8 ms·

F-Droid's Progress and What's Coming in 2025

321 points by mappu 2y ago

oigursh 2y ago
Anyone preferring a privacy respecting store should key an eye on https://accrescent.app/ https://accrescent.app/
tasn 2y ago
Been a happy f-droid user for as long as I can remember (and even published some packages there). Thanks and kudos to the f-droid team!
- Lerc 2y ago
  I too like f-droid but have found it too difficult to figure out how to publish packages for it. Last time I looked at it all the documentation covered tool chains I don't use. I see that there are Godot games on f-droid now so I hope that means there is an easy path to go from a Godot project to f-droid package. Also is there any support for PWAs on F-droid?
  - epse 2y ago
    PWA's just got a callout in the OP, freshly supported since this year
  - tasn 2y ago
    I had to write (heavily improve? I don't remember) the React Native guide when I release my first RN app there (non RN apps were easy). Though I assume/hope things are better now?
Spunkie 2y ago
> Supported iOS apps and progressive web apps (PWA) as packages that can be shipped via repositories. iOS apps on f-droid, huh?
- greazy 2y ago
  Europeans can install alternative app stores https://support.apple.com/en-us/118110 https://support.apple.com/en-us/118110
  - rnaarten 2y ago
    True, but only when you login with your Apple account. Which kind of defeats the purpose for some parts
colordrops 2y ago
Just wanna say that F-Droid is one of the most important projects out there for retaining some sanity and freedom on mobile devices.
redox99 2y ago
After more than a decade, the UI for updating apps in F Droid is still very buggy. One of its most basic and fundamental features. I don't get it.
- pmontra 2y ago
  Still not perfect but it improved a lot in the last year. When it says update, it really updates now, and when it says updated it's updated. Running the package installer works, etc. I believe that all the process is not very well integrated because it must run external components, whilst Play does it internally, but I might be wrong.
- emaro 2y ago
  These days even automatic updates are working. But I agree the UI of the official app (there are others) isn't amazing.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    > But I agree the UI of the official app (there are others) isn't amazing. I think it does help that there are others. The official app should be good, but there's a decent collection of others that can do things better. If nothing else, they can make different tradeoffs, like only supporting new Android versions.
  - internet_points 2y ago
    at least it's less annoying than Google Play :-)
  - Lammy 2y ago
    > there are others Relevant: Droidify https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.looker.droidify/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.looker.droidify/ (meta lol)
    - vrighter 2y ago
      This is the one I use and has worked pretty much flawlessly since day 1. I highly recommend it. I don't even have the f-droid app itself installed anymore.
ap-andersson 2y ago
In general F-Droid works well for me even if I have only maybe 2-3 apps that I get from there. I think it's good that it exists. There could be some improvements on the process of adding an app though. I recently made a very small app for myself that I thought "maybe a couple of people would find this useful, I should add it to F-Droid". I started by reading their docs on how to add a new app. I created an account on gitlab, forked their repo and added my app. Their pipeline failed without telling me why. After reading and re-reading everything a bunch of times I had to give up and look for help. The instructions said to fix all pipeline problems before creating a merge request. So I go to the contact page where there are a bunch of options. I chose IRC and join. Ask for help. No answer or any message sent in the channel for the next 24 hours. At this point I am getting a bit irritated and are thinking about truly giving up. Then eventually someone answers in the channel and says "create a merge request and someone will help you". Which is what the docs said NOT to do. Fine. Ok. I will create it. I go to Gitlab and chose the right template for the merge request. And now I get a whole bunch of new instructions and questions that I have to answer that the docs never mentioned. And it even mentions in that template that I should TRY to fix pipeline problems, or someone will help me (still going against official docs on their site). Since there was a bunch of questions I would have to look up to properly answer I did not have the time to do it right away... And I still have not done it. Its on a todo-list. tl;dr: F-Droid works okey but the whole process of submitting a new app for someone that has not gone through it before could be made way better with some updated and unified instructions.
- daghamm 2y ago
  You can run their pipeline locally with better observability.
- iggldiggl 2y ago
  > I started by reading their docs on how to add a new app. Did you stumble across https://f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_How-To/ https://f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_How-To/, or did you miss that page somehow? Because there it mentions the Submission Queue as the simpler, if somewhat slower route to adding an app. For the submission queue, you just need to fill out the pertinent data in an issue ticket and then follow along with any further instructions you might subsequently receive.
ggm 2y ago
https://f-droid.org/2023/03/20/f-droid-board.html https://f-droid.org/2023/03/20/f-droid-board.html pleases me. Google store? Governance be damned.
openrisk 2y ago
> progressive web apps (PWA) as packages that can be shipped via repositories Aah, wasn't aware this is possible now, thats cool. But raises the question of how exactly to check and communicate to users what data are being collected. With a PWA almost all of the code runs on the server. Even if that server is based on an open source project, there is no guarantee that there has been no modification (eg a plugin) that changes behavior. Not sure there is a way to reconcile these demands in an automated way that doesnt ultimately fall back on trusting the developer.
- black_puppydog 2y ago
  I thought that the whole point of PWAs is that they can nearly all the logic and storage on-device?
  - openrisk 2y ago
    Its very flexible, both ends of the spectrum are within the specification. One could force the "on-device only" by requiring no data exchange with the outside world but thats quite limiting too (and not trivial to check at upload time).
    - idle_zealot 2y ago
      So... like a normal app? Nothing stops native apps from mostly running on the server. In fact, many do. Social media, banking, heck, do maps apps even do offline routing, or do they just query a server for that usually?
      - openrisk 2y ago
        yeah, its a very blurry line (like the overall separation and balance between client and server roles anyway).
  - zo1 2y ago
    There is way too much marketing and "evangelism" around PWAs that it's hard to pin down exactly what they are or what they want the term to encompass.
donatj 2y ago
Anyone have any strong recommendations for apps available on F-Droid I should try? I think I have maybe two apps installed via it currently. If something is available on the Google App Store I'm generally using that instead.
- ap-andersson 2y ago
  I myself use the following that are on F-Droid: - Hacki for Hacker News - Immich - Organic Maps - Synchting-Fork - VLC - Voice Audiobook Player
  - dizhn 2y ago
    Why fork of Syncthing?
    - Eavolution 2y ago
      The official Syncthing has been discontinued on android, I believe due to the difficulty of keeping up with the changing APIs.
      - dizhn 2y ago
        Thank you.
- user070223 2y ago
  AnkiDroid (Anki - Spaced repetition app) AntennaPod (Podcasts app) Coffee (quicktile alowing adjusting how long will the display will stay awak) NetGuard (VPN to control app internet access & domain based ad blocking) Newpipe (alternative youtube & other media sites frontend) OsmAnd (Navigation based on Open Street Map) Sky Map (google's sky map) Telegram FOSS (Telegram client) VLC (media player) WiFiAnalyzer
- t0bia_s 2y ago
  Aurora Store to replace Play Store completely.
- 2y ago
rekoil 2y ago
I don't tinker much in the Android ecosystem, is there an F-Droid client available for Android TV devices? I've managed to install the smartphone version on my NVIDIA Shield TV, but it is more or less impossible to navigate using the remote control...
- nosrepa 2y ago
  Can you plug in a mouse and keyboard, if only temporarily?
  - BizarroLand 2y ago
    If you can't, you can probably still get a bluetooth mouse to work and navigate that way. There are lots of sub $10 bluetooth mini keyboard/mouse combos out there that can do the job even if they are generally crappy at it.
crote 2y ago
I wish they would add some kind of download counter. A decent bunch of the apps on F-Droid are woefully inadequate or still early in development. At the moment F-Droid allows sorting apps either by time of most recent update, or alphabetically. Neither of those is actually useful to me as user. If there are multiple apps doing the same thing, it is currently incredibly hard to see which one is the best. I do not want to download and install multiple apps only to find out they are essentially unusable, and that of the 5 options only a single one is actually functional. I understand that F-Droid might not want to go all-in with the rating and review system, but a barebones download counter would at least show some indication whether people install it once and remove it after trying it out, or leave it installed long enough to survive multiple updates.
- Almondsetat 2y ago
  How does a download counter tell you if people immediately uninstall the app because it sucks?
  - Jarwain 2y ago
    Depends on implementation. One way, which is less private, show active installs by having the phone reports back to the store if it's unstalled A more secure way, show downloads for each version/build. Graph it. If an app is releasing/being updated regularly but more users are uninstalling, you'd expect the downloads per version to decrease or stay level
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - irjustin 2y ago
    Don't know about the parent, but for me VS Code's download count + star rating mental combo does make not download some extensions.
  - crote 2y ago
    If you install it once and then remove it, you only do a single download. If you install it and keep it installed for several app updates, you download it for every update. If a lot of people download it at the same time due to an app update, you'll see a huge download spike immediately after a release. It's a very rough metric, but it could be added without adding any kind of additional telemetry to the client, and it would give at least a small hint of what's happening.
aszantu 2y ago
I think it used to be able to download other people's cards. Last time I tried there were only language sets to download.
allan_s 2y ago
People have asked what app other are using and I was wondering "which apps do you think are missing" ? (it can be games or even very specific needs) as I think lot of people are like me here, we would like to hack on some "weekend project" but we lack creativity.
- aledue 2y ago
  I personally searched for and couldn't find an app that gathered various random generation tools, like the ones on random.org (integer sequences and sets, dice, list shuffle...) Other than that banking, transport, government apps are (almost) never on fdroid, but that's not something a weekend project can fix :)
ubertaco 2y ago
[flagged]
- greenavocado 2y ago
  You can bypass fdroid ideology by using custom repos
- bunabhucan 2y ago
  Do chromecasts phone home with data on all nearby wifi devices? If they do then is that not reporting location data for those devices, albeit static monitoring? "mehtacos phone was on ubertacos wlan" is location data.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Aissen 2y ago
Sharing a small tip I discovered recently: Android 12 introduced the ability for third party apps to do background updates of apps they installed (or last updated). This should be usable by F-Droid, but is not yet to update itself(!) because it targets an older Android version (targetSdk 25). F-Droid Basic (by F-Droid developers) removes some features, but targets Android 14 instead (targetSdk 34): https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fdroid.basic/ https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fdroid.basic/ ; my understanding is that it should be merged at some point, but isn't yet. Note that targetSdk is different from minSdk: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/uses-sdk-element#target https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/uses-sdk... F-Droid article on this: https://f-droid.org/2024/02/29/twif.html#f-droid-core https://f-droid.org/2024/02/29/twif.html#f-droid-core
sizzle 2y ago
Does anyone know if something like this is possible for iOS?
- zaik 2y ago
  For users in the EU it might soon be possible.
rldjbpin 2y ago
at the expense of turning this a platform to rant away my grievances, the past year i faced a weird issue with the store that lasted several months! the tailscale client introduced a bug with a new updated that crashes on launch. the developers rolled back the release after a few days, by then i had already unknowingly installed it. now came the world of hurt. while it is also partially the dev team's fault to not quickly patch a new version for f-droid to allow easy update, there was no way to rollback versions of installed apps from the store! non-rooted phones have a lot of issues with installing specific apk version without getting rid of app data, and it really soured my experiences with using open-source app stores. in this case, the only way was to wait 4 months to finally get the official patch. i really wish they introduce a way to install older version without losing app data. besides this, i do agree with others on having no filters to weed out dead projects from results. the sort by last update does most of the job to be fair.

321 points by mappu 2y ago

Anyone preferring a privacy respecting store should key an eye on https://accrescent.app/ https://accrescent.app/

tasn 2y ago

Been a happy f-droid user for as long as I can remember (and even published some packages there). Thanks and kudos to the f-droid team!

Lerc 2y ago
I too like f-droid but have found it too difficult to figure out how to publish packages for it. Last time I looked at it all the documentation covered tool chains I don't use. I see that there are Godot games on f-droid now so I hope that means there is an easy path to go from a Godot project to f-droid package. Also is there any support for PWAs on F-droid?
- epse 2y ago
  PWA's just got a callout in the OP, freshly supported since this year
- tasn 2y ago
  I had to write (heavily improve? I don't remember) the React Native guide when I release my first RN app there (non RN apps were easy). Though I assume/hope things are better now?

Spunkie 2y ago

> Supported iOS apps and progressive web apps (PWA) as packages that can be shipped via repositories. iOS apps on f-droid, huh?

greazy 2y ago
Europeans can install alternative app stores https://support.apple.com/en-us/118110 https://support.apple.com/en-us/118110
- rnaarten 2y ago
  True, but only when you login with your Apple account. Which kind of defeats the purpose for some parts

colordrops 2y ago

Just wanna say that F-Droid is one of the most important projects out there for retaining some sanity and freedom on mobile devices.

redox99 2y ago

After more than a decade, the UI for updating apps in F Droid is still very buggy. One of its most basic and fundamental features. I don't get it.

pmontra 2y ago
Still not perfect but it improved a lot in the last year. When it says update, it really updates now, and when it says updated it's updated. Running the package installer works, etc. I believe that all the process is not very well integrated because it must run external components, whilst Play does it internally, but I might be wrong.
emaro 2y ago
These days even automatic updates are working. But I agree the UI of the official app (there are others) isn't amazing.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  > But I agree the UI of the official app (there are others) isn't amazing. I think it does help that there are others. The official app should be good, but there's a decent collection of others that can do things better. If nothing else, they can make different tradeoffs, like only supporting new Android versions.
- internet_points 2y ago
  at least it's less annoying than Google Play :-)
- Lammy 2y ago
  > there are others Relevant: Droidify https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.looker.droidify/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.looker.droidify/ (meta lol)
  - vrighter 2y ago
    This is the one I use and has worked pretty much flawlessly since day 1. I highly recommend it. I don't even have the f-droid app itself installed anymore.

ap-andersson 2y ago

In general F-Droid works well for me even if I have only maybe 2-3 apps that I get from there. I think it's good that it exists. There could be some improvements on the process of adding an app though. I recently made a very small app for myself that I thought "maybe a couple of people would find this useful, I should add it to F-Droid". I started by reading their docs on how to add a new app. I created an account on gitlab, forked their repo and added my app. Their pipeline failed without telling me why. After reading and re-reading everything a bunch of times I had to give up and look for help. The instructions said to fix all pipeline problems before creating a merge request. So I go to the contact page where there are a bunch of options. I chose IRC and join. Ask for help. No answer or any message sent in the channel for the next 24 hours. At this point I am getting a bit irritated and are thinking about truly giving up. Then eventually someone answers in the channel and says "create a merge request and someone will help you". Which is what the docs said NOT to do. Fine. Ok. I will create it. I go to Gitlab and chose the right template for the merge request. And now I get a whole bunch of new instructions and questions that I have to answer that the docs never mentioned. And it even mentions in that template that I should TRY to fix pipeline problems, or someone will help me (still going against official docs on their site). Since there was a bunch of questions I would have to look up to properly answer I did not have the time to do it right away... And I still have not done it. Its on a todo-list. tl;dr: F-Droid works okey but the whole process of submitting a new app for someone that has not gone through it before could be made way better with some updated and unified instructions.

daghamm 2y ago
You can run their pipeline locally with better observability.
iggldiggl 2y ago
> I started by reading their docs on how to add a new app. Did you stumble across https://f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_How-To/ https://f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_How-To/, or did you miss that page somehow? Because there it mentions the Submission Queue as the simpler, if somewhat slower route to adding an app. For the submission queue, you just need to fill out the pertinent data in an issue ticket and then follow along with any further instructions you might subsequently receive.

ggm 2y ago

https://f-droid.org/2023/03/20/f-droid-board.html https://f-droid.org/2023/03/20/f-droid-board.html pleases me. Google store? Governance be damned.

openrisk 2y ago

> progressive web apps (PWA) as packages that can be shipped via repositories Aah, wasn't aware this is possible now, thats cool. But raises the question of how exactly to check and communicate to users what data are being collected. With a PWA almost all of the code runs on the server. Even if that server is based on an open source project, there is no guarantee that there has been no modification (eg a plugin) that changes behavior. Not sure there is a way to reconcile these demands in an automated way that doesnt ultimately fall back on trusting the developer.

black_puppydog 2y ago
I thought that the whole point of PWAs is that they can nearly all the logic and storage on-device?
- openrisk 2y ago
  Its very flexible, both ends of the spectrum are within the specification. One could force the "on-device only" by requiring no data exchange with the outside world but thats quite limiting too (and not trivial to check at upload time).
  - idle_zealot 2y ago
    So... like a normal app? Nothing stops native apps from mostly running on the server. In fact, many do. Social media, banking, heck, do maps apps even do offline routing, or do they just query a server for that usually?
    - openrisk 2y ago
      yeah, its a very blurry line (like the overall separation and balance between client and server roles anyway).
- zo1 2y ago
  There is way too much marketing and "evangelism" around PWAs that it's hard to pin down exactly what they are or what they want the term to encompass.

donatj 2y ago

Anyone have any strong recommendations for apps available on F-Droid I should try? I think I have maybe two apps installed via it currently. If something is available on the Google App Store I'm generally using that instead.

ap-andersson 2y ago
I myself use the following that are on F-Droid: - Hacki for Hacker News - Immich - Organic Maps - Synchting-Fork - VLC - Voice Audiobook Player
- dizhn 2y ago
  Why fork of Syncthing?
  - Eavolution 2y ago
    The official Syncthing has been discontinued on android, I believe due to the difficulty of keeping up with the changing APIs.
    - dizhn 2y ago
      Thank you.
user070223 2y ago
AnkiDroid (Anki - Spaced repetition app) AntennaPod (Podcasts app) Coffee (quicktile alowing adjusting how long will the display will stay awak) NetGuard (VPN to control app internet access & domain based ad blocking) Newpipe (alternative youtube & other media sites frontend) OsmAnd (Navigation based on Open Street Map) Sky Map (google's sky map) Telegram FOSS (Telegram client) VLC (media player) WiFiAnalyzer
t0bia_s 2y ago
Aurora Store to replace Play Store completely.
2y ago

rekoil 2y ago

I don't tinker much in the Android ecosystem, is there an F-Droid client available for Android TV devices? I've managed to install the smartphone version on my NVIDIA Shield TV, but it is more or less impossible to navigate using the remote control...

nosrepa 2y ago
Can you plug in a mouse and keyboard, if only temporarily?
- BizarroLand 2y ago
  If you can't, you can probably still get a bluetooth mouse to work and navigate that way. There are lots of sub $10 bluetooth mini keyboard/mouse combos out there that can do the job even if they are generally crappy at it.

crote 2y ago

I wish they would add some kind of download counter. A decent bunch of the apps on F-Droid are woefully inadequate or still early in development. At the moment F-Droid allows sorting apps either by time of most recent update, or alphabetically. Neither of those is actually useful to me as user. If there are multiple apps doing the same thing, it is currently incredibly hard to see which one is the best. I do not want to download and install multiple apps only to find out they are essentially unusable, and that of the 5 options only a single one is actually functional. I understand that F-Droid might not want to go all-in with the rating and review system, but a barebones download counter would at least show some indication whether people install it once and remove it after trying it out, or leave it installed long enough to survive multiple updates.

Almondsetat 2y ago
How does a download counter tell you if people immediately uninstall the app because it sucks?
- Jarwain 2y ago
  Depends on implementation. One way, which is less private, show active installs by having the phone reports back to the store if it's unstalled A more secure way, show downloads for each version/build. Graph it. If an app is releasing/being updated regularly but more users are uninstalling, you'd expect the downloads per version to decrease or stay level
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- irjustin 2y ago
  Don't know about the parent, but for me VS Code's download count + star rating mental combo does make not download some extensions.
- crote 2y ago
  If you install it once and then remove it, you only do a single download. If you install it and keep it installed for several app updates, you download it for every update. If a lot of people download it at the same time due to an app update, you'll see a huge download spike immediately after a release. It's a very rough metric, but it could be added without adding any kind of additional telemetry to the client, and it would give at least a small hint of what's happening.

aszantu 2y ago

I think it used to be able to download other people's cards. Last time I tried there were only language sets to download.

allan_s 2y ago

People have asked what app other are using and I was wondering "which apps do you think are missing" ? (it can be games or even very specific needs) as I think lot of people are like me here, we would like to hack on some "weekend project" but we lack creativity.

aledue 2y ago
I personally searched for and couldn't find an app that gathered various random generation tools, like the ones on random.org (integer sequences and sets, dice, list shuffle...) Other than that banking, transport, government apps are (almost) never on fdroid, but that's not something a weekend project can fix :)

ubertaco 2y ago

[flagged]

greenavocado 2y ago
You can bypass fdroid ideology by using custom repos
bunabhucan 2y ago
Do chromecasts phone home with data on all nearby wifi devices? If they do then is that not reporting location data for those devices, albeit static monitoring? "mehtacos phone was on ubertacos wlan" is location data.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Aissen 2y ago

Sharing a small tip I discovered recently: Android 12 introduced the ability for third party apps to do background updates of apps they installed (or last updated). This should be usable by F-Droid, but is not yet to update itself(!) because it targets an older Android version (targetSdk 25). F-Droid Basic (by F-Droid developers) removes some features, but targets Android 14 instead (targetSdk 34): https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fdroid.basic/ https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fdroid.basic/ ; my understanding is that it should be merged at some point, but isn't yet. Note that targetSdk is different from minSdk: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/uses-sdk-element#target https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/uses-sdk... F-Droid article on this: https://f-droid.org/2024/02/29/twif.html#f-droid-core https://f-droid.org/2024/02/29/twif.html#f-droid-core

sizzle 2y ago

Does anyone know if something like this is possible for iOS?

zaik 2y ago
For users in the EU it might soon be possible.

rldjbpin 2y ago

at the expense of turning this a platform to rant away my grievances, the past year i faced a weird issue with the store that lasted several months! the tailscale client introduced a bug with a new updated that crashes on launch. the developers rolled back the release after a few days, by then i had already unknowingly installed it. now came the world of hurt. while it is also partially the dev team's fault to not quickly patch a new version for f-droid to allow easy update, there was no way to rollback versions of installed apps from the store! non-rooted phones have a lot of issues with installing specific apk version without getting rid of app data, and it really soured my experiences with using open-source app stores. in this case, the only way was to wait 4 months to finally get the official patch. i really wish they introduce a way to install older version without losing app data. besides this, i do agree with others on having no filters to weed out dead projects from results. the sort by last update does most of the job to be fair.