What open-source Android apps should people know about?

KDE Connect! Share files, clipboard, links from one device to another, use your phone as a mouse or laser pointer.

When you use the KDE Desktop Environment it will also show notifications from your phone and sync media controls (e.g. stop playback when you get a phone call). It's great!

accrescent is a great appstore with limited apps, my favourite is beautyxt and DNSnet, give it a try!

Tabs Lite let's you search for songs, fetches lyrics and tabs, chords from the web and stores them offline on your device. You can organize all the songs in playlists as well.

Hum I get a 404 page not found and f droid can't find it as well.
- Me, too. Too bad, I was excited to see a guitar app.
- Strange, my Neo Store opens it fine

rquickshare This is not an app for the phone because it uses the app you already have by default (nearby share/quick share), it enables you to use it with your Mac or Linux computer on the same lan so you can share your clipboard and files. I like it a lot.

Metro - A Music Player For Android

Very, very nice music app for those with a local library.

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.trianguloy.urlchecker

url checker works as your mobiles default browser to easily edit links before opening them in a browser of your choice, I love this thing, I have given up trying to tell people about url hygene

CoMaps. Google Maps alternative. Can save paths and do navigation with TTS. Gets its data from the amazing OpenStreetMap.

Why use this app instead of OsmAnd?
- OsmAnd is a great app for powerusers. CoMaps is a simpler, and more user friendly.
- I was a long time OsmAnd user, I loved that app. After a couple of years I realized, I really liked the cusomizability, but in the end, I use like 5% of it's features. I gave Organic Maps a try (now Co Maps after some community drama) and it was love at first sight. It's the opposite is OsmAnd, a lightweight and super simple app to look for places and navigation. I miss like one, maybe two features, but I the usability is great and I won't look back.
- For me, I have both of them.
  co-maps I use when I need to add a place to open street map, and OSMAND I use for features that co-maps doesn't have.
  Basically, co-maps is easier to use for things that it can do and OSMAND is harder to use but can do more things/different things.

I use davx5 to sync my caldav calendar (radicale) with my Android.

This helps with Apple Calendar too so you can share with Google Calendar or some other
yeah, this one is less known and most useful

Red Moon. Blue light filter for screen. Makes it less hurting for eyes to use phone at night, or generally in dark.

Oooh I bet this will work for viewing my salt water aquarium at night so I can see the nocturnal critters and corals at work!
Or maybe I just got a little too excited because this is for the output light filter and not the camera/input.
ArwwWwoOoOoo

Mindustry: one of the few great games on f-droid (tower defense)

Mindustry is a great FOSS game, period. There's also Shattered Pixel Dungeon.
- And pirate solitaire

https://codeberg.org/svewa/MedicalCalendarLog

I use this every day to keep track of my medication, remind me of stuff I want to do regularly (measure weight, take specific meds but also chores). Disclaimer: I'm the author, could not find anything alike.

That looks cool, though I can't seem to find the "releases" section to download the apk...
I've been looking for a tracking app to replace one I use called Tickmate. It's so old and needs upgrades, but I've been using it for years and can't seem to find a better replacement
- I also can't find releases on mobile. I see a bunch of f-froid publishing stuff at bottom or readme. Doesn't seem to be on f-froid now, but maybe will show up there eventually.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/dnsfilter.android/ personalDNSfilter. DNS proxy filter. You can use your favorite block lists to block ads and trackers in a browser but also in most any other app. You can add your own rules and it doesn't need root.

FindMyDevice. Alternative to Google’s find my device. You send a text from a different phone number, and you can do things like get the GPS location, lock the device, erase the device, ring the device, or have the device take a picture of its location.

Yikes
- I agree. Ability for a third party / uncontrolled phone text to wipe my phone? No thanks

Mandatory

https://f-droid.org/packages/pan.alexander.tordnscrypt.stable/

osmand~ – frontend to openstreetmap with included pathfinder.

Droid-ify Way better F-Droid Client with many Repos Out of the box

obligatory shilling for LocalSend, it's airdrop except open-source and completely cross-platform!

Are there any alternatives that are decently fast for large files? My computer and my phone both get at least 300 mbps from the router, and I have yet to find a local file transfer application that will be anywhere near that fast for large files (destiny, local send, kde connect, might have tried others, I don't remember)
- I have used Copyparty on my LAN (with nginx as a reverse proxy), and remember it being fast enough to saturate a gigabit connection. I would probably believe the numbers quoted here: https://github.com/9001/copyparty?tab=readme-ov-file#reverse-proxy-performance
Yup, used this a lot until I started using KDE Connect more.
fantastic for someone like me who doesn't know shit about networks and file sharing yet has a mix of windows and linux machines
Use it, love it, has a great http webserver fallback option too
- Didn't know about the plain HTTP option! I'm using Sharik for this

URLCheck Share a URL to this app to preview it before opening, sharing or copying. It also has multiple neat features, like

removing trackers
quickly removing URL parts and extracting encoded text e.g. to skip redirection
custom rewrites; can be applied automatically

I second this, one of my most used apps
That's one of the first app I install after installing F droid every time I format my device

Drip A tracking free, cloud free and subscription free period tracker. There are a lot of period tracking apps around, but most of them try to push a subscription on their users and putting that data into a cloud can be dangerous in many countries where abortions are forbidden. You know that some judge in Texas wants to have access to that data. Save yourself or the women in your life from subscribtion and tracking hell and switch them over.

Markor - A markdown/text editor app. It is frankly not the best in terms of design, but it does have quite a few neat features.

Eh, I don't think it has a bad design, it's just very utilitarian which I like. Markor is my favorite app for notes and text files on the fly.

AntennaPod Podcast player with awesome ui

On my wife's phone it has tabs along the bottom. On mine it has the same options in the hamburger menu at the top left. I have no idea why they are different 😅
- You can change it from Settings > User Interface > Bottom navigation
antennapod has boosted the quality of my commutes hugely.
One of the most used F-Droid Apps on my phone
Antennapod also has Android Auto support, though you have to do something in developer mode to activate it, because Google.

Tubular - a Newpipe like player for youtube, that automatically skips ads and promotion content...

Does it work with VPNs?
- I believe so. From my experience, using it with TOR proxy made it somewhat unreliable.
- If it doesn't then it's because of youtube, not because of the app...

Image Toolbox
Shrink, convert, stitch, draw, OCR, blur, do almost anything to an image.

Wow thanks for this!

Breezy weather. It plays nice with gadget bridge and if you use the git version you can choose all kinds of weather sources, the fdroid one is a bit more restrictive. Also it just looks great and is easy to interpret at a glance.

Don't forget the Breezy live wallpaper, where it shows a wallpaper based on the current weather.
I like cirrus as well

Molly.im Signal Fork with the ability to have it on multiple Devices

you're 7 hours late :-) https://lemmy.ml/post/39895219/22599990
- Damn I skimmed through the whole thread but missed it. Will delete my comment.

OrganicMaps or CoMaps Fast beautiful offline Maps, search, wiki and routing

WhoBird Identifies Birds by their sound

I am US based, so maybe not relevant, but is it a good replacement for Merlin?
Nice this uses a local model of birdNET?

OSMAnd, fully featured Map suite with a lot of features and extensions, slower and not so easy and polished as CoMaps, but has way more features.

I think this was posted twice?

Aegis - Google Authenticator compatible 2FA

Also KeePassDX can do 2fa and if you keep passwords there it makes logging in with 2fa super quick and seamless
- I don't think it's a good idea to have both the passwords and the 2FA in the same app. But it does make it much more convenient
Also Stratum which is another open source authenticator app.
I like it because it has a Wear OS companion app.
What does "Google Authenticator compatible" mean?
- It means that apps that ask you to use Google Authenticator for 2FA can be used in Aegis instead. Most authenticator apps do support this same standard at this point.
- It probably means that you can copy your keys between apps.

OpenSudoku, really good sudoku app

WifiAnalyzer, great for finessing your own WiFi channels by providing a scan layout of all 2.4Ghz and 5/6Ghz channels in your area.

You can see bandwidth, signal strength, overlapping networks, everything.

I use it to diagnose deadspots in my home, or to search for hidden wireless cameras in hotel rooms

search for hidden wireless cameras in hotel rooms
Wow, how do you find them? Have you actually had success?
- I went to an airbnb that had a creepy but visible proximity sensor in the bedroom, and a hidden wifi network that was strong near it.
  So, I found a network for an already visible device :-)
It used to have a feature that would beep faster the closer you got to an AP. I used it in cafes and libraries to figure out where to sit for the best WiFi. But they killed it, and I have no idea why :'(
- I think it's an OS limitation which throttles the Wifi scanning to slower intervals (and also requires you to enable location(??))

Firefox. Shouldn't need introduction.

Yes there are forks that may be better to use but let us not forget the one main browser family who's been giving us a chance at fighting against ~~Malware~~ browsers with zero respect for our privacy.

There's been a somewhat recent controversy with regards to stock Firefox selling our data. Many switched to LibreWolf fork after that.
- Thank you for the warning and source. I think I had read about this. Personally I use IronFox on Android, but Firefox otherwise.
  Even if we take this at worst case scenario, it is a much lesser evil than Google in my opinion. And they still open source everything (I think?) and as far as I'm aware allow 100% configuration to remove or tweak anything we don't like one way or another.
  More recently I was also not happy with their introduction of AI crap in the browser which can also be disabled.
  It would be better to be disabled by default and even better not to be present, yes, but well...
  As long as it does not get too out of hand and as long as they keep it open so anyone con remove that crap from forks and/or through configuration... Given our choices, I think they deserve recognition for their work. Even if we don't agree with everything they do.
  I never donated for them and used Firefox for over 20 years. Even if it goes downhill really fast starting now (Which I hope it won't, and the future would suddenly turn much bleaker in this regard), I think I should be thankful for 20+ years of good service.
  I never switched away from Firefox except for 2-3 of its forks on Android. And Librewolf as non main browser on pc.
  I'm also keeping an eye on ladybird but not keeping my hopes up yet.
  All that being said, your concerns are valid and I do share them. I just want to reinforce that when all is said and done.. No matter what the future looks like..
  They were here for us for at least 20 years.
I like that unlike Chrome, Firefox mobile can use all the extensions.
- Just wish that firefox Android supports "right clicking" extensions, though.
  Right now, extensions that use the right-click context menu to function (e.g. Singlefile) doesn't work that well on Android.
IronFox
Being able to use JShelter and Libredirect on mobile is great

NewPipe — Lightweight YouTube front-end: background playback and downloads without Google Play services.

Or if you dislike all kinds of ads like me, you may also like the NewPipe fork Tubular, which provides SponsorBlock integration.
- Me like PipePipe
See also, FreeTube.
I feel like NewPipe would be awesome if it weren't just for Android. Like if you could run it on PC/Mac/Linux. iOS wouldn't be entirely out either, since you can sideload up to 3 apps with a free developer account. If you have an iPhone or iPad, you already have an Apple account, so you can just make it a developer account, and all that really does is add you to the developer mailing list, which isn't that annoying.
Of course, on the computer I just use Firefox + uBlock Origin, but I can do that on Android, too. I've never tried watching YouTube on my Android phone (my iPhone has a bigger screen, but I'd just rather use a computer) but I bet I can block the ads in the browser. I think the app comes with it. My iPhone doesn't even have the YouTube app. I never see ads in Safari using uBlock Lite, which is a DNS filter, which is exactly what Android users without root are doing, AFAIK (or VPN-based blocking e.g. PiHole that's platform independent).
(So basically I prefer a solution that works on all my devices from various vendors. But a good option for Android, especially since Google backed down on canceling sideloading!)
- there's freetube for desktop, i hate how it's an electron 'app' though
- There is an experimental version floating around that does run on linux through the very new android translation layer. Very buggy though currently. Its in flathub.

Fossify apps.

Replace your phone, calendar, and more standard apps with foss apps

I've actually replaced my phone, messages and contacts apps with the fossify ones and I gotta say, the oppo ones were slow, would jump sometimes and just were very slow to respond to when texts or calls hit the phone. In contrast, the fossify messages app responds pretty much instantly to messages, the fossify phone app responds instantly to calls, and the two consume way less resources than the preloaded apps.
I like the calendar one especially.

BinaryEye to create, scan and store QR Codes

Obtainium. Lets me install and track apps that aren't on fdroid yet, or are in alpha release.

Syncthing — Continuous file synchronization, self-hosted alternative to cloud.

SyncThing is probably my most used bit of software after LibreWolf. I have it installed on all of the computers I use so I have damn near instant, magical access to a bunch of files. It's how I sync my photos from my Pixel.
It's funny, because SyncThing is basically the reason I barely use my iPad these days. While there is a way to make it work with iOS, it's irritating enough that I just don't bother, and I don't use iCloud storage anymore, so it's a pain in the arse getting documents to it compared to just dropping them in a ST folder that my phone can access.
I use this on my Macs — I think it works on all platforms? My use case is quite interesting. I have two Nintendo Switch emulators, one on a Mac and one on a MacBook. Due to the way Nintendo handles save files, it's not the same folder name from machine to machine. You'd think it would be something dumb like \savesserial-of-game} but no, it's weird, it's dumb, and it makes syncing a challenge.
SyncThing isn't easy to set up, but it's doable. I had to find the folder on both systems (different names, of course) and I have ST set up to where if it detects a change in one, it updates the other.
For the test, I set up Animal Crossing on the Mac, played until I could generate a save (roughly 10-15 minutes, I think: you do character creation, then a tutorial, before you're allowed to go to sleep, and wake up with real-time enabled), then I booted it up on the MacBook and expected the save to load. I got a screen (within the game) I had never seen before, something about transferring my data to a new Switch (I'm guessing there's a hardware ID in there), but then, it worked. I might have to face that screen every time, but I did what Ninten-don't — I have an Animal Crossing save that lives on two machines at once. (And I never play it. I really just did it to see if I could. I play the game on my actual Switch, the actual game I paid for, because I wasn't trying to rip off Nintendo, really, just see if I could do it. And, ST was the tool I used to accomplish it.)
- I have my Calibre library in SyncThing, so if I'm on my work PC and see a book I want to put on my Kobo I don't have to wait until I'm home. Its great!
Is there a android app again?
- Yep
- https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncthingfork

f-droid.

SpamBlocker (Call & SMS)

intelligent spam blocker for SMS and calls

Buran, a Gemini protocol browser.

The posts by Ivan odintsiff are very cool to read. He writes about his discoveries in Gemini.

The only thing that sucks is Buran, or any Gemini browser for that matter, haven't been updated in years which makes for some frustrating issues browing Gemini sometimes.

Öffi for Trains and busses

Very limited in locations that it can provide timetables for. Basically, if you're not in a large, urban area (US or Europe) it doesn't have timetables.
Link because it sometimes doesn't show up in f-droid:
https://f-droid.org/packages/de.schildbach.oeffi/

Shelter - isolate and run multiple instances of apps using Work Profiles.

Similar to Island and Insular.

Could anyone ELI5 the difference between all these? Is there a "stock" Android work profile possible also?
- Work profile is basically a second set of apps with a little briefcase badge that coexist next to your other apps. You/work chooses which apps are installed. They can't access the data in your actual profile and vice versa. You don't log out and in, it's just 2 containers spaces.
  Private space is basically another such container, meant to be a 2nd personal one, but the apps aren't seen next to the others ... Theyre inert and hidden until you unlock the private space (pin/print/etc)
  I think Android 15 is needed or thereabouts.
  IDK about this 3rd party one being mentioned by adding it to my todo list
Now You can have Private Space integrated into Android Out of the Box
- Private space works slightly differently especially when it comes to folder organization. Because of that I actually still prefer Shelter, personally.

Lichess Chess on and offline

Meta does anyone with blorp know how to control-F the comments?

Blorp dev here. Comment are virtualized. That means anything that isn’t currently in view can get unmounted to keep the comments page super snappy. For small posts, this is definitely overkill, but it means we can smoothly render posts with thousands of comments.
I’ve kinda been waiting for someone to complain about this for me to fix it. What I’ll likely do is implement a custom search box that is compatible with the virtualized comments. I have a lot on my plate rn, but I’ll get this fixed as soon as I have time. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Loop Habit Tracker - simply tracking habits.

simpleX Secure, private messenger

Ah yes, the all knowing, 30 year old wizard.

That means you are supposed to know everything there is to know, without being taught it.

Save locally to save shared files

God this is such a lifesaver. And insane how useless android is that it can't fucking save files by default

QUIK SMS — Open source replacement to the stock messaging app on Android. It is a continuation of QKSMS.

I use this, it's pretty great! Not really a replacement for the stock app, but I use a non-stock OS so it doesn't matter to me. It is more like messaging before GIFs and whatnot, but not hard to figure those things out if you want them.

Pedometer counts your steps

Ning, list clients on your network

KISS Launcher - blazingly fast launcher focused on search

Seriously you don't know what you're missing if you're not using this.

This is amazing, thanks partner ;)
Once you start using tags on the app shortcuts & the widget mode with a history menu hidden until you press an invisible favorites bar it's impossible to switch to anything else it's perfect
Every now and then I try a new launcher, but I always come back to Trebuchet. It just works, it's light, and I'm only one or two taps away from anything

Metrolist!

An incredible app for music listening on YouTube(no video rendering).

Of course no ads and background playing like a lot of other apps, but honestly this one has a fantastic ui and is above a lot of other apps. I seriously recommend it.

I'm using Outer Tune right now and like it as well.
- They really look alike ! Considering outertune is still in beta, I probably won't switch as I have a smooth experience so far with metrolist but good to know in case something goes wrong.
Thanks, hopefully this one stays functional for longer than the others!

Capy Reader - RSS reader. Not only a cute capybara icon, but a really nice reader with regular updates.

I tried sooo many rss readers on android, some paid, some closed source, but Capy Reader is by far my favorite one especially because it supports notifications!

FairScan to scan documents.

Is it good with handwriting?
- It doesn't do OCR. It just automatically cleans up the pages for archival or sharing. (I use it to archive my handwritten notes and sketches, so technically yes ;-)

ThumbKey A 3x3 keyboard that made it drastically easier for me to type on my phone without doing thumb acrobatics. Took me a couple weeks to internalize its layout, but now that I did I can't go back to qwerty.

Ok, this layout is messing with my head, but I do want to make it work...

Qalculate Calculator

Aves Libre Open Photo Gallery

Element X — Matrix-based secure group and 1:1 messaging with E2EE support.

I want to use Matrix so bad, but my bridges to Telegram and Signal just... stopped working, completely. After which I promptly gave up on it and let my domain expire a few months later (the domain I'd had for 1.5 years, Matrix was the first thing I actually did with it lol).
- Matrix is pretty rough, in many ways.

FlorisBoard — Privacy-friendly, highly customizable open-source keyboard.

I love FlorisBoard. It doesn't have autocorrect yet... which is one of it's best features

AnkiDroid — Android client for the popular Anki spaced repetition system.

Anki is spaced repetition technique which is simple but highly effective. It helps you memorize things by automatically repeating them across increasing intervals based on your responses with no need for you to keep track of what to study or when to study it. You create notes (or download shared decks) with content you need to memorize, and the scheduler will make sure you see the content when you need to.

Giggity for hacker and other events

Netguard to block and log network access of apps

Gobandroid to play Go

Phypox Access to your devices sensors

Onlyoffice. Despite the controversies with this one, most people use big tech apps sometimes full of ads for simple document editing. Also, onlyoffice is so ligthweight in comparison, that it runs nice even on very low end phones

You're two hours later https://lemmy.ml/post/39895219/22599238 :-)
- Aw. Somehow missed it.

Feeder: RSS reader

YTDLnis - a yt-dlp fronted for android.

Many of the apps I use have already been mentioned so I thought I'd plug Tessel.

Tessel is a colorful tile placement game. Place tiles with matching colors to make shapes and fill the board. The larger the shape, the higher the points.

Linkora. It's a bookmarking app.

Tempus: An open source and lightweight music client for subsonic.

It's a fork of Tempo.

Shosetsu - The Free and Open Source Novel Reader for Android.

I queue up lots of things from royal road an other sources.

This seems really cool. Gonna try it out.

@PumpkinDrama@reddthat.com
Librera Book Reader. A book reader with lots of supported formats.

Librera is hands down the best ebook reader.
And supports old versions of android too! (Droidify tells me that it supports as low as android 5)

UntrackMe Redirects you to privacy

Lissen is my favorite audiobook player

OpenScale For weight and estimated body composition tracking

Session Secure, decentralized and anonymous messenger

Scoreboard

Simple game score sheet

SherpaTTS — Text-to-Speech using Piper and Coqui models.

Combine this with Librera Reader and you can listen to eBooks easily.

AudioAnchor. Audiobook player. Works great with Syncthing. Hasn't been updated in 3 years and doesn't need to be.

UsageDirect Awesome Statistics about your usage of apps

Stealth To access reddit

RadarWeather — Watch the weather without location tracking.

Looking at the last change notes, the Dev stated that they're no longer maintaining the app due to openweathermap now requiring credit card info. Looks like they suggested using Cirrus instead.

Harmony YTMusic client

Flashdim

Gives you brightness control for the flashlight.

Sadly my flashlight only supports 1 level of brightness.
- And that level is SUN

I use Noutube for youtube music and videos. It's basically just a wrap of the mobile sites, but it blocks ads and plays while screen is locked.

https://f-droid.org/packages/jp.nonbili.noutube/

Neo launcher

Bineural Beats to have noise on your headphones while its loud

Change Detection of websites

Vector Camera Camera effects, like ASCII or sketches

Jami Messenger

Windscribe VPN allows the user to use its features like Split Tunneling with every OpenVPN config

Brave Integrated Adblock

@PumpkinDrama@reddthat.com
Silence. By default numbers not in your contacts are blocked.

Money Manager Ex

From their website:

Open-source, cross-platform, software that helps you organize your finances and keep track of where, when and to who the money goes. It is also a great tool to get a bird's eye view of your financial worth.

How do you pull data with this? You have to export all your transactions first, right?