Has anyone noticed that apps on F-Droid or that you just get from GitHub are just better than the ultra-popular apps on the play store? Most of them are open source and have no ads or trackers. But this isn’t true on the Play Store at all.

I see myself always getting apps from F-Droid now because there is always an alternative to the ad-infested bloated privacy infesting BS that I find on the play store. It’s unfortunate that it’s gotten this bad, where the only reason I even use the play store is to install updates or games.

    • Calypso7899@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Here are some apps I’ve switched to

      AntennaPod - For podcasts, pretty much the best app out there

      Simple calender - For calender use

      Feeder - RSS feed reader. Useful replacement for news apps

      Simple Gallery Pro - As the name suggests, it’s a clean, simple offline photo and video viewer with some neat features

      Lawnchair - My launcher of choice. A good balance of speed and customisability.

      Just notes - Keep replacement

      K9 mail - Gmail app replacement. FairEmail is a strong contender too.

      Keepass2Android - Password manager

      Neostore - F-droid alternative

      Geometric Weather - My preferred weather app of choice (Edit - For a more updated fork of this, check comment below)

      Wefwef - Kinda mimics apollo for lemmy. It’s pretty neat imo.

      Honourary mention - Infinity for reddit (RIP)

      • WillyWonksters@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Lichess - rather than chess.com

        Rustdesk - remote desktop software

        Syncthing - rather than Dropbox

        KDE Connect - phone/computer integration (notifications, media control, mouse and keyboard, file sharing, presentation remote, clipboard sharing, etc)

        Aves gallery,

        Organic maps

        PlayBook - audiobook player

        Bitwarden - password manager,

        Droid-ify - F-droid client

        Element - matrix client (potentiall alternative to discord)

        GrapheneOS is also great.

      • Illecors@lemmy.cafe
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        1 year ago

        May I suggest you check out KeepassDX? I found it’s UI/UX to be much better a few years ago. Haven’t looked back since.

      • zxo@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        I loved Infinity. Shame they aren’t moving it to Lemmy, and instead they’re making it a subscription.

        • Calypso7899@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Agreed. Although I’m pleased to see them survive through this, I really hoped they’d make a Lemmy client. As a platform, this just makes more sense.

          • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            Seems so bizzare though and contradictory. Like not wanting to use the official reddit app that is free and not restricted, but too addicted to reddit to quit that they are willing to pay a subscription to be able to continue to reddit on the app they want. That’s like a super hardcore reddit addict more than regular users who scoffed at the idea of a boycott.

            • Calypso7899@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Haha, funny and sad at the same time. Apart from addiction though, the sentiment to support the developer who had worked so hard to bring to app to them might be at play too. I know many users who are willing to either donate to the Infinity dev directly and patch the apk for themselves, or pay the subscription cost only if it has a profit margin for the dev. Nobody wants to pay reddit.

            • lka1988@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              the official reddit app that is free and not restricted

              Hahahahahaha

              Oh you’re serious

              HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

              • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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                1 year ago

                To me someone paying monthly to continue posting on reddit through a third party app because they are too addicted to quit is more ridiculous than using the official app. At that point they are participating and adding content that increases engagement on reddit. There’s no stance of being anti reddit at that point. They are officially a reddit addict. So yeah, I do look down on them more than official reddit app users.

    • zxo@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I’ll give you a few from F-Droid (and maybe IzzyOnDroid too):

      • Auxio is a pretty good lightweight music player
      • NewPipe is an anonymous YouTube client without ads or tracking
      • Obtanium is an app that allows you to auto-update apps from many sources like GitHub, GitLab, and F-Droid
      • Bromite (use this repo instead of the out of date F-Droid version) is a hardened version of Chromium with features like ad blocking and less spyware Those are just a couple apps, there are a ton more on F-Droid. I reccomend using the Droid-ify client because it has more default repos and better UI.