My F-Droid Favourites

Unlike iOS, Android has allowed multiple app stores to coexist within its ecosystem for years. Despite numerous options, the only alternative android app store that I have used is F-Droid. It's a unique app store where every app is open source and free.

The experience itself of using the app store is pleasant. It's so nice to browse an app store without promotions and advertising. In saying that, it would be nice if it provided app charts so it’s easier to find popular apps within a genre or category. F-Droid most certainly has a discovery problem. Therefore, I am hoping my blogpost will assist in its small way.

The following are my favourite F-Droid Apps that I use regularly and highly recommend them:

CAPod

When I started using my Pixel Fold back in September, I spent some time looking for android friendly earbuds. I tried the Google Pixel buds which were great but not as good as my Airpods Pro 2. CAPod basically makes any Airpods work well with my Pixel fold (any android device for that matter) and it even shows a popup when I open the case, just like iOS. It's a companion android app for Airpods. It works extremely well.

DAVx⁵

I have written about this before. Essentially, it allows me to use my iCloud calendar and contacts on android. It works so well that I have not found the need to move my contacts to Google.

RedReader

It's an open source Reddit client which has no advertising or tracking. After most of the third party apps either disappeared or have subscription models, this one appears to be working well and is very stable, fast and efficient. It’s not the most visually pleasing which in a strange way is keeping my Reddit exposure to a bare minimum.

Léon

This is a nifty little app that solves a really annoyance and also preserves a little bit of my privacy. Let’s say, I find something on Amazon and want to share the link with my wife. Leon will remove all the tracking from the link and will share a clean link with my wife.

Scrambled Exif

I really like the name of this app and it's app icon. Always makes me feel like I want bacon and eggs. This app removes meta data from images. It's simple and it works. It's workflow is designed towards removing meta data from images before sharing it which is exactly what I was seeking .

Squawker

It's an open source twitter client. I was initially using it because it allowed me to use Twitter without logging in. However, this is no longer possible. Having said that, it's still a very good Twitter app that is without advertising and has chronological feed of the people I follow. Interestingly, a cool feature is that it allows me to follow accounts without actually following them on Twitter. Thats neat.

Tusky

It’s a lightweight Mastodon client and I also like its name. There are tons of Mastodon third party apps so I cannot claim to use this one exclusively. However, it is in my regular rotation.

Tailscale

It's a mesh VPN alternative that makes it easy to connect to any of my devices regardless of whether I am home or not. Tailscale serves many purposes for me. For example, I use it to connect to my NAS remotely and also with the NEXTDNS integration, it also blocks advertising and tracking on every device that has Tailscale installed. There is a lot more.

Image Toolbox

It's the Swiss army knife for images. Filter, Resize, Compare, Crop - do anything with your images.. there is a long list of what it can do. In most, if not all, this is my go to app for anything to do with images on Android.

VPN apps

There are lots of VPN service providers. However, I prefer to use VPN service providers that have open source apps. In my case, I use either Proton VPN or Windscribe and both are available on F Droid and have generous free plans. It feels good to use open source apps because it provides the added assurance that the code behind the app can be inspected by anyone. So when my network is not on Tailscale, it's likely because I am using either of these VPN.

Note: there are other apps that I regularly use, however, I'm hesitant to name them here because they may be breaching the terms of conditions of other big tech companies and I still want to keep using that software.

These days if I'm looking for an app, I generally start with F Droid and if I don't find anything there, then, I refer to the Google Play Store. Coming from iOS, I'm still new to the alternative app store environment and therefore if you have any apps that you recommend, please feel free to reach out.

One thing is crystal clear in my mind that having an alternative store has given Android a lot more flexibility and more app options that otherwise would not have been available. This makes android fun 😊 and fun is something that iOS has been lacking for years.

This blog post written in Notion on my Pixel Fold.