Just setup a new de-Googled phone and figured I’d share some of the good FOSS apps I’m using. Please feel free to chime in with any you’d recommend (or better options than what I have listed)

  • Weather: Breezy Weather. Note that the version in F-Droid is the “freenet” version and only has one source (Open-Meteo I believe). The “standard” release is available on Github and has additional sources like AccuWeather, OpenWeather, etc. Absolutely gorgeous app as well as widgets.
  • Maps: Organic Maps What Google Maps should be. Absolutely gorgeous, functional, and works 100% offline.
  • Google Play Store: Aurora Store. Sometimes you need an app that’s only available in the official Play store. Aurora store lets you download apps without having Play services installed or requiring a Google account. Even if you do have Play services and Play store available, Aurora is just so much more usable since it’s not a flaming dumpster fire of “suggestions”, “recommendations”, and ads.
  • Email: K-9 Mail. Basically Thunderbird Mobile. Enough said.
  • Calendar: Etar Fast and efficient, syncs easily with my DAVx5 synced calendars from Nextcloud
  • Tasks: OpenTasks. Create, edit, update, and complete tasks. Can sync to a CalDAV server via DAVx5.
  • Contact/Calendar/Task Sync: DavX5 WebDAV sync utility that I use to sync my calendar, contacts, and tasks from Nextcloud to my phone.
  • Matrix: SchildiChat. So much better than Element for Android. Was having constant issues with encryption keys failing to sync in Element that hasn’t (yet?) been a problem with SchildiChat.
  • Launcher: FastDraw: This is more of a preference, but I really like this launcher for its simplicity and ease of organization. Don’t recommend this if you use a lot of widgets as it only supports one at a time (feature, not bug).
  • Authenticator: Aegis
  • SIP/VOIP: Linphone I really wish the desktop version of Linphone had this kind of polish.
  • MPD Client: M.A.L.P Absolutely gorgeous and intuitive MPD client. I pair it with Snapcast to control my whole-house audio.
  • Quick Share: Snapdrop/Pairdrop I don’t use the app (rather, I have my self-hosted one pinned as a PWA), but this is great for sending one-off files or text between devices.
  • Music: Tie between Apollo and Mucke. The default LineageOS (AOSP?) music player is nice, but the phone I setup wasn’t supported with LineageOS and didn’t have a good music player included. Additionally, those two scale well on the small screen of the device I’m using where others would crop off the controls at varying points.
  • Web Apps: NativeAlpha. Uses the Android System WebView to wrap any website into a standalone “app”. While most mobile browsers will let you do that with the “Add to home screen” button, only ones with a manifest.json will work as apps; the rest are just shortcuts. Also includes other niceties such as adding adblock, controlling cookies, defaulting to a desktop version, and modifying the user agent string (among other options).
  • @[email protected]
    2•2 months ago
    • Weather: KleineWetterVorschau (Germany), even syncs with Gadgetbridge
    • Keyboard: FlorisBoard Beta, they add a ton of cool stuff and it is the only one customizable enough to be usable
    • Maps: nothing beats OSMAnd but the rendering is slow and the UI is uninspired (there is no focus on nice features)
    • Calendar: Fossify Calendar + DAVx5
    • Share: Localsend, wormhole. If snapdrop is easier to use, very nice. But Localsend is very reliable over local hotspot too.
    • Admiral PatrickOPEnglish
      2•2 months ago

      Yeah, I used to use OSMAnd but Organic Maps is my new love. Breezy Weather has gadget bridge support, but I haven’t tested it yet. Will checkout Fossify Calendar for sure. Etar is pretty basic, but gets the job done.

      Haven’t heard of Localsend or Wormhole but will check those out.

      I patched my self-hosted version of Snapdrop to work better behind my Authelia proxy:

      • Uses the display name passed from Authelia rather than randomly assigning one (will fall back to random names if using it unauthenticated on local network)
      • Since it’s behind Authelia, I have it open to the internet (behind SSO with 2FA) and patched the server process to remove the restriction that both devices be on the same LAN. Let’s me send over 4G to another device or my PC easily.