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Favorite FOSS Android Apps for a De-Googled Phone
(dubvee.org)
submitted
2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)
by
ptz@dubvee.org
to
c/opensource@programming.dev
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.jsonwill 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).
I feel like I was late to the MPD party and regret not setting it up sooner. The music plays and is organized on the server and you can control it over the network with an MPD client. So if the server is hooked to a sound system, you can remote control it.
That's all well and good, but MPD also supports outputting to a local file FIFO (basically a virtual output) and Snapcast can use that as a source. Snapcast is a multi-room, network audio service that syncs the streams for all the clients (basically FOSS Sonos). Together, they run my whole-house audio. They're also supported in HomeAssistant so you can add controls for the player and individual speakers in your dashboards.
MPD also supports partitions (virtual players / zones), but I've had trouble getting those working reliably. I'll have to re-try that since it's been a year or so since I last tried, and it was a fairly new feature then.