Been using a degoogled LineageOS phone with all apps being exclusively FLOSS. My favourite free alternatives to proprietary apps and services must be Lemmy (Jerboa) for Reddit, ArcaneChat and Matrix (Extera) for Telegram, Fluxer for Discord.
Which ones are your favourite?
@myszka
- Fossify calendar, message and gallery
- NerdCalci : calculator
- Fennec : browser
- Markor : markdown notes
- Syncthing-Fork : sync my notes
- Acode IDE
- LibreOffice Viewer
- Librera Reader : PDF reader
- CapyReader : RSS reader
- Helliboard
- Termux
- Material Files : support browsing termux storage & more
- OpenCamera
- Image Toolbox
- NewPipe
- TrackerControl : track and block app data
- SherpaTTS
- Proton VPN
- CoMaps
- VLC
- Lawnchair : home screen
- Obtainium : apk downloaderI’m still trying to find something to replace Google Lens for image translation. Anyone got anything?
OpenCamera
If there’s better or similar, please advise me as I’m always interested in discovering
My main ones right now are OSMAnd + BRouter for maps, Spotube + ListenBrainz for music, Etar and Tasks.org + DAVx5 for calendar/tasks, Cheogram for texts/calls, Bitwarden for passwords/passkeys, F-Droid for downloading apps.
Comaps instead of gmaps, mastodon instead of X, bitwarden
FUTO Keyboard I mainly use swipe typing, and it works better for me, than google keyboard.
Not FLOSS though. Only source available.
FUTO keyboard? I can’t find it on fdroid
It’s not on F-Droid because it is proprietary.
Ok, so the code is open source but its not a do anything you want with it?
It’s not open source. The open source definition is about more than being able to see source code. The usual term for the latter is “source-available” which tells you nothing about what you’re actually able to do with it.
Another term I use is “proprietary source available software” (PSAS) as a mirror to “free, open source software” (FOSS). Note that the “free” in that term refers to free software (libre) not free-of-cost (gratis). The free software definition and open source definition generally overlap so most licenses that are one will also be the other. In other words, “open source but not FOSS” is not a thing (and is generally a misnomer for PSAS).
As an analogy, you wouldn’t say a store is “open” just because you can look in the windows and see things.
Gotcha, do you happen to know any alternatives that are actually FOSS? I tried Urik keyboard but it doesn’t hold up for FUTO keyboard in terms of swipe typing and multilingualism
There is HeliBoard, but swipe typing unfortunately requires Google’s gesture typing library at the moment. There is work being done to create a foss replacement for the gesture typing library.
Not yet usable for a pure foss system, but it will be once the gesture library is ready.
I replaced FUTO with HeliBoard quite a while back. I’m contributing swipe data to help the effort with an open swipe library.
Overall the only feature I’m missing is changing to COLMAK.
You need to add the futo repo to fdroid https://f-droid.org/tutorials/add-repo/
Thanks! I really like swipe typing I just couldn’t find one good enough Ps: I’m liking what I’m seeing
I’ve had a worse experience with their swiping which is annoying because in general i like that keyboard way more
Almost everything I use is FLOSS, with some exceptions that can’t be helped.
System:
Droid-ify, Bitwarden, Termux, Ente Auth, Fossify (File Manager, Clock, Voice Recorder, and Gallery), Proton (Mail, Calendar, VPN, Drive), CalcYou, KDE Connect, Tailscale, Offline Translator, Rain (Weather), Brave, Vanadium, Tor, Addy.io (email aliasing)
Media-Based:
Notesnook, Librera FD (e-reader), Collabora Office, OSS File Scanner, Image Toolbox, Ente Photos, WizeStream (YouTube, PeerTube, and SoundCloud client), MetroList (YouTube Music), Jellyfin, Libre Librivox Listener (audio books), Audire (Shazam client), Auxio (local music player)
Social:
Signal, Element X (Matrix), Cheogram, Mastodon, Interstellar (Piefed), Red Reader (Reddit), Slim Social (Facebook)
- Heliboard
- Aves for gallery, Immich for backup/web viewing
- antennapod for podcasts
- aegis for TOTP
- bitwarden for passwords
- Gitnex for codeberg
- auxio for local music
- fennec for browser
- findroid for jellyfin
- inaturalist for plant and animal recognition (only play store but FOSS)
- liftlog for lifting (only play store but FOSS)
- local send for file transfer
- Openvitals for health data aggregation from health connect (buggy slop app, but it is the best of the, apparently only slop, apps available and gadgetbridge doesn’t use phone pedometer and only writes to health connect so can’t be used for aggregated data)
- Supertonic TTS ( used to be marmalade TTS, better voices, but their last update, also a slop app, made the voice synthesis using the android unusably staticy)
- Thunderbird for email
- Signal for messaging
- Fairscan for scanning (also checking out openscan and OS’S document scanner but they seem unusably slow, like 5-10s for one scan)
- Curbox for digital wellbeing (timers, intent, and habit breaking “boops” for apps.
- games: shattered pixel dungeon, mindustry, and Huesort
- whisper+ for STT
- Aves for gallery, Immich for backup/web viewing
Do you have any workflow to automatically upload to Immich?
Yup, set backup to on in the app… That’s all there is to it.
inaturalist for plant and animal recognition (only play store but FOSS)
sadly, inaturalist needs boogle play services
did you try ironfox ?
Ironfox broke too many websites for me personally. I understand the reason is that it uses heavy anti-data collection and privacy settings, but it was a little overkill for daily browsing. I ended up settling on Fennec too.
for those who think of trying ironfox
there are “protection overrides” under settings > ironfox settings, to help with site breakages
LibreCuts for video editing Droid-ify as a lightweight F-Droid client Iris Keyboard as a lightweight yet extremely customizable keyboard Pur.ili as a search engine with its own index OpenNavBar for a fully-customizable navigation bar Fossify File Manager for managing files Prism Gallery for viewing photos and videos Lune as an offline music player Pocket Paint for photo editing and paint CoMaps for navigation GeoLibre as an altermative to Google Earth Yagni Launcher as an Android launcher Pimi Widget for weather widget Offline Translator for translating and OCR
Wow, I didn’t know of many of those. Thanks! A FOSS search engine with its own actual index is especially intriguing.
How is purili FOSS? I see no links to any source code on their site. It actually seems like someone’s vibe coded solo project, based on the blog posts.
Unfortunately a lot of people these days tend to conflate “private” or “not google” with “FOSS.” It’s one of the reasons I’m very adamant about not watering down the definition of FOSS, free software, or open source.
Okay, taking my words back. I just assumed everything people recommend here is FOSS because that’s what I asked for. If it is proprietary and even vibe-coded, I’m not interested.
Yeah I’m also not seeing anything about it being foss
Same, and the project seems very “AI”-friendly on other fronts (assistant feature, agentic search). I’m not touching that.
Oh wait, sorry. Pur.ili doesn’t have a source code. Sorry. Use Mojeek or Marginalia instead
Really? You do not even know Fossify? They got a whole suote of apps! Not just file manager, and they are the most famous FOSS Android app suite beside Proton
I didn’t say everything from your post was new to me. Fossify I do know and their apps look pretty decent although somewhat barebone. I usually need more features so I ended up using other FOSS apps.
If you want a more advanced file manager, try Material Files. They’ve been revived now. If not, then maybe Amaze File Manager. If you really wanna go crazy, WM Keyboard has a built-in file manager aswell
Thanks! Material Files is the one I use most of the time. I also have
Prism File Explorer +installed, but it’s vibe-coded so I try to use as little as possible
- Apps installation: Obtainium for most, directly install apk from GitHub, gitlab,… ; Droid-ify for store-like function
- Keyboard : FUTO, find it the best, includes swipe typing and good dictionary
- Galery: AVES
- Loyalty cards: Catima
- SSH, mosh, sftp, local term,… : Haven, two available version, one with only terminal based and one with remote desktop capability
- File transfer (local network) : LocalSend, easy way to transfer files to people on the same WiFi network, installable through official play store, on windows, Linux,… which allows to use even with non-Foss enthusiasts
- TOTP codes generator: Stratum
- Text editor: Xed-editor
- Calendar: KashCal
- IRC client: HexDroid
- Calculator/Unit converter: Unitto
Mind that FUTO is not FLOSS, just source-available.
I mean… for a keyboard app, should it be a concern that it’s not “free” to redistribute for commercial purposes?
Does this comment mean you would not use the app for this reason?
I mean, it’s a FOSS community and the OP asked for FOSS. With FOSS the user has the four freedoms, the first of which (freedom zero) is unconditional. If something is FOSS it’s taken for granted that you can “run the program as you wish, for any purpose.”
In other words part of the point of FOSS is that the user doesn’t have to worry about whether the rightsholder approves of their use of the software. They have a copy and so they can use it because it is free software.
Edit: I remembered the keyboard specifically has an exception allowing for commercial use, but the point stands. If something is described as FOSS, open source, or free software then the expectation is that the user has those four freedoms. I think it’s worth it to stand up for the free software definition on principle even though I imagine most of us wouldn’t need to sell copies of a keyboard app.
Personally, yeah.
To me, it’s a matter of: It is not open-source, so if the FUTO company starts enshittifying it, then no one’s going to fork it to undo that, because no one wants that proprietary license on their project, whether they intend to distribute it commercially or not.
Obviously, I could just switch to a different keyboard app, if that happens, but in my experience, it also means that no one has their eyeballs on the source code to notice them enshittifying and they’re just generally more likely to sneak shit in, because they know no one’s going to fork.
But I’m also not either a fan of open-source software when it’s developed by a company, for similar reasons. For example, Google puts so much dev capacity into Android and has the infrastructure to uniquely benefit from it, so at best you’ll get soft-forks. No one can afford to do a proper hard-fork and fix the permission system, for example.
Aves, Catima, Xed-Editor, Unitto seem to be very cool and useful, thanks!
Fossify and LibreOffice
LibreOffice? For Android?
libreoffice viewer maybe?
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.documentfoundation.libreoffice/DOOOOOD!! Thank you!!
OK here’s what it is, it’s legit LibreOffice devs which I wasn’t sure of before.
LibreOffice for Android and iOS
The Document Foundation offers a viewer app for LibreOffice documents, with experimental editing support, for Android devices:
To edit documents, there is a LibreOffice-based product in app stores from Collabora, one of our certified developers and ecosystem members:
(On the Collaboration website)
Now available for F-Droid!
Regularly users have asked us about the availability of Collabora Office for F-Droid, the community driven platform focusing on free and open source apps for Android. And now it’s here! Currently we provide two versions: the 4.2.x release – already longer existing, and the snapshot of the unstable 6.4 line. With the latter you can help us test the latest and greatest features! Something we really appreciate, so do contact us!
However, searching in the F-Droid site app list, you will not find it:
- Add the repo using the F-Droid community How To Guide.
- Add the following third party repository: https://www.collaboraonline.com/downloads/fdroid/repo/.
Good catch! I kind of missed this detail. ☺️🤭
Unexpected Keyboard and Thumb Key for two-hand and single-hand typing respectively.
Qalculate! for calc.
Thumb Key is my favourite! Using it right now. Very interesting to see its idea of using swipes to type additional characters implemented in traditional qwerty layout. Thumb Key isn’t the best for terminal, so it might be a good compromise.
i liked thumb key a lot and switched to flickboard so that i could type one- and two-handed with the same keyboard for each thumb. you can even choose the thumb-key layout, and give it a custom background
Interesting. But from reading the description I don’t see any advantages over Thumb Key because the latter also has two-handed layouts that can be seen in screenshots of Flickerboard. What do you find better in Flickerbourd that in Thumb Key?
The two-handed typing you’re referring to, that’s 2x thumb layouts right? Not QWERTY.
correct, 2x thumb layouts!
Got it. Makes sense. I’ve used Thumb Key with 2x thumb layout so I got a bit confused. Tried flickboard, seems nice, very similar to TK indeed.
- Newpipe (replaces youtube app and includes other video platforms)
- Element (Matrix) for chat
- Firefox for browsing the web
