I like the Fossify apps. I use the phone, sms, contacts, gallery and file manager. It’s SO nice to not have google nag about cloud backups all the time, when I just wanted to look at some pictures I’ve taken.
Also whenever I can I download apps from F-Droid instead of play store if they’re available both places. For example I use Home Assistant, KeePassDX, Syncthing, Termux, VLC, and more from F-Droid.
Found a couple of new apps to try out in this thread as well :)
Clipious or FreeTube AndroidClipious: Privacy focused invidious client that syncs with your account and lets you pick backup instances in case yours goes down FreeTube: Ad-blocking cross-platform privacy-focused YouTube client that imo looks better than NewPipe + Clipious
FluffyChat (if you use Matrix) Secure, private (although not as good as Signal), client for Matrix (the messaging service) that imo looks better than Element and lets you seperate rooms + DMs, which some clients don’t let you do iirc as well as a couple other features like pinned messages and video calls.
HeliBoardBest open source keyboard I’ve used so far
Moshidon and/or MastifyMastodon clients. Mastify looks really good but is till in Alpha releases so is missing quite a bit of features. Moshidon is extremely feature rich.
PodverseMy personal favourite podcast app, run by 1 person afaik with a lot of free features, or a very cheap paid plan that is basically just a donation because it only adds like 2 features that I can remember. Has a very generous trial too and the dev has said if you can’t afford it they’re willing to adjust pricing for you.
QUIK SMSBest actively maintained, open source SMS client.
Drip - Keeping track of menstrual cycles (If you have it lol) Tempo - Music client for navidrome Clima - Weather app Telegram FOSS - Alternative to the proprietary client Aegis Authenticator - 2FA app
A lot of the mainstream apps definitely have privacy issues. They often sell data about their users menstrual cycles which can theoretically be bought by anti-abortion activists/authorities on the free market to track whether someone might be pregnant.
An app that recognizes birds singing near you, all on device, and has an option to show a photo of the bird too. It’s exclusive to F-Droid (not on Google Play), and the only bird recognizing app I know of that does it all immediately on your device (without sending it to a server). f-droid.org/en/packages/org.woheller69.whobird/
Organic Maps
Highly detailed OpenStreetMap maps local on your device. Wonderful for walking directions, as it has on-device routing and maps out walking pathways (which is something that even Google Maps does not do well) f-droid.org/en/packages/app.organicmaps/
This is the best FOSS keyboard that’s under active maintenance. It even supports swiping, but that requires a non-free binary library from Google. (Maintained fork of OpenBoard.) f-droid.org/en/packages/helium314.keyboard/
I have been told that Whobird is just a reskin of Merlin and doesn’t work as well. Any truth to that? I just got into birding and Merlin works beautifully it would be hard to give up.
Merlin wasn’t available here when I checked at some point in time (last year?)
whoBIRD does use BirtNET, from Cornell, so it’s basically the same backend (although it may be an older version).
I recently tried out Merlin (which is now available here) and it’s amazing. It’s definitely more featureful than whoBIRD, although both have the core “recognize bird directly using your phone” features.
For anyone OK with non-FOSS apps, Merlin is great. For anyone who wants a FOSS app for bird detection, whoBIRD is still pretty good.
Either way, identifying apps using ones phone is nice. 👍 Big things to Cornell for making the ML for both of these apps.
I used it in the middle of (light) bavarian forest, and it worked quite well. It had some misdetections, but overall it worked to identify all birds I could hear. Don’t know how well it works in the middle of a city, or in other parts of the world.
But if you remind me in about four weeks, I can give a review of how it worked out in southeast asia.
This is the best FOSS keyboard that’s under active maintenance.
I assume that might be a reference to FlorisBoard? Because development on that one as actually picked up again, but that’s only visible so far if you’re using the Beta version. They’re opreparing for a new full release.
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