F-Droid which is an open source alternative to Google Play that only contains FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) apps.
F-Droid utilizes something called repositories. The official repository is very strict about which apps can be included so you can add other repos to get more FOSS apps. Izzy's repo is a popular one.
If there are some apps that you can't replace with FOSS ones and need Google Play for that then you can just use Aurora Store. Aurora Store is a FOSS client to access Google Play without an account.
What are some of the FOSS apps you use and would recommend? Oh and how do we feel about a FOSS comm? Here is a request for one
Try and replace one or a few apps with FOSS versions at a time, just slowly but steadily regain your privacy and control over your phone.
K-9 Mail - install the beta to avoid an ancient version (5.600 is Nov 2018)
Lawnchair - nice simple launcher to get rid of annoying Google launcher stuff
Twidere - if you haven't kicked the twitter habit yet.
Antenna Pod - for Citations Needed
OsmAnd~ - navigation without Google's breath tickling the hairs on your neck
Omni Notes
FreeOTP+ - set up 2FA everywhere
KeePassDX - never use the same password twice
Flym (RSS Reader) - there's lots of clones/forks/flavors based on this, I like the barebones original.
Firefox (Nightly Fenix and Klar)
AnySoftKeyboard - your keyboard could be spying on you...plus I think it does prediction/swipe-text better than Google.
Syncthing - very simple but powerful backup/sync
KDE Connect - lots of neat connectivity controls between your phone and desktop computer, like remote control keyboard/mouse, easy file transfer, pass-through chat and notifications.
Aurora Store - for those few apps you still need from Google, but want to download anonymously.
Also NewPipe so you can play youtube in the background, over other apps, and download videos.
If anyone wants to know more about Newpipe they can check my post
NewPipe is unfortunately a buggy mess. If you're not a FOSS purist, use youtube vanced instead
I haven't heard anyone complain about it being buggy before. It stops working sometimes but it's fixed very quickly by an update which is why I recommend using their own repo on F-Droid to get the latest updates as soon as possible
I always had tons of problems with it until I gave up and stopped using it. It would crash regularly and fail to play or download videos more often than not
Have you tried it recently? I recommend it to others because it has more features and it's more privacy friendly. I also think there are other Youtube clients on F-Droid.
been probably like almost a year? and that's when I switched to Vanced and I'm just not going back
Antenna Pod is fucking awesome. It's by far the best podcast manager out there and has gpodder integration so you can sync your listening between devices
I've only tried a few so I can't really compare it with all of the others, but it works really well for me, even with many many (~3500) episodes added to the queue, and many podcasts added overall.
EDIT: If that doesn't work, the tokenizer URL that I sometimes use ishttp://www.auroraoss.in:8080/EDIT2: edited the wrong post...
I have 500 gigs of storage on my phone and have it just auto download everything in the morning. Great for pods like WTYP that are hosted on servers that limit you to like 50kbps
KDE Connect is a pretty incredible
This is great.
I wish the KDE client worked with Windows.
It does. I'm not sure if the functionality is limited but I used it to do some quick file transfers recently.
Edit: I might have misread this. If by "KDE client" you meant the client for KDE, then disregard this. But there is a client for windows that works with the KDE Connect app.
there is a build of KDE connect for Windows, but it doesn't really actually work lol. The only thing I want is to be able to send SMS from desktop, which is broken on Windows with KDE