F-Droid TIL thread: What's your favorite obscure feature in an F-Droid app?

a year ago by donio to c/fdroid

Is there a feature you've recently discovered in an app available on F-Droid that might not be obvious to casual users of the app? This is your chance to share it!

donio 44 points a year ago

Here is mine: In AntennaPod you can add a local folder as a "podcast".

This is a great way to add audio files from other sources to your pod listening schedule. Files copied from your computer, drm-free audiobooks, audio tracks extracted using NewPipe etc.

It is also possible to have the files deleted when you are done playing them.

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Substance_P 5 points a year ago

This is perfect. Just 20 minutes ago I tried to start an audiobook using VLC. The scrubbing function on that app kinda blows - cheers for the tip.

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d_k_bo 6 points a year ago

For audiobooks, i can recommend Voice.

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donio 4 points a year ago

Yeah, the ability to use the bluetooth or android auto forward/backward jump buttons to skip a few seconds instead of entire tracks makes AntennaPod nice for audiobooks or other long form audio.

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xiao 1 point a year ago

Thanks

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lgsp 34 points a year ago

URL radio and antennapod have android auto integration
Firefox can be used for offline translations: just go to about:translations
- now there is a separate app using the same engine that also has ocr "offline translator", check it out
handy news reader: you can set up filters for feeds. So if you are interested only to articles about a certain topics from a generalist website, you can use this feature
image toolbox has a very handy OCR integration
the best tetris version you can play on android: lemuroid emulator + apotris, an open source Tetris clone for GBA, maybe the best in existence

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boredsquirrel 6 points a year ago

Oh damn didnt know about:translations!

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techsnob 3 points a year ago

For tetris you should also try this one: Falling Lightblocks (Not on F-droid, and you should import a theme)

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girthero 1 point a year ago

I'm still in search of a good photo backup option to my next cloud server or samba file share. Everything I seem to find doesn't work very well or is missing features. I need sorting the photos based on exif metadata. The next cloud app has this feature however doesn't seem to work right and doesn't allow on-demand syncs.

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RobotToaster 24 points a year ago

WhoBIRD: identifies birds by sound

Irregular expressions: 🅺🅴🆈🅱🅾🅰🆁🅳 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝔡𝔬𝔢𝔰 𝓽𝓱𝓳𝓼

edit: just realised you're looking for obscure features not apps, oops.

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donio 8 points a year ago

It's fun to try to make it recognize your own sounds as a bird call. I was able to get an 82% as an Eurasian Collared Dove. I feel like one of the flock now.

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Substance_P 3 points a year ago

Good suggestions though, I'll give you a pass 👍

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KhanLee 1 point a year ago

𝓸𝓱, sᴉɥʇ ᶦˢ ʳᵉᵃˡˡʸ ç̷̖͉̣̮̰̳̞̙̻̖̳̺̊̆̒̀͊̇͑̅͂͒̓͟͠o̷̧͇̟̝̲̦̯̜͕̹͒̅̏̾̓̓̂̌̍̕͜ȏ̴̡̗̬̺̱̘͎̹͉̥̿̀̔̌̎̑̅̒̉̂̕͜͝͡l̸̥̞̿̊̽̾̓̉̍̒͋.̼

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sic_semper_tyrannis 23 points a year ago

LocalSend can be used to share an app to another device and it'll export & share it as an apk file.

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pineapple 6 points a year ago

I use local send and it's really great. When it works. Which is about 30% of the time. I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong but I've seen heaps of people recommending it but it just doesn't work for me, most of the time I the devices just don't see each other when they are on the same network.

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sic_semper_tyrannis 5 points a year ago

If an individual device has a VPN active it won't work. Also make sure the network doesn't have AP isolation turned on.

Besides that I tried using it at work on their network and it wouldn't find the other device for some reason.

Besides all that, it works great for me

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BootLoop 4 points a year ago

If it's intermittent and you're on wireless, maybe one device is on 2.4ghz and one is on 5ghz? Sometimes the networks are kept seperate.

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pineapple 4 points a year ago

Should it work going between a wired and wireless connection?

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BootLoop 3 points a year ago

This is all router dependent or course but the same default settings that prevent devices to communicate betwen 2.4 and 5ghz can also prevent a wired connection from communicating with a wireless device. It's been awhile and it'll be different for each router but I have seen that network isolation enabled by default on a router before.

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mat 17 points a year ago

The navigation app Öffi, which shows public transport times and journeys, has a whole map feature where it renders the journey if you turn your phone to landscape! I'd been using it for months when I found out by accident, made it even more useful.

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donio 7 points a year ago

That's crazy, I almost always have my screen locked into portrait, I would have never found that feature!

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lgsp 4 points a year ago

What? I'm reinstalling it right now!

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ICastFist 12 points a year ago

Does anyone know how to make it search properly? Because searching for apps on fdroid is a fucking hassle, since it only seems to look for the title and the short description of the app. For instance, searching "video player" on my moto g5 will only show:

Next Player
NOVA Video Player
Just (Video) Player

No signs of VLC anywhere. Searching for "Fediverse" shows only 4 apps: Fedilab, Fread, Fediphoto and koyu.space, despite several other apps being there. Seriously, their search fucking sucks

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dadarobot 5 points a year ago

i use droidify. has a better interface

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ICastFist 1 point a year ago

How does its search compare?

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SolarPunker 10 points a year ago

With Syncthing you can use Keepass also for personal notes
With SimpleX Chat you can also share any file to your contacts
With FreeTube you can search into any channel specifically and then open the video as embed on NewPipe

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bitwolf 9 points a year ago

Something I'd really like is a way to export a list of apps I have installed with FDroid so I can easily repkicate them to a new phone.

As for hidden features, you can share APKs directly to another person using fdroid. It's great for when your recipient doesn't have fdroid

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danglybits27 4 points a year ago

The Neo Store client for FDroid allows you to do this. I haven't actually used the install feature yet, but it exports a list to an .aps file and says it will load and download the list (dependent on the repos you have activated.)

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jinx 4 points a year ago

AppListBackup is the closest i've found to this, but it can't filter by install source

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Lfrith 3 points a year ago

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fruitycoder 8 points a year ago

Force Tor requests! Nice if you want to be sure your stuff isnt leaking data"

IPFS gate ways! IPFS is just really cool way to decrentalize storage (with metadata support making it a little longer living then a torrent link).

Nearby downloads! Nice when you want to share an app with a friend but internet is spotty.

Tracking antifeatures! I love that i can filter out network service dependcy or non-foss

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sudoer777 6 points a year ago

You can listen to ListenBrainz recommendation playlists using Spotube's ListenBrainz plugin with their new plugin system

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Substance_P 3 points a year ago

Wha?? Going to check this out.

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rainbowbunny 3 points a year ago

Is there an web browser on FDroid? Like a Firefox fork but where you don't have to use Aurora Store?

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je_skirata 14 points a year ago

There's Fennec F-Droid

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dadarobot 2 points a year ago

yeah i been using it about a week and love it

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sudoer777 8 points a year ago

Ironfox, but I think you need to use a custom repo or use Obtainium

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sic_semper_tyrannis 7 points a year ago

Droid-ify has the IronFox repo built in as an option.

WebLibre is another option in the main F-Droid repo

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pineapple 2 points a year ago

Obtainium is peak!

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FriendBesto 1 point a year ago

Or just it directly from their GitLab.

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doubtingtammy 2 points a year ago

I have a degoogled phone which apparently can't run firefox because of the lack of google play services. At least, I think that's what's going on (WTF, Mozilla). But Fennec is a great replacement. It feels just like firefox. I forget if it was default or not, but obviously ive got the ublock extension. I've noticed some webpages crash more often on Fennec, but maybe that's just because I'm looking for differences and getting confirmation bias.

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fin 1 point a year ago

I'm using Waterfox for some reason

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fin 1 point a year ago

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F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform. The client makes it easy to browse, install, and keep track of updates on your device.

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