F-Droid gets its biggest update in a decade with new UI and smoother app installs
18 days ago by return2ozma to c/technology
It won't be a problem on a de-googled phone. Get it running LineageOS or GrapheneOS. Then install F-Droid (and probably Aurora store too). Some Google junk won't work, but you'll soon be more limited by having Google services on your phone than not having it.
Hardly the point though. For us this is a bother at most, but we can cope because we're already doing our own thing and know what we want. Imagine trying to get your non tech-savvy friends to "sideload" (install) an app from outside the Play Store. Right now it's not a big deal, so if they're interested in the app, they'll likely install it. But this amount of friction and scary warnings is way more likely to stop them.
MicroG too, though.
Under the assumption this is a non negotiable thing...
They should at least let you alter the timer if you know you might not be able to
Like if in the post 24h window you know you'll be busy, let you make it 28h instead of 24h
The worst part is for non tech savvy people.
No, some of they do care, but just have problems learning tech stuff or were excluded from digital education at the critical age, or have in general learning difficulties.
My mom wants to still be able to install and uninstall anything she wants on her phone, but she's elder (and is neurodivergent, too, as me) and has difficulties understanding and learning about tech stuff.
You're making a hasty generalization based on just a composition fallacy (some non tech savvy people don't care at all, yes, but those are not all of the non tech savvy people).
You shouldn't be conflating both things as if it were the same, and even if they were the same (which they're NOT), that wouldn't make your comment less bad. They're still victims of the Big Tech propaganda and marketing and of their massive social, cultural and political influence campaigns.
Please, don't be such a dickhead.
Show me one non-tech savvy person that is installing anything that isn't in the Android Play Store already. And that person has to have come up with this on their own and it wasn't somebody like you who maybe tech savvy showing them how to do this I've been in IT for 21 years and I can guarantee no one is doing that.
i hadnt thought about it before but i just had the realization that im not even gonna be able to have 3rd party apps AND my banking app in the same phone (cuz it doesnt like developer options being enabled). uhm shit
I unlocked my phone's bootloader. I'm on the oem OS, up to date, no root, just unlocked the bootloader. Now my device is "not certified" and a lot of apps that have no business caring about my "certification status" don't work (like my phone operator app). That's if the playstore lets me download it in the first place: "this app is not compatible with your device"
Latest Android update will hide developer options supposedly from apps. However, it's on Android 17
This is why rooting is great and if you re worried about banking apps, KernelSU is very good at blocking detection and keyboxs for the hardware attestation get leaked weekly.
I don't have hope for a solution.
https://github.com/tiann/KernelSU
To help translate KernelSU, we no longer accept translation contributions via Weblate. All translations are now handled using LLMs.
what????
I use play integrity fix and tricky store. Everytime it is revoked, I change it to an unrevoked one. KernelSu hide the root and modules.
We don't hear this enough. Google doesn't hear this enough.
Also, no autoupdates!
Look at Beeper as a alternative, let's you bridge your WhatsApp chats.
The only way you should trust anything bridging is if you self host it.
Matrix with WhatsApp bridge is the only way to properly use that.
For many people it's literally impossible to self host anything, whether it's because of lack of decent hardware resources, and/or because of a lack of technical knowledge, and/or because of a lack of time, and/or because of a lack of energetic stability, and/or because of a lack of monetary resources, and/or because of a lack of mental and/or physical energy, and/or because of a lack of someone with some or any of these; and of course, all of these things can be and in fact are intersectional with each other.
So that's why any managed alternative it's still a good alternative for these people; obviously, only if they're as transparent and reliable as humanly possible.
I myself only do use Disroot's (and maybe Nadeko and a bit others) services because I don't have the hardware, the money, the energy and the enviromental resources to be able to properly self host, and even more, I only use the free tiers of these services.
Absolutely, make sure to self host the bridge yourself on your own hardware!
I don't take advantage of Beeper nearly as much as I should, I saw that they give you a Matrix handle when you sign up which I think is cool.
They give you a Matrix handle because everything is Matrix. The problem is Beeper is nothing to do with Beeper but exactly the kind of thing we saw with Apple: malice. They don't want you to use their apps this way, and for that reason, it just sucks to use. Plus you're lowering the privacy of whatever platform you're using to that of Matrix.
WA bans your account for using it.
Curious. Do they easily find you that you use it?
If meta automatically detects that you use beeper and bans you then there is no point using it with WA. But in this case beeper wouldn't advertise bridging to WA, right?
Same. Its great!
I've just been rawdoggin it with the OG f-droid app
+1 for neo store. I wonder if the new f-droid overhaul catches up as neo is pretty fantastic.
Edit, just looked at the screenshots, looks better than before but I'll stick with neo.
Does Neo Store have a way to make apps only use the official F-Droid repo for updates unless you downloaded them from a different one? Because it seems to just want to update from any repo, so I ended up splitting F-Droid Basic for official F-Droid apps and Neo Store for IzzyOnDroid and other third party repos.
Yeah, if you manually select it in the app releases section. Of course, the thing is that it's only per app.
Anyways, I prefer IzzyOnDroid because imho they have a better reproducible builds system.
Neo Store also allows you to review the reproducible builds' status for every app, and also its download statistics (total and per repo).
Also you can now maintain a local blocklist of apps you don't want or like to see. It's pretty neat.
F-Droid has stricter requirements for apps to be listed so I prefer the official repo, for instance Aves on IzzyOnDroid has Google dependencies that Aves Libre on F-Droid doesn't have. IzzyOnDroid is my backup for some apps I want that aren't on F-Droid.
I love that I've never heard of Droidify. Open source offers a buffet of alternatives.
Honestly the new ui is nice enough I may be switching back to the official F-droid app.
We'll see where I stay. I love the simplicity of droid-ify but sometimes have some issues with minor jank
That was the reason I switched back to F-Droid. Had serious problems with updating and stuff, no problems with F-Droid so far. I don't use it that much anyways, most of my apps are already installed. When searching for new apps F-Droid has a big category selection which is nice.
I've mostly been happy to just put up with the jank but if I get a nice interface without any I won't complain :)
Plus it feels nice for the f-droid projects own app to be in a good state and I'm excited for that ☺️
I'm using F-Droid Basic.
First I've heard of it tbh. I'll check it out, thankyou
I just use Neo Store. The best F-Droid client ever.
Change my mind.
Download statistics for every app (which is neat because that can indirectly tell me how good is an app), also it shows the reproducible builds' status for every app, allows you to directly scan an app through Exodus so you can have a detailed view of its possible trackers, also it lets you blocklist apps (althought I'd love it to let me blocklist authors too, and the UX is a bit slow for now as it requires you to go throught the settings to be able to do it), the y have a reasonably big amount of preconfigured repos and make the process of adding new repos way easier than other clients, their UI is just beautiful and now they made it hugely customizable, and they have so many QOL features that's a breeze to use.
Yup
Been using it since the alpha came out, absolutely love what they've done with the app. The installation flow is much smoother with the instant prompt for confirmation, the more granular categories and improved search make browsing so much better. I tried other stores before, but I couldn't get myself to like any of the actively maintained ones, v2.0 is good for me.
Can anyone ELI5 for the nontechy how things are going to work once Google rolls out the new bullshit? I'm seeing so many of my apps put out notices that they will no longer work once Google goes through with the verification system. Will I still be able to install shit through f droid?
I already have developer options turned on, are they gonna fuck me out of that again? :/
I really hate this shit
I really hate this shit
If you have Play Services running, Google owns your phone (and also tracks you, and sucks 50% of the juice for it). Just rip 'em out.
I genuinely don't know that I'm techy enough to do that. I depend on banking apps and such and I don't understand how to get around that. I would, if I could be taught lol
Ya there's going to be wait periods to turn on developer options, and it sucks cause some apps don't work with developer options turned on, like banking apps for example.
This whole thing sucks, imagine on your laptop not being able to install software and only being locked to getting everything through the Microsoft Store App.
Every time, and every update.
the problem here isnt that users cant do what they want, its that developers might stop developing because not enough people cant be arsed to jump through googles hoops. Everyone who can should support opensource developers more than ever now.
Could be a gradual rollout.
Edit: saw it's actually still a beta (and probably this is why it doesn't show), here's a link for the APK: https://f-droid.org/...
Found it !
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid/
I had to go through the Gitlab, browse to "client" (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient ), and scroll down to the readme section to find the link.
Enable beta.
UX is much better. I wouldn't say it's great. At all.
But I'm really happy to see big improvements! And I'm finding things I had no idea were on the "store" before at all. Which ultimately is the goal.
When you find an app, F-Droid 2.0 will make the installation process easier. Google has long put up roadblocks for sideloaded apps, citing the security implications. This is also the rationale behind its upcoming developer verification system. For now at least, apps will be easier to install from F-Droid thanks to the use of Google’s pre-approval API.
That answers my question if those smoother installs already account for Google's insistence in making "sideloading" way more annoying. They do not.
I've been on neo store for a couple of years for the apps that have no APIs ready in git repos (for those, Obtainium is just the greatest). I tried the new F-Droid app, and it is way smoother than the last time I tried it, and the UI improvement is amazing. They still show you apps that haven't been maintained for over a year up front, but that's not a deal killer.
F-Droid News: https://f-droid.org/...
Posted on Sep 24, 2026 by
F-Droid
After more than a year of hard work, we are thrilled to announce the launch of F-Droid 2.0, a complete redesign of the official F-Droid app and the largest app update in 10 years.
For more than a decade, F-Droid has helped people discover and install free and open source Android apps. F-Droid 2.0 builds on that foundation with a modern interface, better app discovery, improved search, and a simpler experience that works well, whether you’re new to F-Droid or have been using it for years.
This isn’t just a visual refresh. The user experience was redesigned to integrate smoothly with current Android patterns, like Material Design, while keeping familiar F-Droid interactions in place. Key components were reworked and rewritten using Kotlin Compose, the standard toolkit these days, creating a foundation that will help us deliver improvements more quickly in the years ahead.
We are excited to begin rolling out F-Droid 2.0 to users over the coming weeks after 14 test releases.
What has changed?
One of our main goals for F-Droid 2.0 was to make it easier to discover, install, and maintain the apps you rely on. We simplified the main navigation into three core areas: Discover, Search and My Apps. Categories are now integrated into Discover, making it easier to browse and explore, while My Apps provides a central place to manage installed apps, updates, and potential issues. Settings and Nearby Swap are still only a tap away from the top bar, but no longer compete for space in the main navigation.
[... Continues at https://f-droid.org/...
The new ui is excellent, much more approachable in my opinion
It has indeed gotten better more pleasing to look at.
So F-droid "evolves" to become F-droid Basic?
Looks quite good. I am not a fan of M3E in general, but the app is well-made.
I have been using droidify for some time now since the updates and install part has always been a bit weird and the notifications too. Hope it is better now. Not super happy with my current option either.
What I really want is a way to use it properly on the TV, because all the current store apps are so, but so so bad and horrible in a screen controlled with a remote control that is almost a joke.
Saw the post after I had an update on my e/OS and wanted ti check out the new look.
Sadly not one APP showed up. Empty shell. FDroid blank.
24 hours? Will check it tomorrow. Edit: solved itself, see next comment.
Solved itself. After the packages got updated (which somehow suddenly did by itself after several hours).
Do I need to delete F-Droid from my mobile and then install it again to get the latest F-Droid update ?
You can opt out of it by putting your phone in "developer mode" or by using something like LineageOS
I was thinking about rooting my phone to install LineageOS, but unfortunately, that plan won’t be possible because I don’t really understand how to do it, and I don’t have a computer or another phone to help me.
The only thing I’ve done so far is disable Google Play services, and I’m using a few microG apps instead. :/
What:0
But you don't need to unlock the bootloader to install LineageOS.
Half of the videos I watched on YouTube said that it was necessary to format the phone or do several other things to unlock it. I was already getting confused with so much information.
You don't need to root your phone, just unlock the bootloader. But yes you will need to hook it to a PC or maybe another phone to make it work. I did mine off a PC.
This is being worked on now, after 6 years in the pipeline: https://gitlab.com/...
I had alpha updates on and got this early. I then mistook this for malware.
Because it fucking sucks. This is the only time I had to wait for fucking F-Droid to load.
All because they are still sucking Google's dick and abiding by their orders of "meh use this 320GiB framew*rk so that this button can be this much rounded". They have been bitten quite a few times and they still haven't learned anything.
AND the alpha didn't have offline sharing. I figured they would add it later. They did not. It's gone. In some places, one rarely ever goes online. The app auto-updates once and the feature is gone. Reduced to atoms. Cannot share anything.
Also, they used corpo speak to justify it.
I repeat, this so called "collection of nerds" used corporate speak to justify something.
EDIT: I guess they added it, but the corpo speak was so bad that the blog post makes it read like it was not added.
My conclusion is fuck Android, fuck smartphones, that platform is dead, go back to Thinkpads. Older ones. And not E series. And not L series. These Thinkpads. Normalize sharing .c files via an Ethernet cable.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
It's exactly as quick to start as it always has been on my device. You seem to be very angry over basically nothing. I'd rather have a flourishing ecosystem of mobile Linux apps, but until we have that, I'm very grateful for all the hard work of the f-droid team. You do know you can use one of many different clients if you don't like the main one?
on my device
Then let's ship your device to the whole planet.
you can use one of many different clients
Yes, but I am talking about F-Droid's F-Droid.
It's an open source project, fork the old version yourself if you hate the new one so much
Just one more fork broooo, it will be good this time trust
All I can say is, https://droidify.app/
Once I installed it, I never used the official Fdroid store on any device again.
That's way worse. "Application stopped unexpectedly" my ass. Fym you are saying it's downloading but it isn't? (this is also a bug on F-Droid but at least I don't have to try multiple times per app)
Strange. I never see that on Lineage, didn't see it on e/OS either.
I do recall that behaviour on Graphene, but its been a couple of years since I had a pixel. Figured that was just an old version of the app.
My bad, I should be using pigeon mail for this.
Cant tell if sarcasm/copypasta. If not, can't you just reinstall the latest suggested 1x.x version?
APIs can't be compatible forever.
What is offline sharing? Is that not the same as nearby?
That's what I referred to, yes.
You haven't? I always check F-Droid first if I want a new app.
Can't speak for the person you're replying to, but I always check the F-Droid repository first, too... but not using the F-Droid app because it's been a sub-par choice for years.
Droid-ify is what I use, but there are others. Many include/allow other FOSS repos and have additional useful features.
The repo, yes. The fdroid app was pretty shit for a long time. You had to update apps individually, for instance (I think that's fixed now?)
My F-Droid app has been able to bulk-update for two years now. Sometimes you have to trigger the update process manually, but the apps all get updated.
Ah, that makes sense. I'm on droidify now, maybe I'll check out fdroid again.
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https://keepandroidopen.org/
Google says "power users" can "still install" unverified apps. Here's what that actually looks like:
Delve into System Settings, find About Phone
Tap the build number seven times to enable Developer Mode
Dismiss scare screens about coercion
Enter your PIN
Restart the device
Wait 24 hours
Come back, dismiss more scare screens
Pick "allow temporarily" (7 days) or "allow indefinitely"
Confirm, again, that you understand "the risks"
Nine steps. A mandatory 24-hour cooling-off period. For installing software on a device you own.
Worse: this flow runs entirely through Google Play Services, not the Android OS. Google can change it, tighten it, or kill it at any time, with no OS update required and no consent needed.
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