whoBIRD
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). https://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) https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.organicmaps/
AntennaPod
The best podcast client also happens to be Free Software and on F-Droid. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/
HeliBoard
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.) https://f-droid.org/en/packages/helium314.keyboard/
Breezy Weather
Good weather app that has so many details (including pollen too) and fetches from multiple sources. It looks great as well. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.breezyweather/
whoBIRD
I’ve been using it, but it’s so unfriendly compared to Merlin, which allows you to play back recordings, see more info about the bird detected, etc.
Was introduced to Merlin a few weeks ago on a scout nature course, and I love it so much!
I’m using it a sort of real-life pokémon game, trying to grow my list of found birds (Life List). So far I’m up to 36! 😍
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.
Oh, nice! Then there are two great FOSS keyboard under maintenance again! Thanks for mentioning that.
Does the bird one actually work? Nature can get pretty loud, I could see that being an issue.
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.
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.
- Aegis for MFA
- Aurora Store for Playstore apps
- Breezy Weather
- Fossify apps for basics
- KeePassDX for pwd mgmt
- K-9 Mail
- LibreCamera
- (Oeffi for public transport)
- OSMAnd~ for navigation
- QickDic(tionary)
- Molly (fork of Signal messenger) or Threema
- Tracker Control
LibreCamera->OpenCamera TrackerControl-> RethinkDNS
Ooh, good one! I’ll try to stick to the very basics that I’ve installed, different strokes for different use cases and all.
- MicroG — a non-Google framework to circumvent annoying GSF dependencies.
- DAVx5 — will sync calendars and contacts from your own cal/cardDAV instance.
- ICSx5 — helps add external ICS calendars into your calendar.
- Syncthing — keeps documents, pictures, etc synced between devices.
- KISS launcher — search based launcher. No bloat, no muss, no fuss. Everything else seems to try too hard after KISS.
- Fossify apps. There’s a whole suite but I only use
- Fossify calendar,
- Fossify contacts,
- Fossify SMS messenger.
- Fennec — a Firefox that passes F-droid privacy muster.
- K-9 mail — um, is this top grade email app named after the robot dog in Doctor Who? Affirmative.
- Open camera — so much better than a basic Android camera app.
- Authenticator Pro — 2-factor authetication (dunno why it’s called “Pro”, it’s not like there’s a paid tier)
- Obtainium — another app manager, for the fringe cases where an app isn’t on F-droid but you trust its source enough to download it from there.
Edited to add:
- NewPipe! — third party YouTube player that puts a stick in Google’s tracking and profiling.
Additional repositories
F-droid is great and all but its best feature really is that you can add other app repositories alongside the flagship one. IMO you absolutely need to add the following repos for the best selection (ie., adapted to my list above 😉)
Suggestions for more repos?
Nice list. Note MicroG doesn’t appear in F-Droid’s default repository. It probably cannot be installed as a regular app, or requires adding a different repository.
Oh, good catch! They have their own repository that can easily be added to the F-droid app. I think repos deserve special mention, editing my op.
DivestOS Personally I use Mulch (chromium fork) and Google maps webview wrapper
Hmmm, so DivestOS supports bootloader relocking, huh? I’ll have to give that a look.
https://divestos.org/pages/devices check support for your device
Fennec -> Mull
RE: Open Camera
Not seeing an option to remap the photos button (bottom right) from opening Google Photos
That would be in your phone main settings I guess, and specific to your device? In no Android stock or custom ROM I’ve used have I seen a “photos button (bottom right)”.
To be clear, here’s a screenshot. I’m on a Pixel 5 running Android 11. I checked the default apps page in settings but there’s not an option for photos unfortunately.
If you uninstall (or disable) Google Photos, that button should ask what app you want to open.
When I tried that the button takes a photo and asks me where to save the JPG. But then when I select a folder it errs saying the image doesn’t exist.
I guess I’ll stick with the stock camera app
Aegis Authenticator, AntennaPod, Aurora Store, Auxio, Bitwarden, Exodus, Forecastie, Fossify Contacts, Fossify Phone, Fossify File Manager, Fossify Gallery or Immich if self hosting pictures, Gmaps WV, Hypatria, Jellyfin client if self hosting media, Kvaesitso, Libre Camera, LocalSend, Mull, New Pipe, OpenBoard, OpenCalc, OsmAnd~, Pedometer, QKSMS, RHVoice, RustDesk, Send Reduced, Simply Translate Mobile, Tailscale, TrackerControl, VLC, WifiAnalyzer.
kmail/thunderbird too
Url check is pretty good
This is a great list!
organic maps
Ente Photos - Google Photos replacement with encryption and privacy
Ente Auth - Good multiplatform authenticator.
^^ These are paid for service (you get both with same sub), but extremely good.AntennaPod - Podcatcher
K-9 emailFrom official F-Droid & IzzyOnDroid repos (except for Molly):
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Aegis Secure + encrypted 2FA
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Calculator++ Powerful scientific calculator
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Clipious or FreeTube Android Clipious: 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
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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.
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HeliBoard Best open source keyboard I’ve used so far
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KeePassDX KeePass compatible password manager
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Moshidon and/or Mastify Mastodon clients. Mastify looks really good but is till in Alpha releases so is missing quite a bit of features. Moshidon is extremely feature rich.
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Molly Security-focused fork of Signal
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Podverse My 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.
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QUIK SMS Best actively maintained, open source SMS client.
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Twine Beautiful cross-platform RSS feed app.
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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
My wife uses Flow or something to that effect. Should I advise her to change ? do the mainstream apps have privacy issues that Drip doesn’t ?
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.
I suggest Proton’s full suite. It’s $99 a year or $13 a month, but absolutely worth it for the VPN and password manager alone.
Looking through the ones I have installed, I think these are useful to most people:
- AnySoftKeyboard
- Calculator++
- K-9 Mail
- Open Camera
- Orbot
- OsmAnd~
- VLC
If you like NewPipe but want your videos to skip the annoying bits, there’s a fork called Tubular that incorporates SponsorBlock.
There’s also “Newpipe X Sponsorblock” (iirc that’s the name) on IzzyOnDroid’s repo that incorporates it as well.
Never heard of tubular, do they make any other changes or is it just the SB integration?
Same program, the developer changed the name. 😊
Oh cool, TIL thanks!
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