These are my main core apps. Not fully divested from closed ecosystems (YouTube & Google Maps are in there with alternative private frontends). But close enough for me.
Mull - Private Firefox
OrganicMaps & GMaps WV - Maps
Eternity - Lemmy
Meglodon - Mastadon
ProtonVPN - VPN
AntennaPod - Podcasts
Bitwarden - Passwords
Joplin - Notes
NewPipe Sponsorblock - YouTube w/o ads or in-video promotions
My problem with Symphony and other music apps like Auxio is that they don’t work with audiobooks and file types like m4b. Simple Music Player worked for me when playing all my audio files but now I am waiting for the Fossify version to be published.
What apps you install depends on your needs and preferences. It might help others if you include those in any future requests for suggestions.
I suggest not worrying too much about “removing your dependence on closed ecosystems” immediately. Just do as you did before, changing apps as you find better alternatives—only, this time, considering the advantages of FOSS. Simply by giving F-droid apps a chance before opening (I assume) the Play Store, you’re already doing better than the vast majority of people.
Regarding discoverability and security, I believe participation in the community helps:
The Venn diagram of “FOSS app users” and “software enthusiasts” is closer to a circle. People like talking about useful, good software they like. Word of mouth recommendations is how I got into this stuff.
You’ll be more likely to hear urgent actionable news (e.g. X app developer sold to bad company, here’s the fork that will carry the torch onwards).
And so that this comment isn’t completely useless… Mozilla are currently working on a mobile version of Thunderbird for Android, built on top of K9 mail. Been using the beta and liking it so far. If you want a FOSS e-mail app, keep an eye on that one.
P.S. I much prefer the dark side, and don’t forget the cookies!
My bad, I forgot you need to be careful using such metaphors when talking about software. It’s as the other commenter said: a rebrand, but they might keep the old identity around for people who like it.
K-9 is rebranding as Thunderbird for Android, indeed. But since many users of K-9 expressed their desire to keep the logo and name of K-9, Thunderbird agreed to publish both versions: one rebranded as Thunderbird for Android, and the other keeping its original branding as K-9. We will see whether that will complicate things for Thunderbird team too much yet.
Beside concrete suggestions, I would suggest having a look at the applications you use. (Decide whether you actually use and need them first.) Search for the application on AlternativeTo or similar sites and look for a FLOSS alternative there. And also search the internet for general FLOSS replacements for the use-cases of the applications you use. No need to rush anything. Even replacing one application a week is good progress.
Begin to de-google yourself. Research on FOSS alternatives to Google apps and services. Depending on your reliance, this may be a slow process. It’s OK. Build an understanding that there will be lots of sacrificing, especially convenience around the brand ecosystem that Google and Apple are known for.
why defend defaultism or sexism? It may sound harmless to you, you may be used to it, but “alright boys” is exclusive and not, like some need to claim, a default greeting.
older women don’t care, they’re used to men being dickheads, but not being recognized hurts girls
alright girls, (that by default means you boys🤯) you can downVote this comment to hell now
I’m loving obtainium. I just found it about 2 weeks ago and, I’ve been slowly switching everything I had installed with f droid over to obtainium. Only problem so far was one didn’t have apk releases. Only a .zip. There is already a issue on github about it and I expect obtainium will be able to handle that in the near future. It has be getting updated a lot lately. Plus version 1.0.0 just released.
Obtainium lets you install FOSS programs directly from the developers source. You can get updates from the github/gitlab of app developers before they get uploaded to F-droid.
You have to add them manually, either by url or with the built in search. For example, you can add newpipe by searching sources and checking github as a source to search. It will then show you repos that match newpipe, which usually is the regular newpipe repo and then a bunch of forks of it.
Obtainium isn’t for finding FOSS apps, it’s for installing them. To find them, you can check out existing repos such as f-droid or izzy, or you can ask around. This post has a bunch of recommendations in the replies
DAVx & ICSx (nextcloud contacts and calendar sync)
DNS66
Jellyfin
Spotube
From FDroid (really droidify from various repositories)
FUTO Voice Input
Breezy Weather
K-9
Libera Reader
FFUpdater
Joplin
The list is massive and I’m on mobile and hate tiny keyboards. I can finish the list later if you/y’all are interested. The only thing that I actively use that is not FOSS on my phone is Google Messages, which I guess is a bit hypocritical, but its too good. Just the ability to react to messages makes it worth it for me.
I also highly recommend Grayjay. It is the best (IMHO) YouTube replacement. It is cross service, like I have odysee, nebula, youtube, and various peertube instances added as sources.
As far as what apps to watch out for, someone mentioned Simple Mobile Tools. Otherwise, I would stay away from apps that are not being updated anymore or are otherwise way too old.
It works perfectly well. I find the ui bit clunky personally, but functionally it works very well. I don’t have much time to read anymore though, so I rarely use it to be honest.
Librera Reader is the best reader I have had the honour to try. I have been using Librera Reader for several years now, and I think it is safe to say I love the app. It is actively maintained, and new features are added continuously. There are plenty of settings to allow you to modify the user experience exactly to your liking. If you are considering reading any e-books or PDFs on your Android devices, give Librera Reader a try. It is a fantastic app.
I read a lot, and currently I read with calibre on my pc since I can highlight and export them directly so I can include them in my notes. I’d like it if I could run the calibre server and be able to higlight on my phone, and sync it over to my pc automatically.
I feel so sorry for recommending a closed source app in this community, but Genius Scan from Grizzly Labs is the only non-oss app I still use. I think I paid around €30 for the enterprise version so it doesn’t bother me with cloud nonsense.
It’s all local only (if you want) and the scanning quality is the best I’ve found. (I used OpenNoteScanner for a few months, sadly it’s not even close both in terms of quality and convenience)
I figured I’ll mention it as an alternative to MS Lens app that likely sucks in every bit of information it can get its hands on.
Not yet possible. Google hasn’t provided an API to access RCS from 3rd party apps. They did to Samsung’s messenger (1st party as far as their own phones), but as far as I know that is the only other one currently. (Verizon for a while had their own RCS implementation and infrastructure and their own messenger app could access it)
Honestly for selfhosters, I can’t recommend enough setting up an instance of Gitea. You’ll be very happy hosting your code and such there, then just replicate it to github or something if you want it on the big platforms.
+1 for Gitea. It’s super lightweight, and works really well! I recently switched to Gitlab simply because I wanted experience with hosting it, but Gitea is much lighter and easier to use.
Just so you’re aware, Gitea was taken over by a for-profit company. Which is why it was forked and Forgejo was formed. If you don’t use Github as a matter of principle, then you should switch to Forgejo instead.
Thanks for the link! As long as it’s being worked on I feel comfortable spinning up an instance. I’ve been meaning to do gitea for a while so I’m glad I waited.
It’s more I don’t have them all checked out, and a good chunk are mirrors of github, so I’ll have to list out each one and push to a new remote, mirrors will have to be setup again, and I also use the container and package registries. I’m pretty embedded. It’s not impossible, but it’s a weekend project for sure.
My understanding is the fork isn’t doing much but waiting to see if gitea turns to shit, pushing all their changes upstream. If you use docker I’ve heard you can just pull the new image and it simply drops in, no migration needed.
Honestly I’m kind of surprised that Gitea is still being recommended on Lemmy, it’s been a while since Gitea was acquired and the community has been raging since. Lemmy is regressing
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