Unattended updates for everyone, 1.19 is here

Posted on by Michael G

Author: linsui
Source

TWIF generated on Thursday, 01 Feb 2024, Week 5

F-Droid core 🎉

We announced last year that client work is underway to bring it up to the target that future Android users and devs want. In the mean time we kept teasing at every opportunity the coming of F-Droid client version 1.19.0, releasing alpha after alpha and polishing the experience each time.

Hence here we are, F-Droid and F-Droid Basic 1.19.0 have been live for a couple of days already, but in good “F-Droid is slow” spirit, it’s not yet the suggested version. Meaning that brave users need to install this manually for now (enable Beta updates for the app or expand Versions and hit upgrade). As users update and there’s a feeling of a good release, 1.19.0 will become suggested soon enough.

What’s new? The Changelog has the gritty details, but we can highlight two of the user facing changes:

  • “Use Session Installer on both F-Droid and F-Droid Basic, including support for automatic background updates” – yes, this is the big one, the one that everybody wanted since forever. On Android 12 or later, apps will be autoupdated after the first install or first update, no root, no unlocking, no PrivExt needed. Older apps that can’t be updated will feature a banner explaining why.
  • “Completely overhauled adding repositories and mirrors, both the user experience and the code” – while mirrors and repositories were either a daily used feature or a never seen before feature for our users, they have kept a simple way to interact until now, Add and Remove were enough. Over the years this proved a little underwhelming so a new workflow was conceived and coded. In short, paste repo link or use QR code, see list of apps before adding it, see apps from a single repo, all new features that make repositories a joy to use. Mirrors like to keep things chill and in the background, but they are expanding and getting easier to control, as plain servers, Tor .onion hosted or via IPFS gateways.

Thanks to everyone that contributed, be it reporting issues, fixing their pet peeves, adding new features, submitting ACRA crash reports or just being around helping in any capacity!

Note: Xiaomi users should keep an eye on issue #2659.

Community News

FOSDEM is tomorrow, so get your updates for FOSDEM 2024 Schedule and FOSDEM Companion today. For your next quest, try to find at least one F-Droid contributor on the floor. Go!

@linsui blocks some calls 📵 to tell us about:

Aard 2 was downgraded from 0.56 to 0.55 pending an app rebuild, the new version will be available again soon.

Carrion was included recently trying to help in the fight against spam calls and robocalls. Do read the README to find out the needed requirements and how to set it up.

drip. menstrual cycle and fertility tracking was updated to 1.2311.14 after more than an year lapse.

ClashMetaForAndroid was declared gone 3 months ago after some mysterious events, yet it made a comeback at version 2.10.0 this week and we hope it stays in the long run.

And still in proxy news, Xray, Xray GUI Client, was added too.

@Licaon_Kter waves the green flag:

Fossify Contacts and Fossify SMS Messenger are now here, making your launcher seem monochromatic.

SimpleX Chat arm64 was updated to 5.5, while the armv7 version will come in the next build cycle.

Spring Cleaning ☔

  • Calendula was downgraded from 2.4.1 to 2.3.3. (upstream issue)
  • Car Cast got archived as it crashes at least on Android 6 and 13, while development has stopped
  • Lawnchair included code of dubious origin, disassembled from somewhere, without a license, so now it is archived (more info)
  • Libre Memory Game was added recently but its recipe needs a rewrite from scratch, so it was pulled out for now (discussion)
  • Minutes Checker for Virgin Mobile was failing to do its work, given the API used is long gone it is now archived
  • Plant Sense had all its versions removed as they were affected by a long standing Flutter issue actually (upstream issue)
  • TalkBack (deprecated) was archived as newer builds use a different appID: TalkBack
  • Who Has My Stuff? was downgraded from 1.1.0 to 1.0.38 (upstream issue)
  • Wifi Camera was archived as it was built such a long time ago that Android 6 or later refused to even install it

Newly Added Apps

11 more apps were newly added
  • Circles – Secure social sharing for friends and families (Matrix client)
  • Closet-Archive – Organize clothes, log events, track laundry, and recall last week’s outfit
  • FoCal – Create your personal photo calendar
  • Het Saldo – A cross-platform De Lijn “smart” ticket saldo checking application
  • Hisn Elmoslem – You favourite app to azkar
  • Jass board – Very flexible Jass board to write points at the Schieber, Coiffeur, Molotov
  • Micro REPL – MicroPython IDE in your pocket
  • OpenTapasReader – Read Tapas.io comics (with offline support)
  • Openlib – Download and read books from shadow library (Anna’s Archive)
  • Peristyle – Simple wallpaper manager app for Android
  • Same – Two colors, nine fields. Make them all the same.

Updated Apps

201 more apps were updated

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