This Week in F-Droid
TWIF curated on Thursday, 25 Jul 2024, Week 30
F-Droid core
Recently, we rolled out a new AntiFeature – Tethered Network Services. It’s introduced to solve a long-standing issue in the NonFreeNet AntiFeature: What does “NonFree” here mean? All these years we have marked apps relying on web services that can’t be customized with the NonFreeNet AntiFeature and this caused confusion since many users thought that the marked apps rely on web services running non-free software. And this is unfair to many apps that they are marked as the same as apps relying on proprietary services while their services are running FOSS. Now we split the old confusing “Non-Free Network Services” AntiFeature into two different Anti-Features: “Non-Free Network Services” is only for apps relying on proprietary services and “Tethered Network Services” is only for apps relying on unchangeable services. They are totally orthogonal. Most apps relying on “Non-Free Network Services” also rely on “Tethered Network Services” but if an app relies on a non-free but self-hostable server software, e.g., MongoDB, it should be marked as “Tethered Network Services” only. We have marked some apps that are known to rely on only FOSS services with the new AntiFeature. This is just an initial work. If you find any apps wrongly marked as “Non-Free Network Services”, please report to us or fix it directly with an MR.
If you use the official F-Droid client updated from 1.19, please check the enabled Anti-Features list in Settings > App compatibility > Include anti-feature apps. The new added TetheredNet is counted as Other Anti-features which is disabled by default. New installations are not affected.
SensorServer is not reproducible anymore due to a weird problem of a lib, please see fdroiddata#15371 for more details. Current users can’t update to the new version because the signature is changed. Please uninstall the old version and install the new version manually.
@XilinJia published a new version of Podcini:
On getting my new version Podcini.R listed, linsui and Licaon_Kter have been very helpful. There were some issue on getting a reproducible build, linsui patiently provided lots of assistance in getting the build right. I here express my appreciation for their work.
Please note that the users can’t update from Podcini to Podcini.R, the new version with a complete overhaul, because the database is not compatible and the app id is changed. We take this opportunity to enable Reproducible Build for it.
We talked about Pilipala, a Bilibili client, coming back last week. Unfortunately, another Bilibili client, BiliYou was removed due to the same proprietary lib, GeeTest this week. It’s not actively maintained so maybe it will never come back.
Removed Apps
1 apps were removed
Newly Added Apps
13 apps were newly added
- AppListBackup – Effortlessly create and manage backups of your installed apps on Android
- FocusPodcast – A quality podcast management and playback application
- Fossify Keyboard – Simple and open-source offline keyboard with emojis
- Json List – Previewing JSON files in a user-friendly list format
- KeyStoreViewer – Quickly view MD5, SHA1, and Public Keys for App Signatures
- Minute Maze – Solve as many mazes as possible in before the time runs out
- OwnTracks – Your location companion
- SnapSaver – An app to quickly take photos and organize them into specified directories
- Transito – Public transit app to download GTFS data & calculate routes offline
- VPT#003-GDP – Simple android app for displaying pictures for a set amount of time
- VPT#003-GDP – A simple android app for assisting you in your decisions
- VPT#005-RSD – Minimalistic Android app for rolling 2 dice
Updated Apps
156 apps were updated
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