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Posted on by Michael G

Author: Licaon_Kter
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This Week in F-Droid

TWIF curated on Thursday, 17 Oct 2024, Week 42

F-Droid core

I hope this note finds you in good health. By the time this post reaches you, final F-Droid Client and Basic 1.21.0 went live, but not yet suggested. Did you test the alpha releases? No? Let’s hope someone did on your special device and Android version combo, I mean I run bleeding edge here and it works fine. 🤷

The full changelog since the last alpha1 is:

  • Fix race conditions when repositories are updated at the same time
  • Don’t crash when Bluetooth permissions are missing
  • Fix launching panic settings from Panic app (e.g. Ripple)
  • Fix permission issue that prevented full and basic installed at same time
  • Update UI if the repository disable warning is canceled

Nothing exciting, as expected, we’re polishing the experience in this 6 months long development cycle.

Based on your feedback, and more of our internal testing, this will be promoted to suggested soon.

Missed the gist about why 1.21.0 is great? Go read the week 40 intro and take a peek at the full changelog between releases.

Unfortunately there’s no targetSdkVersion bump with this new version, but the good news is that it looks like only the Bluetooth permission needs some fixes, so we are pretty close.

Since you want some drama and excitement, you can read about what the future will bring, as AndroidAuthority peeks into the F-Droid development and writes about “F-Droid being the first third-party app store to support Android 15’s app archiving feature”.

Community News

Did you know that the Internet was invented for cat pics? Yes, they even have their own domain name .cat and that’s a true story I swear! 😸

On a serious note, the Catalan community launched a call to action for a “Collaborative translation into Catalan of F-Droid”. This was back in July, and we missed it, but we see there’s a bit more work to do to reach that 100%, so another pair of eyes might be helpful anyway.

Element X – Secure Chat & Call was updated to 0.6.5 after 4 months of missing out, as the Element team worked to replace the components that made the app builds non-deterministic. Reproducible builds are harder to setup and maintain, but both teams understand their importance.

NextGIS Mobile, GIS that lets you create, edit and export geodata, both online and offline, was updated to 2.8.0 after an 8 year long pause. Thanks to @linsui for digging into old apps recipes and fixing them. This app had the Google Analytics code cleaned up.

Newly Added Apps

5 apps were newly added
  • BinEd – Binary/Hex Editor: Editor for binary data (hex viewer/editor)
  • Compose Stopwatch: Stopwatch in the Material You theme, designed for ease of use and best features
  • DroidCrypt: A file and text encryption tool for Android
  • FetchIt: An app that lets you download media files from YouTube, Twitter, etc
  • Seers Lodge: A feature-rich P2P chat application that runs on the Tox protocol

Updated Apps

60 more apps were updated

(expand for the full list)

Autumn Cleaning

We are slowing down in the archiving department, then again we’ve never deep dived this much for years. All thanks to you, the contributors that help out!

We’ve added some recommendations for alternative apps in past TWIF posts too, if you expanded the full list and checked them out, but if you have better ones feel free to reach out and we can update these lists for future reference.

You can read week 38th TWIF explanatory section for more details about why archiving happens.

Archived Apps

62 apps were archived

(expand for the full list)
  • /d/gapps: Delete/disable GApps
  • /system/app mover: Add and remove system apps
  • Addi: Math calculation environment
  • Ambient Weather DashClock Extension: Ambient Weather on Lockscreen
  • Androsens 2: Monitor sensor data
  • AndroSS: Screenshot capturing
  • AndSys ~ Apps: Package information
  • AnXray: A universal proxy toolchain with XTLS support
  • Apps Organizer: Organize apps with labels
  • Baby Care Timer: Know when to feed the baby
  • Birthday Buddy: Minimalistic app to remember your friend’s birthdays and anniversaries
  • BlitzTypeKeyboard: Android custom keyboard with special keys for the WOT Blitz game
  • Blue Minimal: Minimalistic CM12+ theme
  • ChocoUI (XDA colors): Chocolate/XDA theme for Cyanogenmod
  • Clock: app that contains: clock, alarm, timer, stopwatch
  • Color Picker: Display color codes of a touched point on a photo
  • Contact Book: Manage your contacts in a local addressbook
  • Cool Reader: E-book reader
  • Countdown for DashClock: Countdown on the lock screen
  • DashClock Birthday Extension: Show upcoming birthdays in your lockscreen
  • DashClock: Battery: Battery info on the lock-screen
  • DashClock: DashCricket: Cricket scores on the lock-screen
  • Dashclock: Last Caller: Previous caller on lock screen
  • DashClock: Sunrise: Sunrise and sunset info on lock-screen
  • Diode: Interact with Reddit
  • DuOTP: Log in to Duo-protected services with any standard OTP app
  • Enhancement: White theme for CM13
  • eSpeak TTS: Text-to-Speech Engine (Android 14+ compatible RHVoice or the not yet updated eSpeak NG are better)
  • Flight Mode: Widget to toggle flight mode
  • Great Freedom: Theme for CyanogenMod
  • GSMmap: GSM Security Mapper
  • GTalkSMS: Control your phone via XMPP
  • HackDash: Hackerspace extension for DashClock
  • HashEasily: Calculate hash checksums of files
  • Hexiano: Musical instrument
  • Intent Intercept: Attempts to catch Intents in order to examine their contents
  • JellyRevenge: Dark/Holo based theme for Cyanogenmod
  • KurobaEx: Free and open source image board browser
  • Lesser Pad: Simple memo pad
  • Little Sir Echo: Repeat SMS notifications
  • Loaned: Keep track of loaned items
  • Maniana: User-friendly todo list
  • MaterialOS: Material Design CyanogenMod 12/12.1 theme
  • MoClock: A small, minimal clock app
  • Music: Lightweight and Material designed Music Player
  • My Location Widget: Homescreen widget
  • Mytronome: Use your smartphone as a metronome
  • Nekogram X: The third-party Telegram android app (We have Forkgram, Mercurygram and the one that started it all Telegram FOSS)
  • NFC Tag maker: Make NFC Smart posters
  • Notification Notes: Add notes and show them as notifications
  • oandbackup: Backup manager (Try Neo Backup)
  • OI Shopping list: Keep track of your shopping items
  • Orgzly: Outliner for notes and tasks in plain-text (We hope the developer is in good health, but 2 years have passed and Orgzly Revived works fine)
  • Pitcha: Pitch detector
  • Quill: Pen note-taking
  • Shortyz: Crossword game
  • To Do List: Manage your to-do lists quickly and easily
  • UniPatcher: Utility to apply patches to ROMs
  • USB Mountr: Use your device as a USB flash drive
  • WebApps: Sandbox for webapps
  • WhereRing: Setup your phone to switch among vibrate, ring, or silent according to GPS
  • 注音倉頡輸入法: Keyboard for zh_TW (We have newer apps, see TWIF 16 Nov 2023)

Thank you for reading this week’s TWIF, and for your patience while we maintain and polish the F-Droid experience. 🙂

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You are welcome to join the TWIF forum thread. If you have any news from the community, post it there, maybe it will be featured next week 😉

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