1y ago

Preparing a megathread about android FOSS apps – Part six (Web Browsers, Important utilities and forgotten apps)

Thread to discuss webbrowsers, important utilities, and apps that we have forgotten about previously but cannot live without. In short , all apps you want to see on the final megathread.

Next week, I will open a thread to discuss some details and thoughts with the entire community to build the megathread.

Previsouly discussions

Discussion about Contacts, SMS and Dialers app is here.

Discussion about Calculators, Cameras and Calendars apps is here.

Discussion about Manager files, Recorders, Galleries and Video editors apps is here.

Discussion about Keyboards, Notes, Maps and Music Players apps is here

Discussion about Weather, Stores, social media and related stuff apps is here

Little context

30 comments

Cromite has been my main browser, with zero trackers, according to Exodus, and has a sandbox incorporated.
Audile has been my Shazam, and I use RethinkDNS to block some apps. It also has more features.
AntennaPod is amazing for listening to podcasts.
- I switched to Antenna pod a few month ago. It is a very solid podcast client with 2 exceptions. One is a bug that means hitting the play button on notifications only works half the time, and the other is Android Auto not allowing you to just pickup where you left off, you have to go into your queue and find the thing you were last listening to every time. Neither are a deal breaker, but both are quite annoying.
  I really should sit down and see if I can help with the code, but I have zero Android programming experience. I would hope that auto play on Android Auto connect would be rather simple, but I have no clue at this point.
- antennaPod +1
- I like AntennaPod but wish it would play Podcasts in Sequential Order. It's a highly requested feature but the Dev does not want to implement it. The Smart Queue is anything but.
  
  The general inability to manually order Podcasts and playlists is the only real serious drawback to the app.
  Don't get me wrong, it's fantastic. I'm not a FOSS purist, and it's still my primary podcast app. Just hoping one day to get that feature.
- Cromite is great, it's still Chromium
  RethinkDNS is fantastic, and actually FOSS
  I know nothing about Shazam or podcasts.

Browsers
Mull is my go to browser, based on Firefox with proprietary blobs removed and since its Firefox uBlock Origin can be installed
Mulch is chromium based for when websites ~ break ~ with Mull. Both are by the same Dev that makes DivestOS
Utilities
I'm not really sure what is meant by utilities but these are some apps that I utilise pretty much every day
URLCheck for easily removing tracking from URLs either manually or automatically
Bitwarden is my go to password manager, you can add their repo to your fdroid client to get auto updates
Aegis for 2FA with easy backup and restore to and from files and supports importing files from so many other 2FA clients
Insular utilises the work profile to separate out apps. Some people in my life still use WhatsApp so I have a whole profile just for it, I can't wait for the DMA to fully kick in so I can get rid of WhatsApp
Librera opens all of my documents for me and I can choose between scroller mode for PDF type stuff or reader mode for ebooks. It also has amoled black which I love.
QbitController to easily manage all of my qbittorrent instances. It also automatically opens magnet links I tap on so I can add them to one of my instances easily
RHVoice TTS that integrates with OSMand, I find I have better voice results with this compared to espeak
Syncthing Fork to auto sync folders on my phone, PC and NAS
Termux terminal emulator I use for SSH, it also runs Zotify and YT-DLP
KDE Connect for controlling my cursor on my PC, quickly sharing files to and from my PC and for seamlessly sharing clipboards between them
Forgotten Apps
Showly OSS Integrates with trakt(.)tv to keep track of shows and also has a discover tab for TV and movies
Unexpected Keyboard I missed the keyboard discussion so I'm going to mention it here. It supports function keys! So I can use htop in SSH to kill processes on my PC when I break something and my screen freezes
- In this thread, you can share what you want. And ty for your suggestions.

Aegis 2FA Authenticator

Only saw these megathreads now, thank you for the great work. If you don't mind I'm just going to past my comment of a recent post with a similar question, but add some more that I use. If you want I can delete it
I use a variety of FOSS tools for both personal and work productivity.
For personal I use:
Nextcloud (Calendar, sync files, contacts etc, forms, availability sharing)
Thunderbird (Mail & Calendar)
Vikunja for managing all my projects/tasks. Also is very useful to have shared tasks with relatives. Another useful feature is that it can share specifics projects to people that do not have an account (for vacancy planning for example)
Tasks.org to manage Vikunja tasks in Android
Logseq for managing all my thoughts, ideas, tracking content like books, movies, videos watched
Nomie (specifically this maintained instance which has some new features). I use it to track myself (mood, anxiety, adhd, symptoms, food and drug consumption, people). It has an API so I for example can automatically insert activities from Garmin API. It is very useful to correlate things in life, or to tell the doctor if a specific symptom has flared up or not and many more things
Omnivore is my read-later off choice app, replacing Wallabag. It has an EXTREMELY polished interface, can aggregate RSS feeds, supports tags, comments, many filters and more. But the amazing thing is that it has a plugin for Logseq which automatically syncs all my highlights, notes and tags to it
Ferdium to quickly access all my important services
Syncthing on my phone, laptops and Kobo to sync Logseq between devices and books/articles from my PC to Kobo
Liftosaur for exercise routines (it has script language even) and can also track body measurements.
waistline as a substitute for myfitnesspal or cronometer
Phoneprofileplus as a sort of Tasker substitute
Sayboard for speech-to-text keyboard
Cofi to aid in making the perfect cup of coffee
Anki for learning things faster. I use a plugin for Logseq to automatically send cards to Anki, and AnkiDroid to access anki on phone
ActivityWatch has my cross-device time tracker
FindMyDevice but FOSS
For work use:
Logseq is my main tool, with the capability of connecting to Zotero, reading papers and taking notes which with queries I can leverage it to see new ideas forming. It also acts as the best logbook I've ever used through its powerful templates and queries which simplifies a lot the work of comparing results since it can all be done automatically
Zotero to manage all my papers
neovim with vimtex, ltex-ls and ultisnips to write documents in LaTeX very fast. Also have some scripts to manage vector graphics very easily using https://github.com/gillescastel/inkscape-figures
Inkscape for doing all the images for my papers since I plot my graphs in SVG. This way I can edit graphs after ploting and never lose quality
Ranger file manager
Espanso
- No problem. You can say what you want. Ty for your suggestions!

netGuard of course
and fairEmail

Utilities:

    
Transportr: Bus and Train Navigation
Change Detector: Notification and diff if a website changes
FlashDim: dim your Flashlight
Linphone: SIP Phone
Librera FD: Full Featured PDF reader and editor
phyBox: Use your Smartphone Sensors
Pedometer: counts your steps
Puls Rate Monitor
UnTrackMe
STools+
Termux

Forgotten apps: Lawnchair(Release) together with Arcticons. Very minimalistic!

Honest question. Are there any FOSS Android browsers? I use Mull or SmartCookieWebPreview. Even Mull gets the 'the upstream code is not free' on F-Droid.
Obviously Chromium is out, Webviews are just a wrapper for Chromium.
Does that leave anything?
- Firefox is open source last I checked. On Android it runs its own engine and everything. It may not be on FDroid, but that doesn't mean it's not open source.
- https://divestos.org/pages/our_apps
  It is compiled from source and proprietary blobs are removed using scripts by Relan from here.
- Be brave
  
  Brave, you mean Chromium with crypto?

Iceraven

I recently switched from Firefox to Floorp. It is based on Firefox ESR and customizable like Vivaldi. Only downside is, there is no mobile version
- there's always Mull as a more "private" Firefox

How about free and open source money? Bitcoin has been around for 15 years. Some default suggested wallets for users might be worth including in a list of must-have FOSS apps. Many users just use google to find their first wallet and that can send them down some wildly unsafe paths. The more users know about which are the kind of "standard" open source wallets, the less they'll end up installing some closed-source 'trust me bro' nonsense or worse download a wallet which is an actual scam and just steals their funds.
For custodial wallets for Bitcoin I would suggest Strike (supports the most countries) and for non-custodial I would suggest Phoenix. Custodial means the app developer control the keys to access the Bitcoin, non-custodial means you do.
Strike: custodial, most countries of any custodial wallet, can connect directly to bank account/debit card, closed source (I'm not aware of any open-source custodial wallet)
Phoenix: non-custodial, all countries, can't connect to bank account which means you can't buy BTC with it, you need a custodial wallet or exchange account to do that. That's true of all non-custodial wallets.
- All suggestions and opinions are welcome. However, I'll not accepeted any app closed-source. I guess you understand. Ty for the suggestions mate.
  
  Fair enough. Just suggest a FOSS non-custodial wallet like Phoenix then.

30 comments