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#tip #android #playstore #alternative
Do you hate apps that need too many permissions to operate? Are you always searching for privacy-friendly and safer alternatives to your favorite apps?
Try F-Droid—a Play Store alternative for Android for getting lots of safe and open-source apps.
🔗 https://f-droid.org/F-Droid.apk
F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform.
And here's an unofficial version of F-droid app (named "Droid-ify") which works much faster than the official F-droid app, is also open-source like the official app, and has lots of additional repositories for getting more open-source apps:
🔗 https://github.com/Iamlooker/Droid-ify/releases/
(Open link, and download latest "droidify-release.apk" from Assets section)
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❓ What is an open-source app?
Open-source apps are those apps whose internal programming code (source code) is freely available to everyone to view, download, edit, improve, contribute, and audit for security flaws or otherwise. Due to such transparency, open-source apps are preferred by many privacy and security conscious users. In addition, most (not all) of the open-source apps are totally free without feature restrictions, and many of them are even better than their closed-source alternatives.
❓ Why would I install F-Droid or Droid-ify to search for apps when Play Store already has millions of apps?
🔸 You can find safer & open-source alternatives to apps that you are already using.
🔸 Some apps can never be published on Play Store no matter how safe they are because they violate terms and conditions of Play Store. For example, Play Store will always reject or remove any app that tries to give option to download YouTube videos. So, for such apps we need to find alternative safe sources of apps like F-Droid.
🔸 Not all developers who publish their apps on F-Droid publish their apps on Play Store. So, there are many apps you will find exclusively on F-Droid.
❓ I can find some of the apps both on Play Store and F-Droid.
Yes, many of the apps hosted on F-droid are also available on Play Store because developers often publish their apps on multiple app stores.
While Play Store hosts both closed-source apps as well as open-source apps, F-droid only allows open-source apps.
❓ If the apps on F-Droid are safe to install, why do I get a warning when I try to install apps?
Android warns you about possible security issues when you install apps from sources other than Play Store.
The warning your phone displays when you sideload an app (install an app from sources other than the inbuilt Play Store) is a standard warning which is displayed to keep you aware of the risks of installing apps from unreliable sources.
But as we already know that all the apps available on F-Droid are open-source, so they are generally considered even safer than those available on Play Store. So, we can safely ignore the warning when we are sufficiently informed about the safety of the source the app is coming from.
❓ If the same app is also available on Play Store, are there any additional advantages or disadvantages of installing from F-Droid or Play Store?
It depends. There can be both advantages and disadvantages.
🔸 In some cases, app updates are available faster on F-Droid.
🔸 There have also been cases, where some app developers choose to provide full version of their apps free of cost on F-Droid, whereas the same pro-version is available for a cost on Play Store (e.g., Simple Gallery Pro).
🔸But in some cases, apps which were open-source earlier can become closed-source later. In such cases, you might find app updates being pushed only on Play Store but not on F-Droid.
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