Has anyone noticed that apps on F-Droid or that you just get from GitHub are just better than the ultra-popular apps on the play store? Most of them are open source and have no ads or trackers. But this isn’t true on the Play Store at all.

I see myself always getting apps from F-Droid now because there is always an alternative to the ad-infested bloated privacy infesting BS that I find on the play store. It’s unfortunate that it’s gotten this bad, where the only reason I even use the play store is to install updates or games.

  • godless@latte.isnot.coffeeEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Many are functionally better and of course don’t have any ads, but often look utterly terrible, unfortunately.

    • archived@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yup. This is the exact problem I have with them. Most apps look kind of outdated, finding one with nice UI/UX is like finding gold.

    • Pechente@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      If it was just looks. Usually the UX is simply not very good. We need more designers in the FOSS space.

    • mahomz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s true, any developer in any space knows that core functionality is often built quickly, while refinement and beautification can swallow up enormous amounts of time.

      Combined with my experience being that the dev guy and the UI/design guy are rarely the same person, and the former is way more inclined to create things for fun and give them away.

  • Frederik (vatbub)@feddit.deEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Getting your app published on Google Play is fairly easy. You basically just upload an APK and with how little Google reviews apps, you can get almost anything published. F-Droid on the other hand has very strict standards (which is a good thing). Since I published an app myself on F-Droid, I can tell you that fulfilling those standards does take a lot of effort, and thus a lot of love from the developer.

    This creates a filter: If you care enough about your project to go the extra mile to fulfil the F-Droid requirements, you probably also care about making a good product. If you don’t, you also won’t be motivated enough to publish on F-Droid. There are countless open-source projects which sort-of work but are left behind, usually because it was someone’s side-project. This is ok as well, because it’s free time that most people are spending on Open-Source projects, but as a result, most open-source projects are actually not very mature. They just never make it onto F-Droid and don’t go viral.

    • Calypso7899@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Here are some apps I’ve switched to

      AntennaPod - For podcasts, pretty much the best app out there

      Simple calender - For calender use

      Feeder - RSS feed reader. Useful replacement for news apps

      Simple Gallery Pro - As the name suggests, it’s a clean, simple offline photo and video viewer with some neat features

      Lawnchair - My launcher of choice. A good balance of speed and customisability.

      Just notes - Keep replacement

      K9 mail - Gmail app replacement. FairEmail is a strong contender too.

      Keepass2Android - Password manager

      Neostore - F-droid alternative

      Geometric Weather - My preferred weather app of choice (Edit - For a more updated fork of this, check comment below)

      Wefwef - Kinda mimics apollo for lemmy. It’s pretty neat imo.

      Honourary mention - Infinity for reddit (RIP)