this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
373 points (96.5% liked)

Privacy

31385 readers
755 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
all 30 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (4 children)

There was once a time where I thought living with apps from only F-Droid was impossible.

Now, F-Droid is my only app store, and I only use Aurora Store for banking apps (and even then, I prefer to do banking on desktop).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I recently switched to a phone with only microG installed, absolutely 0 Google services.

It works insanely well nowadays.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is that possible on stock rom? What are you running?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I don't think it's possible to get rid of everything in the stock ROM.

I usually install LineageOS on all my phones but I'm on /e/OS right now because Lineage is not available yet.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Just started doing exactly this recently. Aurora fills the gaps for the stuff that I need without the play store.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

This is exactly what I am doing.
I am very grateful to the foss community that this is possible.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I got late to the party, I still use the Google Play Store, but I find some neat apps with Fdroid from time to time, and I was like "hey this isn't that bad" I feel weird to have spend so much time looking for individual APK files ngl.

[–] RQG 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I always look for apps on fdroid first if I need something. It doesn't have everything but a lot of the time there are great FOSS apps available.

I also love that you can filter apps for different criteria such as privacy, close source dependencies etc.

It's a great project. Reminds me I should tip them some for their great work.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I always look for apps on fdroid first if I need something

Me too, and if it's not there then I recently discovered Aurora Store which let's you download from Google Play anonymously and is itself available on F-Droid.

Reminds me I should tip them

Nice try, Philip J. Fry!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How's the Aurora Store working right now? Last time I used it, anonymous accounts started getting rate-limited pretty severly, rendering it quite painful to use

[–] TangledRockets 7 points 1 year ago

The latest versions of Aurora store have a setting to automatically search in the browser which evades the playstore-side rate limiting. It's a little annoying, but that's on playstore, not aurora.

[–] RQG 2 points 1 year ago

Made me exhale audibly through my nostrils.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Also add IzzyOnDroid for newer packages

[–] PeachMan 3 points 1 year ago

Aaaand use Droid-ify for easier automatic updates with a prettier interface!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you know the proper url please? I've just searched, and there are a few different results.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

If you are not already using it, https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium, it's updated and improved frequently

'Get Android App Updates Directly From the Source.'

Currently supported App sources:

Open Source - General: GitHub GitLab Codeberg F-Droid Third Party F-Droid Repos IzzyOnDroid SourceForge SourceHut Other - General: APKPure Aptoide Uptodown APKMirror (Track-Only) Huawei AppGallery Jenkins Jobs Open Source - App-Specific: Mullvad Signal VLC Other - App-Specific: Telegram App Steam Mobile Apps Neutron Code "HTML" (Fallback): Any other URL that returns an HTML page with links to APK files

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

My favorite F-droid app: [email protected]

  • Open Source
  • Uses your phone's spare computational power to help scientists working on everything from cancer research to finding pulsars and black holes. You choose which projects to contribute to. Phones are more compute-per-watt efficient than most computers, and every little bit helps!
  • Can't be published in Google Play store due to their ToS (it downloads and executes code from outside of its own APK which is not allowed)
  • Make sure to limit CPU usage to keep temps down. If your phone can't get rid of heat easily, this app is not for you.
[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems like awful use of your phone battery. Things like this are much better suited to desktop computers than anything that runs off battery. Even if they are more efficient as you say, they wear out much faster, leading to e-waste.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

By default it only runs when battery is full and plugged into a charger. If you are keeping temps low there is no battery damage. I have ran this for years on several different phones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

can't trust it (blindly) for some reason... but there are other reasons I will not get into here

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Great app! I've been using it for years and it just gets better and better over time

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

What Post is that??

Onion is down

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I posted this not to long ago