I have been using the F-Droid for past few months and the experience with it has been great and I want to share it with others.

What is F-Droid?

F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform. The client makes it easy to browse, install, and keep track of updates on your device.

Basically all of the application on the F-Droid repository is Free and Open-source. Meaning it is much better than using some random apps from Google Play Store.

Is it better than Google Play store?

Yes, but in certain way. All of the apps at F-Droid are free and open-source. I think it is hard to find an app with such quality in play store for doing simple stuff. Of course you will not find any juicy games or proprietary software in F-Droid. If you want to use apps in Google Play store with privacy, you might be interested in Aurora Store.

Download and Installation

It's really easy. Go to F-Droid and click the "DOWNLOAD F-DROID" button. It will start downloading the .apk file.

Go find the .apk file which you just downloaded and install it. You might be prompted to give privilege to install software. If your app does not have, give permission.

My favourites

Here are the lists of apps which I use.

K-9 Mail

Email client. There is nothing special, it just works.

Bromite

Chromium based browser with ad blocking and privacy enhancements. I believe this app is not in the F-Droid repository so you have to add the repository manually if you want to install.

Imagepipe

Removes exif meta data from images. It can also handle some basic image editing which is good enough for me.

KeePassDX

A password manager for saving username and passwords which saves locally. It is also compatible with .kdb and .kdbx files.

Compass

I am not sure why Android does not have compass app by default.

Simple Mobile Tools

A collection of open source Android apps without ads and unnecessary permissions. It seems you can also download it from Google Play store but I recommend using F-Droid since it is much better.

• Calculator
• Clock
• Gallery
• Voice Recorder

[Update December 29, 2023]

It seems Simple Mobile Tools have been bought by "ZippoApps". It's pretty sad to see the apps turned out to proprietary spyware/adware. I guess this is just a consequence of getting attached to software maintained by same person.

Looks like the long contributor of Simple Mobile Tools, @naveensingh will create a fork of it on FossifyOrg. I hope they keep the old good principals.

Cuppa

Tea timer. I am too lazy to open timer app and measure 3 minutes, so this helps me a lot.

Just a reminder

Almost all of the apps are made by volunteers. Send some donations to the developer of the app if you enjoy using it. Well I don't have spare money so I can't donate them.