F-Droid 2.0: The Biggest Update in a Decade Brings a Modern Interface and Smarter App Discovery
F-Droid 2.0: A New Chapter for Android Freedom
After over a year of development and 14 test releases, F-Droid 2.0 launches as the largest update in 10 years. The app has been rewritten with Kotlin Compose and Material Design, introducing a simplified navigation with Discover, Search, and My Apps. Discover now highlights popular apps, categories are expanded with meta-categories, and search covers descriptions and CJK languages. A unified installer leverages Android's new pre-approval API for smoother installs. Automatic updates, improved filtering, and simplified privacy settings round out the release.
The best refresh button is the one you never have to press.
- hashworks
> Categories play an important role in helping users browse the repository, so we’ve expanded and refined them significantly
Are people actively using F-Droid categories to find new apps? I don't think I know anyone who does, and I've only ever used the search functionality.
- comex
I notice that
Syncthing-For
k
is one of the first pieces of text in the first screenshot. With the k on its own line like that. Not usually something I’d comment on, but if you’re showing off a redesign…
- silverbluep
I have been using droid-ify on GrapheneOS for a few years now; because F-Droid ui is terrible, and the privilege extention has been such a pain to configure and get working without issues on my previous lineageOS phone. Happy to see this major overhaul; and i'm glad the FPE is being phased out.
- idle_zealot
It's sad to see F-Droid using the now-standard design convention of categorically refusing to draw lines between things. No visual differentiation between sections of the UI, no clear indication of what's tappable and what will happen on a tap, no indication of scrollable areas beyond content being cut off. I'm willing to chalk some bad text alignment or uneven padding up to amateur designers working for free, but the design ethos on display, the thoughtless trend-chasing, is depressing to see.
- hauget
My problem with F-Droid has always been the lack of app reviews: no way to separate the good from the ugly and the bad.
- jjice
What does the future of something like F-Droid look like once Google does their lock down next year?
- ocd
I haven't used F-Droid since the age of Copperhead when I had an Android phone sitting around for testing purposes only. I never thought it would catch a wave like it has, but I also wasn't really thinking about geopolitical upheaval (not often or entirely seriously anyway) or tech companies angering (this much) everyone, but it is nice to see.
I never got around to trying the Copperhead successor in Graphene.
- collabs
I feel like f-droid is still very much a developer / advanced power user tool. I have not tried the 2.0 release candidate yet but with my version I get things like
> F-Droid: Repo timestamp expected 1790110069568, but was 1790205675224
IzzyOnDroid F-Droid Repo: Repo timestamp expected 1790100093000, but was 1790272636000
The real problem I think is who should this message go to? My guess is we don't want to have mindless telemetry going from every single user to some central database or repository somewhere. My injection isn't even privacy here. It is that when we have lots of data coming from all over the world, I am afraid someone still has to sift through all this data and make sense of it but we can only understand and prioritize things we already know or are at least able to understand. I feel like this is pulling us in different directions — we want a simpler interface but we also want to expose all sorts of application states that require advanced understanding of how the system works. And someone needs to decide which bucket any particular message goes to — perhaps there is a more opaque but less frightening message like "sync had a hiccup, will retry" or even no message at all surfaces to the user unless it fails multiple consecutive times for the simple, default bucket and more verbose more frequent messages for those who want to see them?
But then even as I write this I can feel like this adds more maintenance headache, even as I push decision making to avoid havin […]
- temphaaa
Can someone recommend a good F/OSS ebook reader on F-Droid? The existing ones I have tested have too many knobs and options and are not really user-friendly.... My wife started to get into reading, but I could not get her to get out of the Kindle/Play Books ecosystem because of the user-friendliness and easy synchronisation across devices that Kindle gives.
- rom1v
In addition to F-Droid on the device, I'd love an F-Droid "package manager client" on a computer, that allows installing apps on an Android device via adb:
# update repo lists
fdr update
# upgrade all apps on the connected device
fdr upgrade
# search packages
fdr search vlc # lists org.videolan.vlc
# install on the device
fdr install org.mozilla.firefox
# download the apk
fdr download org.mozilla.firefox
# uninstall
fdr uninstall org.mozilla.firefox
Of course, all operations would verify the signatures first.