Kickstarting this community; let’s discuss our favorite apps on Android & iOS.
For iOS:
Fully FOSS:
- Organic Maps - Offline Maps
- Yattee - YouTube Frontend
- BookPlayer - Audiobook Reader
- NetNewsWire - RSS Reader
- Signal - Encrypted Messaging
- Element - Matrix Client
- OrBot - Tor VPN Alternative
- Swiftfin - Jellyfin Client
- VLC - Media Player
- Metapho - Remove EXIF Data
- Privacy Blur - Blurring Photos
- Raivo - 2FA
- Firefox Focus - Web Browser
- Mastodon - Official Mastodon Client
- PixelFed - Official PixelFed Client
- Sync - Reddit App (RIP?)
- Mlem - Lemmy App (currently testing)
- KDE Connect - Airdrop Alternative
- Berty - Encrypted Messenger with Offline Capabilities
FOSS, but with a paid tier:
- KeePassium: Offline Password Manager
- Slide for Reddit - Reddit App (RIP)
- AdGuard - Content Blocker
- Bitwarden - Password Manager
- Joplin - Note App
- Podverse - Podcast App
- NextDNS - DNS Filtering
- Invoice Ninja - Invoicing Software
- SimpleLogin - Email Aliasing
- ProtonMail - Encrypted Email
- ProtonCalendar - Encrypted Calendar
- Proton Drive - Encrypted Cloud Storage (Testflight is Full)
- ProtonVPN - VPN
- Standard Notes - Encrypted Notes
- Notesnook - Encrypted Notes
- Tutanota - Encrypted Email & Calendar
Paid Only, but Open Source:
Privacy Friendly, but not FOSS apps:
- QuickScan - Document Scanner
- Hello Weather - Weather App
- MySudo - Phone Number Aliasing
- Mobius Sync - Syncthing Client
- Privacy.com - Virtual Credit Cards
Edit: Added ente Photos, Mullvad, IVPN, Tutanota, Standard Notes, Notesnook, and Berty
Starred this reply, thank you!
Glad you found it helpful!
What about using cryptomator on ios requires paying? I’ve only used it on osx before which I believe was free.
They charge for the mobile app. I believe it is a one-time fee of $8. It’s a really fair value in my opinion. They even upgraded to 2.0 and let everyone so so for free. No regrets on my end supporting them.
Great list, thank you!
Regarding photos, which app do you use as gallery? Because as we can see in app store that app (apple) records a lot of data about photos. As alternative I’m using cryptomator. I created a folder in which I move every singles photos from native photos app and manage it through native files app (records few data unlike photos app), but as you can imagine it’s not so handy
Honestly, I’ve been stuck on Apple Photos, but turned on ADP (Advanced Data Protection). ente.io is the only other option I found somewhat adequate, but I haven’t pulled the trigger to switch to it just yet. I guess I should add that to my list!
Do you have any specific info on what Apple records in regards to the photos app? Would love to read more.
I’ll start:
-UntrackMe - https://f-droid.org/packages/app.fedilab.nitterizeme/
-Mull - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/us.spotco.fennec_dos/
-NewPIpe - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/
-Shop with mom - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.jdfossapps.android.shopwithmom/
-Lemuroid - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.swordfish.lemuroid/
-Nekogram X - https://f-droid.org/packages/nekox.messenger/
I use Mull, NewPipe and UntrackMe. What I want to stress here is that UntrackMe is an amazing application that more people should use regularly. UntrackMe redirects one to a more privacy-respecting sites. That is great and all, but what I find the most important of the features is that (and you can set your phone to always use UntrackMe, that is, open its context menu) when you click on any random link anywhere (or share it to UntrackMe), you will get a context menu allowing you to select which application to use to open that link, and, most importantly, it will show you the link itself.
You can (and should) verify that the link points to the website you expect, not a scam / fake one. I find this amazingly useful. I know that I can click on anything and always open this UntrackMe context menu to verify, that it leads where I expect it to.
Likewise, UntrackMe is the single most underrated app out there, despite being so incredibly useful and I use it all the time. I only hope they add more redirect services or at least custom ones (e.g. the ones on this browser extension that I also use https://libredirect.github.io/)
I agree that I, too, would make use of such improvements. Maybe the future will pleasantly surprise us :) Similar kind of support that LibRedirect has would be great.
Some Apps I use that I didn’t see mentioned:
Antennapod
Element
Simple Gallary
KDE Connect
Mastodon
Material Files
Medito
My Brain
QBitController
Showly
SimpleLogin
Termux
Vinyl
VLC
I recently decided to try some games on my phone too and found these on F-Droid
2048
Blockinger
Lichess
Lemuroid
Flowit
AntennaPod is great. My replacement for Google podcasts.👍
Oooh, thank you for the games list! I’m always looking for more foss games
2048 is on F-Droid?.. Oh no.
That is difficult to find some players over 2800 on lichess. Do you know another chess apps?
I’m not good at chess at all, I only recently learned how to play so the only other website I know of is chess.com but I don’t know what their app is like
Aegis, libretube, infinity (well…not anymore)
Aegis is so good. I always hated that, when I changed phones, I had to sync my authenticator with the cloud to transfer it. It’s nice that I can just make an encrypted backup and transfer the file.
For me would be on Android:
Seal: for downloading any video, specialty YouTube
ViMusic: For listening to music from YouTube
Paisa: for budget control
Read You: best RSS I had seen on Android
Xtra: Twitch client without the ads
Quacker: For following Twitter accounts without creating and actual account or interacting with them t all.
Most of them are on F-Droid and they use material design.
Let me know if you want direct links. And Droid-ify is the best F-Droid store client out there
Wow, ViMusic is surprisingly pretty for a FOSS app. Seal isn’t bad looking either.
I hate finding an app which is functionally great but completely hideous.
I love ViMusic too but the dev seems busy with other projects and doesn’t fix bugs like the fake absence of albums 😭
Just mentioning the tools I had not seen on other posts:
Selfhosting
- https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag - Instapaper/Pocket alternative. Has mobile clients and hosted version as well
- https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx - Great document management system, has multiple apps by third party developers
- https://grocy.info/ - ERP for your household (food inventory, grocery list, chores) - there are multiple open source clients for it as well
Android
- https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.osmand.plus/ - Routing based on OpenStreetmaps
- https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.oxycblt.auxio/ - Audio player
- https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ws.xsoh.etar/ - Calendar
- https://ntfy.sh/ - Pushbullet alternative, can be selfhosted as well. Works as a - https://unifiedpush.org/users/apps/ provider.
Other than already mentioned, I use daily:
- FairEmail: Fully featured, privacy-oriented email app for Android,
- Syncthing: A continuous file synchronization program,
- Tasks.org: Open-source To-Do Lists & Reminders, and
- AntennaPod: The Open Podcast Player.
Might have to give Fair Email a shot. I use AquaMail now, and it’s about the only non-foss app I use.
hmm… i’m on macOS, so I had to go through my apps to see which are FOSS, as it’s not always clear. More than I thought, so I’ll list some of my favorites:
- Pulsar (a fork of the discontinued Atom) - a text and code editor
- Cyberduck - my favorite FTP client since forever
- Handbrake - swiss army knife for video encoding/transcoding
- OverSight - makes sure my webcam stays off when it should
- LuLu - watches my ports and incoming/outgoing connections
- KnockKnock - guards against processes (malware) trying to gain access to system services and resources surreptitiously
- Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, Overseerr - a suite of media and download management applications for Plex Media Servers
- Transmission - a simple yet powerful bittorrent client
- Homebrew - a complete and extensible package manager for macOS, much like apt or rpm
- VirtualBox - Virtual Machine solution
and many more!
Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, Overseerr - a suite of media and download management applications for Plex Media Servers
Have you considered Kodi or Jellyfin? They’re more private alternatives to Plex
Nah, i really like Plex
Yes, I use Kodi and Real Debrid for movies. Kodi is so easy to use and so stable.
I had not heard about LuLu before, seems like a great replacement for LittleSnitch, thanks for sharing!
Yeah, it’s pretty great! And free!
I have neck issues and emulating my phone on screen is a must! I cant get enough of ‘guiscrcpy’ Open source Android screen mirroring! Multiple phone support, works perfect! https://guiscrcpy.srev.in/
Oh nice! We’ve been using scrcpy at work. This would be much better.
Likewise I have horrible posture from studying. How have I never even heard of android mirroring?! I’ll try out guiscrcpy, many thanks
Bitwarden - password manager
Raivo - 2FA codes (iOS)
aria2 is a lightweight multi-protocol & multi-source command-line download utility. It supports HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, SFTP, BitTorrent and Metalink. aria2 can be manipulated via built-in JSON-RPC and XML-RPC interfaces.
Another good one to add to the list:
Logseq: “A privacy first, open-source knowledge base.”
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Darktable is a great photo editor (similar to Lightroom).
What benefits does it over GIMP? I’ve honestly never heard of it before
I never use GIMP actively but i think GIMP is more focused un image edition, more like Photoshop. Darktable is focused in processing RAW image files (and probaly even more things), applying color profiles, filters, retouching the RAW data, etc.
Because i never edit images i don’t use GIMP (also due that i don’t really learned how to use it). But i use Darktable to process my RAW photos taken from a camera, it just enhances the photos, with color correction, filters and other settings.
It is just different. GIMP is a general image editor. Darktable is for developing, retouching, and organizing photos. GIMP does a lot of things that Darktable doesn’t. But for processing RAW photos, adjusting light, color, contrast, removing spots, it is much easier to do with Darktable.
I can’t say for sure because most of my apps are FOSS, and they are all really good. I’m a KDE user so I really like KDE apps, KMail and NeoChat allows me to connect with people while being integrated into the rest of the system. I also like SoulSeek, a p2p file sharing app useful for downloading music.
