Repo timestamp expected blah blah... toast coming out of nowhere is such a bad design. Really, the architecture in which you absolutely have to download the multi-MB index is as well.
Yes. F-droid allows that, you can have multiple repositories and ... a few of those even exist :)
I'm using that with 2.0 (or rather with F-droid Basic, but I noticed Basic was updated to the same that is described in article, but a while ago). It works just fine.
Very cool, the visual redesign was very much needed and I had been using Droid-ify for a while because of this. I'll switch back to the official app, congrats to the contributors!
> All new code in this effort uses modern Android code standards and designs. This gives us a codebase that is easier to maintain, test, and easier to extend with new features in the future.
No, this increases the overall complexity of the system. Android will hopefully eventually collapse under its own weight.
For people who are die-hard F Droid users, do you get all your apps from it? I have tried in the past but it seemed like even when I restricted my use to basics it was missing things I needed to make my phone feel useful. Wonder if it has gotten better.
Aurora works fine for me, and Google's software needn't chug along in a background sandbox no matter if all it can do is install apps, ping back to the mothership what your IP address currently is, and act as a proxy for other apps whose direct internet access you try to deny
Yes, essentially. I do have the Guardian Project repository and I get a handful of applications from the Play Store (via Aurora Store), but everything else comes from F-Droid. If you want even more, you can add the IzzyOnDroid repository[0], but bear in mind that unlike F-Droid, applications are built by developers themselves, and the rules on FOSS-only licensing are less strict.
It did yesterday, for me.
Sometimes it doesn't work for a while and the dev needs some time catching up to what Google deliberately or inadvertently or indifferently put in the way of access to the place where apps are published (and they are published there, not because app creators deliberately chose Google out of many app distributors in some healthy competitive market; there is no choice).
The Aurora project accepts donations, if you want to hurry things along some time! And they have a donation button right there in the app listing, try doing that for yourapp in the PlayStore and see who comes knocking in 3...2..1 to make you a non-person.
What do you find is missing? The main apps I need Google Play for are apps that are tied to a specific company or government service (eg, banking apps, or HMRC). For pretty much all basic functions I think F-Droid does the job.
Store and restaurant apps, discord, streaming apps, most games, payment apps, apps for school, ride-sharing. I tried the "degoogle" way and tossed after two days because that's impossible unless you're willing to adopt a more expensive boomer/millennial lifestyle.
No... I use a combination of Aurora, Obtainium and F-Droid.
Unfortunately there are APP providers actively preventing their apps to work on graphene OS, so i own an extra use@home cheap broken glass iphone for these mandatory but non-graphene apps.
It is a pain and it is getting worse... I'm really tempted to get back to the Apple ecosystem for less shens but currently i cannot do this yet... It just feels wrong but the pain is real. I'm Lösung the fight of investing too mich of my time in things that just should work.
I wouldn't use F-Droid exclusively. Many apps can simply be downloaded from their respective webpages. GrapheneOS also has also its own very basic app store.
FDroid offers the guarantee that the apk was built from source, and at least some marginal safety in terms of having passed their security and analytics/ads checkers.
Obtainium makes it easy to download apps directly from their webpages. Many of them have ready configurations you can simply add: https://apps.obtainium.imranr.dev/
It is not my main device, nor even my secondary device. It’s basically just a device I bought for cheap hoping that maybe I was lucky and it was actually pretty snappy. It’s not snappy :(
I occasionally watch a couple of YouTube videos on it and read a couple of HN posts on it, when my phone is out of battery or when I’m doing a backup of my phone and have left the phone on the table for that.
Anyway, aside from YouTube the other apps I have installed on it myself are all from F-Droid, including the DuckDuckGo browser that I use on it. I also have Signal on it, which I don’t remember if I installed from F-Droid or from Google Play.
My main device that I actually use a lot is an iPhone. And like I said I basically only use the tablet like a couple of hours a week and only to watch a couple of YouTube videos and read a couple HN threads, when I am not able to use my phone for those things.
Most of them, yeah. My main non-F-Droid apps are YT-Music, Google Maps, Duo auth, Bible, and my bank app. Firefox, podcasts, local music player, ebook reader, RSS reader, email client, Matrix client, XMPP client, audiobook player, calendar sync, KeePassDX, SyncThing, Nix terminal, etc are all F-Droid.
I use droid-ify as frontend; and it's been fine to use f-droid repos for most of my needs. I try to install my apps from there in general. Biggest issue for me is android auto capability usually requires the app to be installed from play store (CoMaps) and my music player app (GoneMAD) has a companion unlocker that is from paid app store.
I need banking and bunch of vendor related apps. I need play store for them; so not full on f-droid repos. But close-ish when it comes to phone functionality.
When I need some category of app - say a note app or an audiobook player - I generally check F-Droid first.
If there's a good enough app on there, I generally stick with that as opposed to trying what Google Play has to offer.
I like having that prefiltering, knowing that the app will be open source, not trying to pull anything shady and not have ads or sell my data. On the Play Store, more often than not, at least one of those is not true.
Similar experience for me. I find f-droid a great supplement store but cutting out the default store entirely has felt like more of a commitment than I'm interested in so far.
No I have Obtainium side by side with F-Droid. There are some closed source apps or apps that are not published on F-Droid (like Wireguard) that unfortunately I need. Obtainium is great for that.
Fossify Clock has the best accidental feature: when your alarm is going off, there's no way to stop it except for unlocking your phone, opening the app, finding the current alarm in the list of alarms, and disabling it.
I only use it to install the apps that aren't available on the Play store (e.g. Öffi, an excellent public transit app that gave up on dealing with the Play store after one too many arbitrary removals, Termux, and NewPipe).
The user experience was just too broken for too long to consider it usable (didn't support background updates for about two years after Google made it available, and generally just too much jank and random errors/failures). I might look into it the next time I'm setting up a device, but I think for the majority of apps I'll still go through the Play store - I don't trust F-Droid to be stable/reliable enough yet.
> Also, F-Droid Privileged Extension (FPE) is not currently supported by 2.0. That means even if FPE is installed, F-Droid 2.0 won’t use it. This overhaul focused on full featured support for the Android “session” installer. That lets F-Droid run background updates on any recent Android version without requiring FPE. Like with any of the changes here, we welcome feedback.
This is a shame. Is the privileged extension a large maintenance burden?
When Google added the "session" installer to AOSP, we thought it would replace F-Droid Privileged Extension (FPE). So we stopped development on it. The answer now is that the "session" installer mostly replaces FPE, but not fully. So we're exploring reviving development:
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/privileged-extension/-/work_items/...
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.
I tried Neostore. All the info it shows is pretty cool, but ultimately I felt the expierence suffered from all the extra information shown compared to the simpler UI in Droid-ify.
I think it is great that there are multiple clients out there, so people have a choice of user experience. One thing that I think is too often overlooked look is if they have implemented the same security and privacy standards as F-Droid, if that's important to you. For example, last I checked, the third party clients where still using index-v1, which is signed using SHA1. Maybe NeoStore updated to index-v2? And there is also quite a bit of effort put into the client-side to make sure it leaks as little as possible to the servers. There are libraries of the official core pieces for third party clients to use to gain many of these protections:
https://f-droid.org/2023/05/02/three-client-libraries.html
Thank you. Used it to uninstall F-droid and roll back to v1 after trying out this new update (ooof... full-blown material ui is not for me. Those progress bars, oh my eyes!)
The old f-droid client made selecting app updates easy. With both v2 and droid-ify, you have to click through for each app. Not a great interface decision :( Why do updates always dumb interfaces down these days?
Super rare? The government seems to release only on an obscure source called Play for some reason. I don't want to play a game, just to ride the transit system. There seem to be a lot of apps that don't release on such an addable source..
The other way is to use fdroid as source within obtainium.
The benefit is to maintain app list at one place, so you can export/import to another device, when needed.
I tried it with 3 random apps for a while, but instantly got into issues. Two stopped updating due to Obtanium falling behind how app releases - for instance, developer changed version numbering scheme but Obtanium didn't expect that, so an outdated version was always presented. It wasn't fixed for quite a while.
I have 23 currently. It's surprising how fast it happened... I don't have any problems, but I don't pay much attention to it and apps seem to update automatically sometimes and after a manual refresh other times.
I've found Droid-ify more reliable at doing background updates, though it still only manages it sometimes (possibly due in some way to how I installed the apps). Hopefully Fdroid's app will be better at this.
I tried Obtainium a while back and didn't like it too much, finding apps seemed difficult.
Then I discovered https://apps.obtainium.imranr.dev/ which makes it very easy. I feel like Obtainium should make this more obvious. It would help adoption a lot.
Fwiw, that link is documented in the readme at https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium so it's not hard for someone to find again. It's also prominent in the Obtainium app UI itself.
I use F-Droid precisely because I don't want that. When https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38505229 happened - and when the same thing happens again in the future, because it will - I explicitly want F-Droid doing some basic due diligence on updates before shipping them to me. Cutting out the middleman is the opposite of what I want.
Counterpoint: I use NewPipe pretty much daily for watching YouTube. One day, YT introduced an API change that broke NewPipe, and so I patiently waited for an update.
A few days passed, and I eventually get a notification from NewPipe prompting for an update. But I can't install it just yet, because of mismatching signatures between the F-Droid and GitHub versions (yes, that's the point, I know...). The F-Droid build took so long to release, that in the meantime, another version of NewPipe came out...
True. And especially for that use, I can imagine that the slow return around is actually a breaking problem. I think there are relatively few apps that need that kind of quick update, and I'm more concerned with malicious authors than that, but it would depend on precisely what you need out of your apps.
Notably, this is still cutting out the middleman and bypassing the extra review that that entails. It's fine as long as you trust everybody involved in publishing the repo, which is probably fine here, but a thing to keep in mind.
This issue happens to some extent within liunux distros too. I think specifically for youtube maybe it would be beneficial for a single core library that deals with the API and is shared by every single project that cares to interface with youtube. Rather than dozens of projects trying to chase youtube changes and overburdening repository maintainers, there would only be a single library whose updates would be fast tracked. This also requires there to be no embedding it in anything too, I don't know how feasible this would be on android/f-droid, but it kinda already happens with yt-dlp in linux distros, but yt-dlp isn't a proper library nor does it deals with all youtube endpoints that a proper youtube frontend would require.
It would perhaps be nice if yt-dlp could eject it's youtube api handling into it's own project that is then augmented to handle anything youtube related and turns into THE library for dealing with youtube.. maybe even call it libyt :)
I've never actually had this issue, for whatever reason. In-app updates to NewPipe (and the various forks) install just fine even if I originally downloaded from F-Droid. Not sure how that works exactly.
I ran into the same issue. The good news is that app is the only one I've had to uninstall and reinstall from an apk because fdroid was so insanely slow. I wish they made an effort to keep up with apps where they need to be updated frequently and stop working entirely if they aren't updated. I can't imagine there are too many apps like that
Dear F-Droud, please stop redirecting me to the Mandarin version automatically without an option to read the original message. Just because I have a Chinese keyboard layout available.
First hit for 'check http headers', in case that helps find out why websites think you want Chinese content. Maybe it's a bug in the website; maybe it's set as your first preference. Please report the bug if there is one!
Since F-Droid (i.e., the repositories, not the app) builds all apps, a practical solution would be for the repositories (i.e., their signing keys) to be recognized by El Goog. Whether and how much help / obstacle the "maybe we do evil" company puts up for / against this is a different question.
It seems to me this is a blocker to use if google can restrict sideloading like this. Its not going to end with just get people requiring to register their app with an identity. Wont they be able to put presser on f-droid devs to lock out software they consider a threat to some business model?
If the issue Google has with sideloading is really just the rampant app piracy (and the malware that comes with cracked apps) that might be something F-Droid can accomodate.
I don't think malware is the problem, as most malware comes directly via Google's ecosystem carried by ads. Just recently I had to uninstall some app from the play store since it tried to distribute malware through scary pop-ups and had it replaced with something from f-droid for someone I know.
> most malware comes directly via Google's ecosystem carried by ads.
Google's own Play Store is filled with outright malware too, no ads needed. The idea that Google has to control what people are allowed to install on their phones isn't really for the protection of anyone except Google.
That newspeak term should just disappeared. It only contributes to the image that downloading and installing an app is something that is outside the "happy path". Installing software of your choice on a device you own shouldn't be demonised
Surely you see how installing unvetted software on a device that holds your entire life, bank info, photos, etc. probably shouldn't be part of the "happy path" for most people. You shouldn't even install software you haven't fully vetted from the google play store. This should be drilled into non-technical people.
Those of us who want to can easily bypass it. My mom who doesn't know what she's doing and gets a phishing email with a fancy apk attached should probably have a hard time using it.
The world may not of ended but to of people have been hurt by malware ruining their computer, cryptolocking all of their company's files for ransom, stealing all of your login credentials, stealing cryptocurrency, taking secret photos with your webcam, screen recording what you are doing on your computer, etc.
The "personal computer" has a terrible track record.
It is much rarer since it needs 0 day to do these at the same level as possible on a pc. The play store scanning apps for malware is an important safety mechanism against this. Further more imposter apps like YouTube but with no ads that are Trojans that steal people's accounts.
Or the accessibility permission, or to some degree the access all files ones; but it's also enough for the app to pilfer the data you trust it with.
The Play Store's scanning is very far from perfect, and the amount of crap that's on it, combined with the trust that people have towards it, and apps' unfettered access to internet, makes malicious software easily more common than on PCs.
Even without considering as malicious the enormous data collection that almost everything on the Play Store does, encouraged by Google
For many decades, people have been mistakenly putting diesel fuel into their gasoline cars, yet we never outlawed diesel vehicles. You can only do so much to protect people without destroying their rights to their property.
Today people get in debt to have the latest orange iPhone, for a long time before that most people in, ok, developed countries somehow got hold of a computer.
> a device that holds your entire life, bank info, photos, etc.
I'd see it the other way around and say that a device running an operating system controlled by some company shouldn't hold your entire life, bank info, photos, etc.
How do you get around this? Literally every bank, brokerage, etc... is hell bent on you using your phone for everything from 2FA to passkeys, etc... They dont even imagine people have computers anymore or want two+ physical devices/controls on what can be done with which factors
It requires collective action. Ideally with laws to force interoperability, so folks can move among platforms with ease. Then standards will arise to keep that feasible for app makers.
Without regulation markets coalesce as the winners eat each other like a game of snake. It's a miracle Apple hasn't yet eliminated Android. Although I suppose for some institutions there is only iPhone.
I'm not sure the situations are comparable when Windows doesn't have this permission system where the apps are still very limited in what they can access unless you grant specific directory access or access to the contact list or such
It does, but approximately nobody uses it, because Microsoft also tried to apply loads of constraints on what kinds of program could exist when they rolled it out, as part of their "all Windows software should also work on Windows Phone and Xbox" campaign.
Have you ever tried to educate a 70+ year old person on this kind of stuff? Their eyes gloss over and they don't care. I've told my mother not to install random apps on her phone several times yet she still does it. I could probably send her a phishing e-mail right now that 'looks like' it's from me (so long as my name is in the from: field that's enough) and she'd follow the instructions to install a malicious apk too.
"Everyone should just be smarter/more educated" is what I used to think as well. I now fully understand some people have no desire to be educated in any way and it's a net good for society to not have a large % of devices compromised.
yes, got my father on linux a decade (or more) ago. He's 84. No problem. Most recently we discussed being vigilant against vishing.
Now my in-laws (similar age) one very demented, the other thinks he knows best because he was a chemical engineer...they could use some built in protections
so ultimately I think some default level of "guardrail" is appropriate, but it should have a not too burdensome escape hatch
>so ultimately I think some default level of "guardrail" is appropriate, but it should have a not too burdensome escape hatch
Which is really exactly what google is implementing here and why I'm so perplexed so many people are upset. You or I or smart parents (my mother has never used a computer in her life and wouldn't want to) will have absolutely no issue sideloading apps after the proposed changes.
Given Google's track record, I don't think it's just "being upset" to have serious doubts about the probability of this escape hatch staying indefinitely.
The answer to people refusing to care about important things in life is not to put restrictions upon everyone's freedom. Ultimately, being an adult means you have to take responsibility for your actions (or lack thereof). It isn't hard to learn how to use a computer responsibly, and I've known plenty of older people who did so just fine. There's no excuse here.
The Emacs version for Android makes uses of something like this IIRC by signing a version of Termux with the same key and distributing it in the same SourceForge repo such that Emacs on Android can access CLI tooling like git for example.
Isn't it possible, however complicated, for users to undo the lockdown to install an app? The required 9 steps are noted at https://keepandroidopen.org/ for devices that use Google Play Services.
Irrespective, people should probably be migrating to a GrapheneOS or similar OS asap once the OS ships with a device.
Honestly not as bad as I feared it would be. Still not great and it's moving us farther from the idea that people who paid for the device should be allowed to install what they want on it, but as it stands it's a workable process. We'll see how quickly it takes Google to make it worse
Currently, switching to GrapheneOS means giving Google money. Next year's Motorola-based alternative is also likely going to be several price classes above the Pixels you can currently put GrapheneOS on.
Then buy a Pixel second-hand or when they hit rock-bottom prices, which usually happens after 6 months or so. At some point Google is probably not making a lot of profit from the devices anymore and they want to sell it to you for tracking and to sell Google One subscriptions, which are mostly irrelevant if you use GrapheneOS.
I followed Pixel prices for the last year, and rock-bottom for a 256gb version (the current absolute minimum for a device without an sd, to my eyes) meant 450€.
There are occasional good deals for (unused) older models on eBay, but they're surprisingly rare.
I wonder if Google demands stores to give the old models back, after the release of newer ones; they disappear from every store extremely quickly.
The latest pixels are a complete downgrade from the previous year (worse components). That's one huge reason to buy a last year phone (as opposed to a current one).
Updates on this have been slowly trickling out and the best I can discern is you will be able to still install apps from stores like F-Droid, but you have to go through a manual "advanced flow" which will most likely make you wait 24 hours before installing it and make you go through other hoops.
In short, google has referred to this as "increased user friction" to try and deter people from doing this. Essentially not making it impossible; just really frustrating for users so they get sick of the process and just install verified apps through them.
The only way I know around this is to install a custom rom like GrapheneOS or Lineage OS since this change targets Because the policy targets the Google Mobile Services (GMS) framework rather than the foundational Android Open Source Project (AOSP).
It seems google is going to allow an "advanced flow" that is scam resistant by requiring the user to wait 24 hours before they can start installing their own apps. It sucks, but assuming they don't change the plan again, F-Droid should be able to continue working.
The current lockdown plan is that you'll need to wait 24 hours before installing the first unauthorized app, right? So probably exactly the same as it is now except setting up a phone will take 24 hours longer.
There is an entire world of Android phones not controlled by Google, including GrapheneOS, LineageOS, and countless variations in China and other places where Google is effectively banned.
It looks exactly the same as now. You will have to do Google's 24 hour flow thing, but it's not like that's going to stop anyone who appreciates what F-droid brings to the table.
Because nobody uses it except a handful of uber-nerds who can put up with wasting hours of time for "altruism".
The answer to freedom isn't another marketplace. It's legislation that requires Google and Apple to allow web installs without scare walls or deeply hidden permission toggles.
You should be able to just download an app. And Grandma should be able to do it.
There's nothing insecure about it in a world of sandboxing, permissions, scanning, blacklisting, etc. When the tech giants are more than happy to sell ads to malware, you know their "safety" stance is just economic moat protectionism.
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Edit because of rate limits:
This is not derogatory. This is making the point that the wrong battle is being fought. F-droid fans are cheering a small victory, yet losing the entire war.
F-droid does not matter in the grand scheme of things. It's not the point. The point is the app store monopoly. That there are only two platforms and that both are almost completely locked down.
F-droid users don't even see that Google is purposefully allowing this as an antitrust sponge in their calculus. Google doesn't mind because 0.0001% of their users will install this. If they had a sense that the regulators wouldn't bother them, they'd just as well close this loophole. And they probably will eventually.
This isn't beachhead, and even if it was, it isn't sound footing or a stable foundation. It can easily go away.
> Because nobody uses it except a handful of uber-nerds who can put up with wasting hours of time for "altruism".
What? I'm not sure how you would manage to waste hours installing a single app and then using it to install other apps, and I'm not using it because of "altruism" (what does that even mean?), I'm using it because it's the best way to get apps.
> You should be able to just download an app. And Grandma should be able to do it.
> There's nothing insecure about it in a world of sandboxing, permissions, scanning, blacklisting, etc. When the tech giants are more than happy to sell ads to malware, you know their "safety" stance is just economic moat protectionism.
Even if you 100% trust Android's sandboxing and permissions, which is... not a choice I would personally make, I like it when my apps don't have scams or ads internally, either. I'm not worried about Grandma downloading any app off F-Droid; I am a little concerned about what happens if she can download any app being pushed by any random website.
Can't you at least see and file issues and discussions on the respective app's code repo site? This is often although not always sufficient, as the repo owner can censor issues and discussions.
Google has for years censored app reviews anyway on its Play Store, and also allowed too many low-value reviews which drown out useful reviews.
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.
Amazing news! I mainly use the F-droid Basic version which does automatic updating of apps. The regular one needs user confirmation for updates if I remember correctly.
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.
Koreader interface with syncthing is not that user friendly to non techs, very powerful can do anything but i don't think i would advise that to non techie
To add to this, since the original comment mentioned kindle, you can jailbreak many of the models and install KOReader in them if you want to keep using the hardware.
And then you can automatically sync your reading process with the KOReader phone app. I use that functionality almost every day for when I don't have my Kindle with me (train ride, lunch break etc).
Try storyteller. It’s an awesome app that does the whispersync thing where you get the audiobook and ebook together, can switch between the two and not lose place, can read both at the same time where the ebook underlines what’s being said. All self hosted though so you need to have a way to…obtain drm free e/audio books.
If you want a cross platform option that's pretty good across Android/iOS/Mac/Windows/Linux, Readest[1] Is another great option. It supports syncing a library of ebooks and is licensed under the AGPL[2].
GrapheneOS security complaints about F-Droid are a load of nonsense except for one: the APK on the website is signed by a different key from the one that F-Droid updates itself with.
I hope the new redesign makes the store easier to navigate on TVs. It's a nightmare trying to install/update apps on F-Droid on either my Nvidia Shield Pro or my Onn 4K TV using the tv remote. The cursor gets lost all the time and it's often impossible to see what option is currently in focus when you click Ok on the remote.
Not any super user but about three/four months, I'm using my device without any google account. Also not using any G service apps such as mail/yt/maps and of course play store. Instead of play store I found aurora store very helpful. "Very" because of the anonymous login future. But sometimes the store disturbs. Newly added apps on Play store doesn't appears on aurora. Also many applications fails to be installed without showing any reason. Some shitty apps redirect to the play store app (which I'm unable to disable but uninstalled her! Updates) and just doesn't works anything more then redirecting me. So I'm still not a fan of Aurora. But it's going not bad. But sometimes I should browse other sites to get old/delated from Play store apps. Also for mod/adless version of some apps.
I heard of fdriod but what I think it may only serves feature less, low UI/UX optimized apps. So didn't installed it yet. But something should be available where people can find all Play store apps (as aurora supplies) + premium/adsense deleted modified apps (random website) + Open source apps (fdroid)…… this will make android insane
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…
That app itself also has some of the most revolting UI I've seen in a modern Android app (Vertical gradient filled buttons with thick gray strokes surrounded by not-quite-Material UI widgets, in a nonsensical custom control they had to go out of their way to make rather than just use a dropdown). Android developers really just don't care.
It's annoying and easy to forget, but you have to enable the high-quality line break algorithm per Text component in Compose. Or you have to set two flags (maxLines=1 and overflow=TextOverflow.Ellipsis). I usually end up with a TitleText and BodyText component in my codebases that set these flags internally so I don't have to remember.
I wasn't sure if this was a joke about Android being unintuitive so I was sad to see that enabling high quality line breaks is indeed something you have to configure:
Honestly I'd take that over the hostile vomit that is the google playstore. That thing is an offence to my senses...so many colors and animations trying to grab my attention.
Great! But why hasn't 2.0 installed automatically on all devices that already have F-Droid?
- go to F-Droid -> Updates. "Congratulations! Your apps are up to date."
- refresh the repositories. "Congratulations! Your apps are up to date."
- search directly for f-droid in apps. "This app was built for an older version of Android and cannot be updated automatically."
*facepalm* never change, F-Droid. You might not be able to automatically update the app because of Android API restrictions, but there's no reason your app can't tell me it knows there's an updated version I could be asked to apply manually, is there?
EDIT: it still says version 1.23.2 is "Suggested" even when 2.0 is installed. Perhaps this is a reason? Nonetheless, there's no setting to choose a different version policy, i.e. install 2.0 because it's newer, even if not "Suggested"
What does "Suggested" even mean? According to https://forum.f-droid.org/t/how-does-f-droid-suggest-a-versi... it's set manually by the person maintaining the metadata, which makes it even more of a facepalm if F-Droid are announcing 2.0 on their homepage but nobody set CurrenVersion=2.0 in their own metadata.
2. Please donate a few EUR/bucks to F-Droid! It's a good place to get Android apps from, and we can't all just mooch off of it. Doesn't have to be a big donation.
3. I am worried that Alpahbet/Google will kill these "unauthorized" apps soon, so that the new version arriving would be kind of bittersweet. Although - maybe I'll just need to switch to LineageOS or something.
Running a malicious build script is just as bad as running a malicious app, so I don´t see why you want that? Also F-droid has fully reproducible builds, so you can be sure you'll get the same binary.
Speed. Most people are going to choose a fast binary download + automated integrity check over compiling from source, regardless of their reason for using F-Droid.
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.
I've only seen the screenshots in the post, but those don't look confusing at all to me. A line between every section is not good or clear UI. I'd argue that grouping related entities by their proximity and leaving enough space in between sections is clearer. If you have to draw a line to make that distinction, they are probably too close.
In the case of the featured sections in the first screenshot, there should at minimum be a visual well indicating the horizontally scrollable strips. Invisible scroll panes are insane.
They’ve already made it obvious that the row is horizontally scrollable by leaving part of the next icon visible at the right edge. That's a clear (and standard) visual cue that there’s more content off-screen.
But... does the whole page scroll at once, and can I tap and drag "between" two rows (slightly above one, slightly below the other) to scroll the whole page? Or does each row scroll independently, and only taps on the row scroll? I habitually don't tap on anything that looks like an icon if I want to scroll around, because I'm afraid I'll activate the icon in a poorly written program (or if I tap too lightly and it is picked up as a tap and not a hold and drag event). So visual cues as to what's scrollable makes it easier for folks like me to know where to tap to scroll things properly.
> It's sad to see F-Droid using the now-standard design convention of categorically refusing to draw lines between things.
Where exactly would the UI benefit from "drawing lines"? I'd say the visual hierarchy is rather obvious.
I'll say more: most separators people use in their UIs are completely unnecessary. They should be used sporadically when you don't have a better way of segmenting the interface.
> No visual differentiation between sections of the UI, no clear indication of what's tappable and what will happen on a tap
What section of the UI are you referring to exactly? From the screenshots in their blog post it seems to me like the visual hierarchy is preserved and without using the app at least I can form an immediate expectation as to the function of each button. (And what is clickable and what isn't)
> no indication of scrollable areas beyond content being cut off
What type of indication would you like to see here? I think most users intuitively understand that visual cue. An always-on scrollbar would introduce unnecessary clutter..
zephiel7 | 9 hours ago
RicoElectrico | 8 hours ago
Scene_Cast2 | 8 hours ago
szszrk | 8 hours ago
radicality | 2 hours ago
cf100clunk | 8 hours ago
szszrk | 8 hours ago
I'm using that with 2.0 (or rather with F-droid Basic, but I noticed Basic was updated to the same that is described in article, but a while ago). It works just fine.
reddalo | 8 hours ago
outadoc | 8 hours ago
zb3 | 8 hours ago
No, this increases the overall complexity of the system. Android will hopefully eventually collapse under its own weight.
OutOfHere | 7 hours ago
renszarv | 8 hours ago
juiceland | 8 hours ago
demo4567 | 8 hours ago
someonebaggy | 6 hours ago
Aachen | 5 hours ago
mzajc | 8 hours ago
[0]: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/
lanfeust6 | 8 hours ago
tukunjil | 8 hours ago
Wicher | 8 hours ago
The Aurora project accepts donations, if you want to hurry things along some time! And they have a donation button right there in the app listing, try doing that for yourapp in the PlayStore and see who comes knocking in 3...2..1 to make you a non-person.
NoboruWataya | 8 hours ago
HeatrayEnjoyer | 5 hours ago
flexagoon | 5 hours ago
sandreas | 8 hours ago
Unfortunately there are APP providers actively preventing their apps to work on graphene OS, so i own an extra use@home cheap broken glass iphone for these mandatory but non-graphene apps.
It is a pain and it is getting worse... I'm really tempted to get back to the Apple ecosystem for less shens but currently i cannot do this yet... It just feels wrong but the pain is real. I'm Lösung the fight of investing too mich of my time in things that just should work.
drnick1 | 8 hours ago
rhamzeh | 8 hours ago
You lose all that if you go directly to source.
fghkjlhb | 6 hours ago
QuantumNomad_ | 8 hours ago
It is not my main device, nor even my secondary device. It’s basically just a device I bought for cheap hoping that maybe I was lucky and it was actually pretty snappy. It’s not snappy :(
I occasionally watch a couple of YouTube videos on it and read a couple of HN posts on it, when my phone is out of battery or when I’m doing a backup of my phone and have left the phone on the table for that.
Anyway, aside from YouTube the other apps I have installed on it myself are all from F-Droid, including the DuckDuckGo browser that I use on it. I also have Signal on it, which I don’t remember if I installed from F-Droid or from Google Play.
My main device that I actually use a lot is an iPhone. And like I said I basically only use the tablet like a couple of hours a week and only to watch a couple of YouTube videos and read a couple HN threads, when I am not able to use my phone for those things.
miloignis | 8 hours ago
silverbluep | 8 hours ago
I need banking and bunch of vendor related apps. I need play store for them; so not full on f-droid repos. But close-ish when it comes to phone functionality.
vrganj | 8 hours ago
If there's a good enough app on there, I generally stick with that as opposed to trying what Google Play has to offer.
I like having that prefiltering, knowing that the app will be open source, not trying to pull anything shady and not have ads or sell my data. On the Play Store, more often than not, at least one of those is not true.
rurp | 8 hours ago
fghkjlhb | 8 hours ago
Gander5739 | 7 hours ago
fghkjlhb | 6 hours ago
someonebaggy | 6 hours ago
This means you're definitely awake.
I'm being sarcastic.
tgsovlerkhgsel | 5 hours ago
The user experience was just too broken for too long to consider it usable (didn't support background updates for about two years after Google made it available, and generally just too much jank and random errors/failures). I might look into it the next time I'm setting up a device, but I think for the majority of apps I'll still go through the Play store - I don't trust F-Droid to be stable/reliable enough yet.
mzajc | 8 hours ago
This is a shame. Is the privileged extension a large maintenance burden?
NewJazz | 8 hours ago
hexagonwin | 6 hours ago
izacus | 5 hours ago
NewJazz | 4 hours ago
someonebaggy | 6 hours ago
izacus | 5 hours ago
F-Droid took until now to use those APIs.
eighthave | 4 hours ago
silverbluep | 8 hours ago
PorciiVorbesc | 8 hours ago
After 10 years of F-droid, I'm bummed I only found droid-ify a couple of months ago. Sooo much better than F-droid.
TutleCpt | 7 hours ago
arcanemachiner | 6 hours ago
PhageGenerator | 6 hours ago
mayli | 3 hours ago
BaardFigur | 6 hours ago
dizhn | 5 hours ago
eighthave | 5 hours ago
epihelix | 3 hours ago
The old f-droid client made selecting app updates easy. With both v2 and droid-ify, you have to click through for each app. Not a great interface decision :( Why do updates always dumb interfaces down these days?
aorth | 8 hours ago
pkal | 8 hours ago
asdfqwertzxcv | 8 hours ago
Aachen | 5 hours ago
asdfqwertzxcv | 4 hours ago
s2l | 7 hours ago
fghkjlhb | 6 hours ago
And if you see anything is missing, you can always add it!
szszrk | 8 hours ago
I tried it with 3 random apps for a while, but instantly got into issues. Two stopped updating due to Obtanium falling behind how app releases - for instance, developer changed version numbering scheme but Obtanium didn't expect that, so an outdated version was always presented. It wasn't fixed for quite a while.
aorth | 7 hours ago
Gander5739 | 7 hours ago
zeandcode | 8 hours ago
lanfeust6 | 8 hours ago
asdfqwertzxcv | 8 hours ago
fghkjlhb | 8 hours ago
Then I discovered https://apps.obtainium.imranr.dev/ which makes it very easy. I feel like Obtainium should make this more obvious. It would help adoption a lot.
OutOfHere | 8 hours ago
fghkjlhb | 6 hours ago
yjftsjthsd-h | 8 hours ago
greeniskool | 8 hours ago
A few days passed, and I eventually get a notification from NewPipe prompting for an update. But I can't install it just yet, because of mismatching signatures between the F-Droid and GitHub versions (yes, that's the point, I know...). The F-Droid build took so long to release, that in the meantime, another version of NewPipe came out...
yjftsjthsd-h | 7 hours ago
deng | 7 hours ago
https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/install-add-fdroid-repo/
yjftsjthsd-h | 7 hours ago
amlib | 7 hours ago
It would perhaps be nice if yt-dlp could eject it's youtube api handling into it's own project that is then augmented to handle anything youtube related and turns into THE library for dealing with youtube.. maybe even call it libyt :)
mintplant | 6 hours ago
autoexec | 5 hours ago
flexagoon | 5 hours ago
lawn | 7 hours ago
eighthave | 5 hours ago
Lammy | 4 hours ago
cyberax | 8 hours ago
zaik | 7 hours ago
cyberax | 6 hours ago
Aachen | 5 hours ago
First hit for 'check http headers', in case that helps find out why websites think you want Chinese content. Maybe it's a bug in the website; maybe it's set as your first preference. Please report the bug if there is one!
cyberax | 4 hours ago
I have no idea why it selected Mandarin. I can switch back to English by using the "desktop site" feature that _does_ have a language dropdown.
jjice | 8 hours ago
pritambaral | 8 hours ago
trinsic2 | 8 hours ago
wongarsu | 7 hours ago
OroPla | 6 hours ago
autoexec | 6 hours ago
Google's own Play Store is filled with outright malware too, no ads needed. The idea that Google has to control what people are allowed to install on their phones isn't really for the protection of anyone except Google.
McDyver | 7 hours ago
That newspeak term should just disappeared. It only contributes to the image that downloading and installing an app is something that is outside the "happy path". Installing software of your choice on a device you own shouldn't be demonised
ragequittah | 7 hours ago
Those of us who want to can easily bypass it. My mom who doesn't know what she's doing and gets a phishing email with a fancy apk attached should probably have a hard time using it.
catlikesshrimp | 6 hours ago
g-b-r | 6 hours ago
That device was called personal computer for decades, and the world didn't end for the simplicity of installing software on it.
charcircuit | 6 hours ago
The "personal computer" has a terrible track record.
g-b-r | 6 hours ago
charcircuit | 6 hours ago
g-b-r | 4 hours ago
The Play Store's scanning is very far from perfect, and the amount of crap that's on it, combined with the trust that people have towards it, and apps' unfettered access to internet, makes malicious software easily more common than on PCs.
Even without considering as malicious the enormous data collection that almost everything on the Play Store does, encouraged by Google
krzyk | 6 hours ago
It doesn't mean one can't buy nice things because one is afraid of being robbed.
charcircuit | 5 hours ago
Vrondi | 5 hours ago
Vrondi | 5 hours ago
charcircuit | 3 hours ago
Society didn't ban doing it, but put up barriers that help the average person from doing something dangerous.
g-b-r | 11 minutes ago
I think the pumps still fit where I live, btw
dogmatism | 2 hours ago
JumpCrisscross | 4 hours ago
To be fair, mobile phones being locked down probably contributed to the mass adoption of e.g. mobile payments and banking.
g-b-r | 4 hours ago
The move to apps made things more difficult, if anything
JumpCrisscross | an hour ago
g-b-r | an hour ago
And they used an actually secure OTP dongle, eventually ditched by most banks because, yeah SMS codes and apps are safer............
It's now that a lot of people can't use any remote banking, because their bank's app is huge or refuses to run on their phone.
bluebarbet | 2 hours ago
g-b-r | 16 minutes ago
Today people get in debt to have the latest orange iPhone, for a long time before that most people in, ok, developed countries somehow got hold of a computer.
Maybe with less brain cells burned by
OroPla | 6 hours ago
I'd see it the other way around and say that a device running an operating system controlled by some company shouldn't hold your entire life, bank info, photos, etc.
casualscience | an hour ago
paulryanrogers | an hour ago
Without regulation markets coalesce as the winners eat each other like a game of snake. It's a miracle Apple hasn't yet eliminated Android. Although I suppose for some institutions there is only iPhone.
krzyk | 6 hours ago
Blocking apps is like blocking buying of knifes because one can hurt themselves.
halostatue | 6 hours ago
There's not an easy answer, but the non-answer of "people just need to be educated" is trivially dismissed.
Aachen | 5 hours ago
wizzwizz4 | 3 hours ago
ragequittah | 2 hours ago
"Everyone should just be smarter/more educated" is what I used to think as well. I now fully understand some people have no desire to be educated in any way and it's a net good for society to not have a large % of devices compromised.
LtWorf | 2 hours ago
The logical conclusion is that fdroid should be allowed and google play banned by default.
dogmatism | 2 hours ago
Now my in-laws (similar age) one very demented, the other thinks he knows best because he was a chemical engineer...they could use some built in protections
so ultimately I think some default level of "guardrail" is appropriate, but it should have a not too burdensome escape hatch
ragequittah | 2 hours ago
Which is really exactly what google is implementing here and why I'm so perplexed so many people are upset. You or I or smart parents (my mother has never used a computer in her life and wouldn't want to) will have absolutely no issue sideloading apps after the proposed changes.
folkrav | an hour ago
bigstrat2003 | 10 minutes ago
folkrav | 6 hours ago
rom1v | 7 hours ago
aquariusDue | 6 hours ago
OutOfHere | 8 hours ago
Irrespective, people should probably be migrating to a GrapheneOS or similar OS asap once the OS ships with a device.
jjice | 7 hours ago
Brian_K_White | 7 hours ago
autoexec | 5 hours ago
rurban | 7 hours ago
tazjin | 7 hours ago
microtonal | 6 hours ago
g-b-r | 6 hours ago
There are occasional good deals for (unused) older models on eBay, but they're surprisingly rare.
I wonder if Google demands stores to give the old models back, after the release of newer ones; they disappear from every store extremely quickly.
OroPla | 6 hours ago
someonebaggy | 6 hours ago
ghetsisharmonia | 6 hours ago
drnick1 | 3 hours ago
dogmatism | 2 hours ago
flexagoon | 5 hours ago
russelg | 33 minutes ago
rdsubhas | 7 hours ago
someonebaggy | 6 hours ago
Elfener | 5 hours ago
burningChrome | 7 hours ago
In short, google has referred to this as "increased user friction" to try and deter people from doing this. Essentially not making it impossible; just really frustrating for users so they get sick of the process and just install verified apps through them.
The only way I know around this is to install a custom rom like GrapheneOS or Lineage OS since this change targets Because the policy targets the Google Mobile Services (GMS) framework rather than the foundational Android Open Source Project (AOSP).
iamjackg | 6 hours ago
izacus | 3 hours ago
krzyk | 6 hours ago
LtWorf | an hour ago
creatonez | 6 hours ago
reddalo | 5 hours ago
Knowing Google, that's a big assumption
someonebaggy | 6 hours ago
drnick1 | 5 hours ago
epihelix | 3 hours ago
magnat | 8 hours ago
echelon | 8 hours ago
The answer to freedom isn't another marketplace. It's legislation that requires Google and Apple to allow web installs without scare walls or deeply hidden permission toggles.
You should be able to just download an app. And Grandma should be able to do it.
There's nothing insecure about it in a world of sandboxing, permissions, scanning, blacklisting, etc. When the tech giants are more than happy to sell ads to malware, you know their "safety" stance is just economic moat protectionism.
---
Edit because of rate limits:
This is not derogatory. This is making the point that the wrong battle is being fought. F-droid fans are cheering a small victory, yet losing the entire war.
F-droid does not matter in the grand scheme of things. It's not the point. The point is the app store monopoly. That there are only two platforms and that both are almost completely locked down.
F-droid users don't even see that Google is purposefully allowing this as an antitrust sponge in their calculus. Google doesn't mind because 0.0001% of their users will install this. If they had a sense that the regulators wouldn't bother them, they'd just as well close this loophole. And they probably will eventually.
This isn't beachhead, and even if it was, it isn't sound footing or a stable foundation. It can easily go away.
rpdillon | 8 hours ago
This seems weirdly derogatory towards people that use F-Droid.
nazgulsenpai | 8 hours ago
rpdillon | 6 hours ago
> put up with wasting hours of time for "altruism".
at all. I feel like I install apps from the store, and use them. So I'm confused by both "hours of time" and "altruism".
yjftsjthsd-h | 8 hours ago
What? I'm not sure how you would manage to waste hours installing a single app and then using it to install other apps, and I'm not using it because of "altruism" (what does that even mean?), I'm using it because it's the best way to get apps.
> You should be able to just download an app. And Grandma should be able to do it.
> There's nothing insecure about it in a world of sandboxing, permissions, scanning, blacklisting, etc. When the tech giants are more than happy to sell ads to malware, you know their "safety" stance is just economic moat protectionism.
Even if you 100% trust Android's sandboxing and permissions, which is... not a choice I would personally make, I like it when my apps don't have scams or ads internally, either. I'm not worried about Grandma downloading any app off F-Droid; I am a little concerned about what happens if she can download any app being pushed by any random website.
OutOfHere | 8 hours ago
Google has for years censored app reviews anyway on its Play Store, and also allowed too many low-value reviews which drown out useful reviews.
Velocifyer | 7 hours ago
rom1v | 8 hours ago
yjftsjthsd-h | 8 hours ago
prima-facie | 8 hours ago
eighthave | 5 hours ago
imzadi | 8 hours ago
Telaneo | 8 hours ago
kmarc | 7 hours ago
Even greater HN conversation about all the to-me-unknown alternatives. I used neostore as a replacement, but maybe time to try f-Droid again
aargh_aargh | 7 hours ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20260924152713/https://f-droid.o...
Thev00d00 | 7 hours ago
temphaaa | 7 hours ago
wingmanjd | 7 hours ago
[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.koreader.launcher.fdroid...
ossusermivami | 7 hours ago
fn-mote | 6 hours ago
OptionX | 7 hours ago
kungp | 2 hours ago
sporedro | 7 hours ago
Once your used to it, the controls are a lot better than stock kindle as well imo.
archole | 7 hours ago
https://github.com/Aryan-Raj3112/episteme
tukunjil | 5 hours ago
brnt | 7 hours ago
asnelt | 5 hours ago
AdManusMedici | 7 hours ago
andrepd | 6 hours ago
aaronax | 6 hours ago
luqtas | 5 hours ago
wilsonnb3 | 3 hours ago
The only options are stripping the DRM from kobo books or piracy, last I checked.
antinomicus | 3 hours ago
sfRattan | 2 hours ago
If you want a cross platform option that's pretty good across Android/iOS/Mac/Windows/Linux, Readest[1] Is another great option. It supports syncing a library of ebooks and is licensed under the AGPL[2].
[1]: https://readest.com/
[2]: https://github.com/readest/readest
1317 | 2 hours ago
dogmatism | 2 hours ago
parisiansam | 7 hours ago
someonebaggy | 6 hours ago
amiantos | 4 hours ago
sharktheone | 7 hours ago
97laos | 7 hours ago
mightysashiman | 6 hours ago
someonebaggy | 6 hours ago
eighthave | 4 hours ago
Could you explain? I don't understand what you mean here. https://f-droid.org/F-Droid.apk is signed by the same key that signs https://f-droid.org/repo/entry.jar
1970-01-01 | 6 hours ago
AdmiralAsshat | 6 hours ago
NewJazz | 6 hours ago
opan | 2 hours ago
tukunjil | 6 hours ago
I heard of fdriod but what I think it may only serves feature less, low UI/UX optimized apps. So didn't installed it yet. But something should be available where people can find all Play store apps (as aurora supplies) + premium/adsense deleted modified apps (random website) + Open source apps (fdroid)…… this will make android insane
comex | 5 hours ago
katzenq | 5 hours ago
tripleee | 4 hours ago
frereubu | 3 hours ago
bluebarbet | 2 hours ago
crabette | an hour ago
tadfisher | 5 hours ago
erikus | 3 hours ago
https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/compose/text/style-...
izacus | 2 hours ago
phinnaeus | 49 minutes ago
> Should be a default
Meaning the developer should opt-in to this explicitly but choose it as the default option. The actual default is no strategy at all.
meta-level | 4 hours ago
mayli | 3 hours ago
Flere-Imsaho | 3 hours ago
warkdarrior | 3 hours ago
AshleyGrant | 2 hours ago
hobo123 | 5 hours ago
Still, excited for when it'll be ready.
Muhammad523 | 5 hours ago
lutoma | 5 hours ago
pkulak | 4 hours ago
haha, I kid. I... kid. :(
jazzabeanie | 4 hours ago
henearkr | 4 hours ago
Am I missing something stupid?
Lammy | 4 hours ago
luoc | 3 hours ago
henearkr | 3 hours ago
amiga386 | 4 hours ago
- go to F-Droid -> Updates. "Congratulations! Your apps are up to date."
- refresh the repositories. "Congratulations! Your apps are up to date."
- search directly for f-droid in apps. "This app was built for an older version of Android and cannot be updated automatically."
*facepalm* never change, F-Droid. You might not be able to automatically update the app because of Android API restrictions, but there's no reason your app can't tell me it knows there's an updated version I could be asked to apply manually, is there?
EDIT: it still says version 1.23.2 is "Suggested" even when 2.0 is installed. Perhaps this is a reason? Nonetheless, there's no setting to choose a different version policy, i.e. install 2.0 because it's newer, even if not "Suggested"
What does "Suggested" even mean? According to https://forum.f-droid.org/t/how-does-f-droid-suggest-a-versi... it's set manually by the person maintaining the metadata, which makes it even more of a facepalm if F-Droid are announcing 2.0 on their homepage but nobody set CurrenVersion=2.0 in their own metadata.
luoc | 3 hours ago
warkdarrior | 2 hours ago
Dwedit | 3 hours ago
einpoklum | 2 hours ago
2. Please donate a few EUR/bucks to F-Droid! It's a good place to get Android apps from, and we can't all just mooch off of it. Doesn't have to be a big donation.
3. I am worried that Alpahbet/Google will kill these "unauthorized" apps soon, so that the new version arriving would be kind of bittersweet. Although - maybe I'll just need to switch to LineageOS or something.
1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2 hours ago
Why not download source, review, (edit) and compile on the device, e.g., using Termux, Gradle and Android cmdline-tools
Is "convenience" the rationale for the F-Droid app
Maybe it's the same rationale that drives Linux users toward "binary package managers"
NoahZuniga | 2 hours ago
epenn | 2 hours ago
opan | 2 hours ago
idle_zealot | 2 hours ago
doginasuit | an hour ago
idle_zealot | an hour ago
janilowski | an hour ago
jjnoakes | 30 minutes ago
stavros | 23 minutes ago
janilowski | an hour ago
Where exactly would the UI benefit from "drawing lines"? I'd say the visual hierarchy is rather obvious.
I'll say more: most separators people use in their UIs are completely unnecessary. They should be used sporadically when you don't have a better way of segmenting the interface.
> No visual differentiation between sections of the UI, no clear indication of what's tappable and what will happen on a tap
What section of the UI are you referring to exactly? From the screenshots in their blog post it seems to me like the visual hierarchy is preserved and without using the app at least I can form an immediate expectation as to the function of each button. (And what is clickable and what isn't)
> no indication of scrollable areas beyond content being cut off
What type of indication would you like to see here? I think most users intuitively understand that visual cue. An always-on scrollbar would introduce unnecessary clutter..
nout | an hour ago
linuxhansl | an hour ago
One of the reasons I went with Android over an iPhone. If F-Droid stops working I am done with Android.
tcfhgj | 56 minutes ago
mococa | 16 minutes ago