F-Droid (FOSS Android App Store)

Site Development Tool Suggestions
36

We only recommend F-Droid as a way to obtain apps which cannot be obtained via the means above.

This sentence makes F-Droid look like the last resort option and the worst one out of all the recommendations, and I highly disagree with that.

Aurora Store:

  • Is unreliable and constantly breaks.

  • Is buggy and doesn’t have good UX.

  • Is completely reliant on Google, and Google could pull the plug at any moment, which would render Aurora Store unusable.

  • Play App Signing.

  • Some apps check if they’re installed from Play Store, and if they aren’t, they will not work.

  • Services like Play Asset Delivery, Play Feature Delivery and app / content license checks aren’t available.

  • A lot of data gets sent to Google, like your IP adress, your device model, your app list, etc.

GrapheneOS App Store: barely has any apps.

Obtainium: F-Droid (FOSS Android App Store) - #32 by Lukas

So what makes these better than F-Droid?

Highly important edit: if you use Aurora Store, there is a high chance that your apps will come with some proprietary libraries, and some functionality of the apps, like notifications, will depend on Google Play Services.

For example, if you get an app from Aurora Store, it will rely on Google Play Services for notifications, but the F-Droid build will have a different FOSS implementation.

Also, some apps come with Google Maps integration when downloaded from Play Store and OpenStreetMaps implementation when they’re downloaded from F-Droid, etc.

4 Likes