GNU and Privacy Apps (Android)
Some of the android apps that I use which are either under GNU GPL licences or is respecting users privacy
The F-Droid Repository is an easily-installable catalogue of free and open source apps for Android. With F-Droid, it's easy to browse and install apps on your device, and keep track of updates. You can also browse the repository with a web browser, and download the app directly from there, if you can’t or don’t want to run the F-Droid client on your device.
All applications in the default repository must be Free and Open Source software – for example, released under a GPL or Apache license. Every effort is made to verify that this is actually the case, both by visual inspection of the source, and by building the application from the published source.
Software that reports user activity without permission (e.g. via Google Analytics) or tracks user behaviour (e.g. most advertising platforms) is specifically excluded from FDroid’s own repository, as is software with the primary purpose of interacting with a non-Free network service. You are, of course, free to set up your own repository for this kind of software – the server source is available, and the client will allow addition or removal of repositories as you see fit.
F-Droid originated as a fork of Aptoide. F-Droid can be installed from its website or from within Aptoide, but it is not available for download in Google Market.
Ready to go. Termux works directly with no rooting or setup required. At first start a minimal base system is installed automatically - you decide what to do next.
Powerful. Combine the flexibility and power of command-line tools - monitor multiple remote servers over SSH by tailing log files in tmux, sync dotfiles with git and encrypt secrets with gpg.
Feature packed. Take your pick between bash or zsh and nano or vim. Grep through your SMS inbox and use curl to upload backups of your contact list into the cloud.
Customizable. Install what you want through the Apt package management system known from Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux, which also takes care of keeping installed packages updated.
Explore. Have you ever sat on a bus and thought about exactly which arguments tar accepts? Packages available in Termux are the same as those on Mac and Linux - install man pages on your phone and read them in one session while experimenting with them in another.
Batteries included. Can you imagine a more powerful yet elegant pocket calculator than a readline-powered python console? Up-to-date versions of perl, python, ruby and node.js are all available.
Scale up. Connect a bluetooth keyboard and hook up your device to an external display if you need to - Termux supports keyboard shortcuts and has full mouse support.
Develop. Develop by compiling C files with clang or gcc and build your own projects with makefiles or cmake. Both gdb and strace are available if you get stuck and need to debug.
Browser using the Gecko layout engine to render web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards. Fennec F-Droid is based on the latest Firefox release (codenamed Fenix). It's focused on removing any proprietary bits found in official Mozilla's builds. There might still be some binaries left and the app (or some builds) might get removed or re-pushed anytime.
The Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access sites which are blocked.
The Tor Browser lets you use Tor on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux without needing to install any software. It can run off a USB flash drive, comes with a pre-configured web browser to protect your anonymity, and is self-contained.
OsmAnd is a map and navigation application with access to the free, worldwide, and high-quality OpenStreetMap data. Enjoy voice and optical navigator, viewing POIs (points of interest), creating and managing GPX tracks, using contour lines visualization and altitude info (through plugin), a choice between driving, cycling, pedestrian modes, OSM editing and much more.
Navigation • Works online (fast) or offline (no roaming charges when you are abroad) • Turn-by-turn voice guidance (recorded and synthesized voices) • Optional lane guidance, street name display, and estimated time of arrival • Supports intermediate points on your itinerary • Automatic re-routing whenever you deviate from the route • Search for places by address, by type (e.g.: restaurant, hotel, gas station, museum), or by geographical coordinates
Map Viewing • Display your position and orientation • Optionally align the picture according to compass or your direction of motion • Save your most important places as Favorites • Display POIs (point of interests) around you • Display specialized online tiles, satellite view (from Bing), different overlays like touring/navigation GPX tracks and additional layers with customizable transparency • Optionally display place names in English, local, or phonetic spelling
OSM Data • High-quality information from the best collaborative projects of the world • OSM data available per country or region • Compact offline vector maps updated at least once a month
Safety Features • Optional automated day/night view switching • Optional speed limit display, with reminder if you exceed it • Optional speed-dependent zooming • Share your location so that your friends can find you
RedReader - An unofficial open source Reddit client for Android.
OpenStreetMap is a project aimed squarely at creating and providing free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them. It is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you. It allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.
Orbot is a freely licensed open-source application developed for the Android platform. It acts as a front-end to the Tor binary application, and also provides an HTTP Proxy for connecting web browsers and other HTTP client applications into the Tor SOCKS interface.
Orbot is a component of the Guardian Project, an effort to develop a secure, anonymous smartphone for use by human rights activists, journalists and others around the world. Learn more: https://guardianproject.info/
Tor protects your privacy on the internet by hiding the connection between your Internet address and the services you use. We believe Tor is reasonably secure, but please ensure you read the instructions and configure it properly. Learn more at https://torproject.org/
Tor Frequently Asked Questions: https://support.torproject.org/faq/
A free and open source alternative Twitter front-end focused on privacy. Inspired by the invidio.us project.
- No JavaScript or ads
- All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Twitter
- Prevents Twitter from tracking your IP or JavaScript fingerprint
- Unofficial API (no rate limits or developer account required)
- AGPLv3 licensed, no proprietary instances permitted
- Dark theme
- Lightweight (for @nim_lang, 36KB vs 580KB from twitter.com)
We are a free and open-source platform to launch your digital brand, social network and mobile app. We are also a social network ourselves. It is a global social network of social networks. Available in either decentralized or centralized options. Meaning its source code is available publicly for reviews and contributions.
• Really free speech. Zero censorship. One of the co-founder Bill Ottman is an information activist. • Blogs, Channel, Groups, Videos • Monetizing options. Such as monthly support which allow users to financially support you monthly to see your monetized posts. Such as Blog posts or almost any other types of posts can be monetized by clicking the dollar icon in the status field before posting. Another option to monetize is the Ad Sharing program. Users can use real money to buy you Minds points. • For all monetizing options, users can pay you using cash, Bitcoin, credit cards, using Swipe.com services • Exchange points for increased views with "Boost". It's peer-to-peer advertising. • Have private, encrypted chats with friends and colleagues • Purchase or earn points for voting, commenting, uploading, swiping • Find people and brands in your local area with geo-location based results • Swipe to vote on content and subscribe to channels • Match with other minds by mutually subscribing in order to chat • Share status updates, photos and videos • Reach 100% of your subscribers • Curate a news feed • Search for amazing media • See what's trending in the world • Share to your other social networks • The world's first free and open-source social network mobile app
Create notes and manage your to-do list using simple markup formats Work completely offline - whenever, wherever Compatible with any other plaintext software on any platform – edit with notepad or vim, filter with grep, convert to PDF or create a zip archive
Syntax Highlighting and format related actions – quick insert pictures and to-do Convert, preview, and share documents as HTML and PDF
Notebook: Store all documents on a common filesystem folder QuickNote: Fast accessible for keeping notes ?? To-Do: Write down your to-do LinkBox: Share pages to read later into bookmark list Markup formats: Markdown and todo.txt Copy to clipboard: Copy any text, including text shared into Markor Notebook is the root folder of documents and can be changed to any location on filesystem. LinkBox, QuickNote and ToDo are textfiles
Highly customizeable, dark theme available Auto-Save with options for undo/redo No ads or unnecessary permissions Language selection – use other language than on the system
Unlike other office suites (like LibreOffice) or to-do apps (like Wunderlist), Markor has one streamlined text editor with no other editing UI. Markor shows how powerful and expressive simple text can be. View, edit, manipulate and convert plaintext!
Markor works with sync apps, but they have to do syncing respectively. Sync clients known to work in combination include BitTorrent Sync, Dropbox, FolderSync, OwnCloud, NextCloud, Seafile, Syncthing, Syncopoli
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.gsantner.markor F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=net.gsantner.markor
Magisk Root is one of the latest and well known Android Rooting tool. Magisk is the first systemless root tool and allows you to install unsupported Apps for Rooted devices without unrooting.
K-9 is an open source email client for Android with multi-folder sync, email signatures, Bcc-to-self, return-address configuration, keyboard shortcuts, Exchange Support, message flagging, IMAP deletes, saving attachments, configurable notifications and more.
Kodi, formerly XBMC, is a free and open source media player and entertainment center for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, XBox, and iOS. Kodi is designed to be the perfect companion to a home theater PC - it supports an almost endless range of remote controls, and combined with its beautiful (and highly "skinnable") interface, Kodi feels very natural to use from the couch.
Currently Kodi can be used to play almost all popular audio and video formats around. It was designed for network playback, so you can stream your multimedia from anywhere in the house or directly from the Internet using practically any protocol available.
INSTEAD – interpreter of simple text adventures for Unix and Windows!
Are you missing the key layout you're used to from your computer when using an Android device? This software keyboard has separate number keys, punctuation in the usual places, and arrow keys. It is based on the AOSP Gingerbread soft keyboard, so it supports multitouch for the modifier keys.
This keyboard is especially useful if you use ConnectBot for SSH access. It provides working Tab/Ctrl/Esc keys, and the arrow keys are essential for devices such as the Xoom tablet or Nexus S that don't have a trackball or D-Pad.
The supported keyboard layouts include: Armenian, Arabic, British (en_GB), Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dvorak English (language "en-DV"), English (QWERTY), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew , Italian, Lao, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Russian phonetic (ru-rPH), Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian (Slovenšcina)/Bosnian/Croatian/Latin Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Ukrainian.
The free and open-sourced Authenticator replacement for 2FA in popular services.
This is based on the original FreeOTP.
It provides additional features:
- Back up the data to Google Drive or other storage
- Restore data from Google Drive or other storage
- Material design and updated UI.
- Android 6.0 on-demand permission support
- Android 6.0 backup support. After reinstalling, all your saved authentications will come back.
Wings for your Windows Explorer!
Clover is an extension of the Windows Explorer, to add multi-tab functionality similar to Google Chrome browser. After Clover is installed, you will be able to open multiple folders in tabs within the same window, and you can also be able to add folder bookmarks.
Note: If you're starting Clover with a bunch of previously opened tabs, so don't be hurry for some first seconds 'cause it can freeze. Also be aware to delete some files if you use Ctrl-D hothey for bookmarking a folder 'coz the same hotkey you can set for deleting without prompt if you unchecked "Show recycle confirmation" in Explorer (or Shift-Del).
Malware Warning Information: Exercise due diligence, but understand that the required behaviour of this application will trigger some anti-malware engines which look for suspicious behavior, such as tampering with Windows Explorer. You may see warnings on this site or from your own software. Review them, but watch for 'trojan.generic' or 'gen.trojan.heuristic' types of identifiers from antivirus engines, which denote that the file does not necessarily contain identifiable harmful code, but exhibits a potentially unwanted behaviour, which is expected and desirable in most cases. Understand however, that this doesn't mean this download cannot become unsafe, infected with real malware, like other software, so read the warnings from your scanning engines to be sure.
BusyBox is a single binary that provides several stripped-down Unix tools in a single executable. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, FreeBSD and others. It was specifically created for embedded operating systems with very limited resources. It has been self-dubbed "The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux". It includes clones of netcat, httpd, init, grep, a dhcp client/server, tar, sh, ash, awk, cat, and many more utilities.
Bitwarden is the easiest and safest way to store all of your logins and passwords while conveniently keeping them synced between all of your devices.
Password theft is a serious problem. The websites and apps that you use are under attack every day. Security breaches occur and your passwords are stolen. When you reuse the same passwords across apps and websites hackers can easily access your email, bank, and other important accounts.
Security experts recommend that you use a different, randomly generated password for every account that you create. But how do you manage all those passwords? Bitwarden makes it easy for you to create, store, and access your passwords.
Bitwarden stores all of your logins in an encrypted vault that syncs across all of your devices. Since it's fully encrypted before it ever leaves your device, only you have access to your data. Not even the team at Bitwarden can read your data, even if we wanted to. Your data is sealed with AES-256 bit encryption, salted hashing, and PBKDF2 SHA-256.
Bitwarden is 100% open source software. The source code for Bitwarden is hosted on GitHub and everyone is free to review, audit, and contribute to the Bitwarden codebase.
AntennaPod gives you access to millions of free and paid podcasts, from independent podcasters to large publishing houses such as the BBC, NPR and CNN. Add, import and export their feeds hassle-free using the iTunes podcast database, OPML files or simple RSS URLs. Save effort, battery power and mobile data usage with powerful automation controls for downloading episodes (filtering episodes, specify times, intervals and WiFi networks) and deleting episodes (based your favourites and delay settings).
But most importantly: Download, stream or queue episodes and enjoy them the way you like with adjustable playback speeds, chapter support and a sleep timer. You can even show your love to the content creators with our Flattr integration.
Made by podcast-enthousiast, AntennaPod is free in all senses of the word: open source, no costs, no ads.
All features:
IMPORT, ORGANIZE AND PLAY • Add and import feeds via the iTunes and gPodder.net directories, OPML files and RSS or Atom links • Manage playback from anywhere: homescreen widget, system notification and earplug and bluetooth controls • Enjoy listening your way with adjustable playback speed, chapter support, remembered playback position and an advanced sleep timer • Access password-protected feeds and episodes • Take advantage of paged feeds (www.podlove.org/paged-feeds)
KEEP TRACK, SHARE & APPRECIATE • Mark episodes as favourite • Share episodes and feeds through advanced social media and email options, the gPodder.net services and via OPML export • Support content creators with Flattr integration including automatic flattring
CONTROL THE SYSTEM • Take control over automated downloading: choose feeds, exclude mobile networks, select specific WiFi networks, require the phone to be charging and set times or intervals • Manage storage by setting the amount of cached episodes, smart deletion and selecting your preferred download location • Back-up your subscriptions with the gPodder.net integration and OPML export
AnLinux allow you to run Linux on Android without root access. by using Termux and PRoot technology, you can even run SSH and Xfce4 Desktop Environment
Currently supported distro:
Ubuntu, Debian, Kali, Parrot Security OS, Fedora, CentOS, openSUSE Leap, openSUSE Tumberweed, Arch Linux, Black Arch
Currently supported Desktop Environment:
Xfce4, Mate, LXQt, LXDE
This app requires Termux to work.
AnLinux-Adfree can found on: https://f-droid.org/packages/exa.lnx.a/
An ad blocker that uses the hosts file. The hosts file contains a list of mappings between hostnames and IP addresses. When an app requests an ad, that request is directed to 127.0.0.1 which does nothing. There are options to run a web server to respond to blocked hostnames and to direct requests to the IP address of your choosing. You can automatically download hosts files from the app but it is possible to use your own and to add certain sites to the white- and black-lists.
Open Camera is an Open Source Camera app for Android phones and tablets. Features:
Option to auto-stabilise so your pictures are perfectly level no matter what. Expose your camera's functionality: support for focus modes, scene modes, color effects, white balance, ISO, exposure compensation/lock, face detection, torch. Video recording (supports all available resolutions including HD). Handy remote controls: timer (with optional voice countdown), auto-repeat mode (with configurable delay). Option to take photo remotely by making a noise (e.g., voice, whistle), or by voice command "cheese". Configurable volume keys. Optimise GUI for left or right-handed users. Zoom via multi-touch gesture and single-touch control. Ability to lock orientation to portrait or landscape for photo or video. Choice of save folder (including support for Lollipop's Storage Access Framework). Disable shutter sound. Overlay a choice of grids (including "rule of thirds") and crop guides. Optional GPS location tagging (geotagging) of photos and videos; for photos this includes compass direction (GPSImgDirection, GPSImgDirectionRef). Apply a date and timestamp, location coordinates, and custom text to photos; store date/time and location as video subtitles (.SRT). Yes you can take a selfie (also known as front camera), includes support for "screen flash". Support for (some) external microphones. Widget to automatically take a photo after launching. Support for Android 5 Camera2 API: manual focus distance; manual ISO; manual exposure time; RAW (DNG) files. Support for HDR and Exposure Bracketing (Camera2 only). Dynamic range optimisation mode for better quality photos. Small file size. Completely free, and no ads in the app. Open Source.
Material Design The user interface matches every single detail of the material design guidelines to ensure Phonograph is an eye candy for you. The experience is even better on devices running Android Lollipop and above.
Easy to Use No complicated or overblown menus but a familiar and clean interface.
Last.fm Integration Phonograph automatically downloads additional information about your artists such as their images or biographies. When you install the official Last.fm app, scrobbling will work right out of the box too.
Dynamic Colors The UI colors change dynamically to match the main contents base color.
Customizability There is an inbuilt theme engine with many different colors to choose from.
Tag Editor The tag editor allows you to easily edit the tags of your music files such as title, artist, album name (...) for single songs or whole albums. You can even either let Phonograph automatically download missing album covers for you (powered by Last.fm) or choose one from your internal storage.
And OF COURSE
- Phonograph has got all those standard features such as:
- Create and edit playlists
- Homescreen widget
- Lockscreen playback controls
- "Go-To Actions" such as jump from a song or an album right to its artist
- ...
Keep in mind that this is a beta, more features are coming soon
Ripple is a "panic button" that can send it's trigger message to any app that is a "panic responder". Such apps can do things like lock, disguise themselves, delete private data, send an emergency message, and more. It is meant for situations where there is time to react, but where users need to be sure it is not mistakenly set off.
Here are two example scenarios:
An organization gets regularly raided by the security forces, who search all of the computers and mobile devices on the premises. The organization usually has at least a minute or two of warning before a raid starts. They need a very reliable way to trigger wiping all of the data from the sensitive apps. An aid worker has lots of sensitive data about people on their device. They regularly sync that data up with a secure, central database. Occasionally, the aid worker has to leave the country on very short notice. The border guards regularly download the entire contents of mobile devices of people crossing through. While waiting in line at the border, the aid worker sees the border guards seizing people's devices, and then remembers all the data on the device, so she unlocks her phone and hits the wipe trigger, which wipes all sensitive apps from the device. When the aid worker returns to the central office, the device is again synced up with the central database.
Element is a Matrix-based end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) secure collaboration and messaging app.
It provides instant messaging, voice and video calls, screen sharing and file sharing; for 1:1s to huge chat rooms. It’s available to use across Web, Android, iOS, macOS, Windows & Linux.
Its decentralised design delivers digital sovereignty, enabling deployment on-premise or through any cloud provider.
Element Matrix Services (EMS) is the most popular SaaS for corporate use of Element. EMS provides fast performance and enterprise-grade add-ons.
Being Matrix-based, Element provides interoperability between traditional siloed apps. It can bridge into proprietary ‘walled garden’ systems such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and Discord to enable easy connections between different organisations.
End-to-end encryption is provided by default to keep users’ conversations and files safe. Cross-signed device verification uses QR codes or emoji comparisons to guard against imposters and eavesdropping.
Element is built on the Matrix.org open standard which provides bridges to other systems such as Slack, IRC and a lot more soon.
VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
Features
Simple, fast and powerful media player. Plays everything: Files, Discs, Webcams, Devices and Streams.
Plays most codecs with no codec packs needed: MPEG-2, DivX, H.264, MKV, WebM, WMV, MP3...
NewPipe is a lightweight YouTube front-end for Android.
It doesn't need the YouTube-API or any Google Play Services, as NewPipe only parses the YouTube website in order to gain the information it needs. Therefore this app can be used on devices without Google Services installed. Also, you don't need a YouTube account to use NewPipe, and it's FLOSS.
NewPipe Legacy (Android 4.1+) version available on website.
Features
• Search videos • Display general information about a video • Watch videos at resolutions up to 4K • Listen to audio in the background, only loading the audio stream to save data • Popup mode (floating player, aka Picture-in-Picture) • Watch live streams • Show/hide subtitles/closed captions • Search videos and audios (on YouTube, you can specify the content language as well) • Enqueue videos (and optionally save them as local playlists) • Show/hide general information about videos (such as description and tags) • Show/hide next/related videos • Show/hide comments • Search videos, audios, channels, playlists and albums • Browse videos and audios within a channel • Subscribe to channels (yes, without logging into any account!) • Get notifications about new videos from channels you're subscribed to • Create and edit channel groups (for easier browsing and management) • Browse video feeds generated from your channel groups • View and search your watch history • Search and watch playlists (these are remote playlists, which means they're fetched from the service you're browsing) • Create and edit local playlists (these are created and saved within the app, and have nothing to do with any service) • Download videos/audios/subtitles (closed captions) • Open in Kodi • Watch/Block age-restricted material
Supported Services
• YouTube & YouTube Music - one of the most popular video and live streaming platforms, including music, news, gaming and much more. Best supported out of the five. • PeerTube - a decentralized video platform. Any PeerTube instance can be added to NewPipe. • SoundCloud - a streaming platform for music. • Bandcamp - an artist-friendly platform for sharing music. It offers user-friendly DRM-free downloads. • media.ccc.de - the video archive and live streaming platform of the German hacker and information security activist group Chaos Computer Club.
Feeder is a fully free/libre feed reader. It supports all common feed formats, including JSONFeed. It doesn't track you. It doesn't require any setup. It doesn't even need you to create an account! Just setup your feeds, or import them from your old reader via OPML, then get on with syncing and reading.
Features
Parses HTML and displays it in a native TextView
Offline reading
Background synchronization
Notifications
OPML Import/Export
Handy access to enclosure links
Material design
Tachiyomi is a free and open-source manga reader for Android 6.0 and above.
Features include:
- Online reading from sources such as MangaDex, MangaSee, Mangakakalot, and more
- Local reading of downloaded manga
- A configurable reader with multiple viewers, reading directions and other settings.
- MyAnimeList, AniList, Kitsu, Shikimori, and Bangumi support
- Categories to organize your library
- Light and dark themes
- Schedule updating your library for new chapters
- Create backups locally to read offline or to your desired cloud service
Fedilab is a multifunctional Android client to access the distributed Fediverse, consisting of micro blogging, photo sharing and video hosting.
It supports:
- Mastodon, Pleroma, Peertube, GNU Social, Friendica.
The app has advanced features (especially for Pleroma and Mastodon):
- Multi-accounts support
- Schedule messages from the device
- Schedule boosts
- Bookmark messages
- Follow and interact with remote instances
- Timed mute accounts
- Cross-account actions with a long press
- Translation feature
- Art timelines
- Video timelines
Tired of seeing ads and promotions in your timeline, being disrupted by tweets from bots and people you don't like, or just want a pure Twitter experience back like the good old days? Try Twidere for Twitter!
Twidere is an open source, fully featured Twitter/Mastodon/StatusNet/Fanfou app.
Features
• 100% Material Design • Classic reply style w/ advantages of 140 characters reply • Restore 'Favorite' (?) instead of 'Like' (??) • Schedule tweets even when you're offline by Buffer • Tweet with photos, videos • Search & share GIFs by GIPHY • Powerful mute filters • Night mode • Multiple account support • Fully customizable tabs • Powerful custom API settings • Free*, open source, NO ads, forever!
*: A small amount of features requires in app payments to activate.
Linux CLI lets you use a custom, linux command line interface as your home screen.
FEATURES
• T-UI commands (like uninstall, open, sms and more) • Native Android/Linux commands • aliases, use your favourites commands faster • suggestions, to help you compose your commands • tuixt, in-app text editor • widely customizable launcher • CLI music playe • full Linux-like CLI interface
