Is there any proprietary Android app for which you wish there would be an open-source alternative?
Basically, what the title says. Do you use any app, that is proprietary, but either has no OSS alternatives or they're all not good enough? If there is an alternative, what keeps you from switching?
My banking app ಠ_ಠ
And mine. And probably everyone else's since the only banking app I can find on F-Droid is something called Varengold.
Not a chance lol but yeah they are a pain in the @ss with all their updates just way too many.
Bitwarden. Most people think that their application is open source, but more and more of their code has shifted from the GPL/AGPL licensed code to code in their SDK, which is under a proprietary license. This led to their new Android app being disqualified from being hosted in F-Droid repos.
Keyguard was supposed to be an open source Bitwarden client, but the dev chose to use a custom proprietary license, so that is source available as well.
Oh!! I didn't know that … :/
Well fuck me.
I've been a paying bitwarden customer for years but i through they were moving more towards free software and not away from it... Makes me consider quitting my subscription. Why do they do this?
Vaultwarden ?
Edit: Nvm, that's just the server part
That's actually a good point too: Vaultwarden is fully open source. The official Bitwarden server also has proprietary components.
Just yesterday I deployed it locally, and was about to migrate from my keepasDX (+syncthing)...
Don't get me wrong: BW is still a pretty good service, and the proprietary code is still readable by anyone, but the fact that they're moving a bunch of their previously open source licensed code to something that's source available is definitely unfortunate.
KeePass, on the other hand, has tons of actually open source clients, which definitely gives them an edge for people that don't mind syncing their own DB.
They are remaking all apps as native apps so maybe this problem gets addressed too.
Their new, native android app is also using more and more of their proprietary SDK. It's not something they're trying to fix.
thanks for getting the word out!
Makes me wish Proton had their own password manager.
Proton Pass is a thing mate take a look it might suit your needs
I don't know much about Proton. Isn't their back end proprietary though?
KeePassDxX on F-Droid it also has export function, bit awkward you could call it, but it's a functioning password storage tool that's using local storage with your export and import options like to a file or cloud I think as well never used that but think it's there? It may lack some of the features of say Bitwarden though because I have never used Bitwarden.
Pedantic, but Google Messages' RCS. And it's all Google's fault because they are holding the API hostage, probably because they want to create familiarity with the app so that people don't switch once they finally open up.
Not pedantic at all. Google lied about RCS being an open standard.
The pedantic point would be saying that RCS, the protocol, is technically open, but the specific implementation that Google is pushing and being adopted is proprietary 🤓
So yeah. Totally fair point and fuck Google for their RCS bait-and-switch.
For anyone wondering:
RCS
Rich Communication Services. It is a protocol designed to enhance traditional SMS. RCS allows users to send messages that can include high-resolution images, videos, audio messages, and group chats, as well as features like read receipts, typing indicators, and location sharing.
Not just that, but they are actively hostile and hypocritical about it. Every 1-3 months they prevent RCS from working on rooted phones or phones running alternate ROMs. The fact that they spent so much time complaining that Apple wouldn't comply with the "open" standard while limiting users' options on their own platform is very frustrating.
I'm glad Google is exposing how crappy RCS is.
It's been fifteen years, and all they have is a "protocol" that's still completely dependant on a phone number.
What good is that? Why would I want that?
There are numerous systems that don't rely on a phone number, e.g. XMPP did everything RCS is trying to do, in 2010 (I ran it on my phone then, with a desktop client that kept in sync).
Teleguard works on every platform, no phone number required, as does MATRIX, Simplex, Wire, Threema, etc, etc.
Not to mention the issues people have with it. It's unreliable.
RCS is not another chat app.
It's the NEW SMS. That is why it is so important, and that is why it works ONLY IF YOU HAVE A PHONE. Because that's literally the point.
Having your mom, grandpa, and everyone automatically use encrypted, modern comnunication just because they have a phone is extremely important.
Realise that in places where SMS has been historically free, SMS is the standard.
XMPP, Matrix or whatever will obviously still have its place for more "incognito" conversations. But having a phone number should also give you access to a better alternative than SMS.
Google Play Services
MicroG works really well
A free-as-in-freedom re-implementation of Google’s proprietary Android user space apps and libraries.
Dating apps.
We need an open source completely free dating app.
No paying for matches, no limits ...just they're in your town, you look at their photos, you can talk, anyone can block anyone.
I don't really care for online dating, but I remember coming across this. They claimed to be open source.
I'm with you, but see a million obstacles (aka. reasons for why things require payments).
You would need some form of moderation, to weed out illegal content as well as simply bots, spam, and dead profiles. Also for message content. I've given it some thought and suspect it can be crowd sourced to some degree, but also needs counter balances. Instead of limiting a profile to be live/banned, you could have a percentage score of peer-reported subjective legitimacy (ditto for message responses, heck you could even have a section of outright reviews of the person's behaviour - although that, again would be subject to abuse and moderation).
Hosting, traffic, etc. would be an unavoidable cost, but can be mitigated with low resolution photos (VGA should be "good enough" for an initial impression, no?)
For sure, an open source solution would offer way more fine grained filtering.
Great, but creating such an app would require someone to foot the bill for hosting user data, the web app and this can easily amount to quite a substantial sum. Not to mention that supporting this app would also be quite time consuming.
@DarkCloud create a Mastodon instance, write your instance rules, moderate. That's it. Plus you'll be connected to the whole fediverse, existing client apps will work.
A keyboard with swipe typing, multilingual autocorrect and speech to text support that actually works.
Other than that, my only proprietary apps are from commercial services I use and pay for (banking, Spotify, Carsharing and public transport). I'd love for them to become open source, but it's probably not ever gonna happen, cause they rely on verifying my identity.
I've had a good experience with HeliBoard
Japanese has been an open issue for months now, so it's a nope from me.
X2. I don't like it, but I still use that libswype Google blob to get swipe-writing. I wish they could produce their own in the future.
Have you tried openboard? Admittedly it doesn't the text to soeech
yes, tried it.
HeliBoard in combination with FUTO Voice Input is recommended. Unfortunately, the word prediction isn't too good.
@Kasupke are we recommending proprietary software here in the open-source lemmy community?
I'm not sure if this fits but here is mine:
I want to get away from Samsung but the "Sound Assistant" app let's me control the volume of every app, kind of like a mixer. Sometimes an app doesn't have a mute option, I can set the volume of that app to 0 without effecting the volume of whatever music I'm listening to.
I also like to listen to my local police scanner and music at the same time. I can set the volume of the scanner app low enough to not really bother the music but loud enough that if something happens I can still hear it and pause the music.
I can't believe Samsung and their app is the only way, but I haven't found an alternative.
My Motorola has it built into the sound settings so you should be able to find other alternatives
Good to know, thank you for the heads up.
I'm using audio changing Magisk mods on my phone, and recently stumbled upon an issue (already fixed by a setting) that made me realize that audio mods work on an app-by-app basis.
The reason I wanted to tell this is if you are fine with tweaking your phone a little, an audio mod could do what you need.
A quick search has shown me these:
This is something I've taken for granted as per app volume control is integrated into the OS on Motorola phones and I've been using mid range Motorolas since the Moto G 4 in 2016 (they offer a reasonable price, reasonable performance, microSD card and headphone jack).
Then I was setting up a Samsung tablet last weekend and was horrified to see I had to use the Samsung store to download Sound Assistant for something I had just assumed was a standard OS feature for close to a decade.
There are so many. By usage however:
Smart Audiobook Player: None of the apps I tried had all the features in one, like reading my complex audiobooks folder structure and auto grouping the books based on that. Timer to pause audiobook that is automatically reset by moving the phone.
Maps: No foss solutions work better where I live than GMaps
YTMusic: So this is a tough one to beat because of the nature of the platform itself.
Notes: I am looking for a P2P syncable note app that can also have a web interface or atleast a Linux version of the App. Allows drawing your notes on an android phone or tablet using stylus, and other usual features. Can also use cloud storage as a backup or sync source. I know this one is a really tall order.
I'll mention organic maps and rimusic.
There's a lot of FOSS music apps that just use YTMusic, like ViMusic or the ones other people mentioned in their replies. For maps, I use Organic Maps, the only thing I feel like is missing from it is traffic jams but I think you can see why that would be hard to add. It does have features that Google Maps doesn't have tho.
For ytmusic you can try innertune
Logseq and syncthing could work for your notes. Logseq has a whiteboard feature that can be used with a stylus, and syncthing is p2p.
I use audiobookshelf. You need to have some (self hosted or not) server to use the client, but I find that software incredibly well made.
Symfonium. There are plenty of music apps, and I've used a lot of them, but none combine the UX and functionality that Symfonium offers to anywhere near the same quality :/
I was so pissed the other day while pulling out of the driveway that my paid copy of Symfonium wouldn't work at all. It needed permission from daddy google to start but didn't have an internet connection at the moment. Fuck that shit I gave you my money!
Synfonium is the only thing that I could get to work with my selfs hosted jellyfin server and with downloading of music. I haven't had any problems with it though.
Tasker: I haven't used it, but I've seen useful automations over the years from people online and I would probably use a good FOSS alternative.
I use "Automation" (on fdroid) - the UX could do with some improving but it thoroughly covers the basics.
Newer versions of Android make it difficult to automate certain things though, I find root helps to get around that in some cases
I used to be a heavy Tasker user. I think I hit a wall with building more complex rules using their interface, which made me stop using it. Maybe they have a way to just write a script instead now, but I haven't looked into it.
There is something called auto clicker(?) Such is simpler but similar. It's on fdroid.
Honestly, Google Keep notes. Trilium server runs as a UWA on Android but it's pretty ass. And things like Obsidian are way too much for something me and my (non-technical) SO use to share notes
Quillpad. It looks and feels like Keep, but sync to nextcloud
X2. Great note-taking app.
Obsidian is not open source any way
Agreed. Plenty of notes apps; none with decent collaboration features.
Whatsapp. I know signal, simplex, matrix, (a billion other things), etc exist that are much better, but where I live, no one uses them, for context, basically everyone, like if you have a phone, you use whatsapp, some government things even happen through whatsapp bots, when people say the word message here, they mean whatsapp. There are about 20-30% (among younger folks) who use telegram, but that is mostly for easier piracy, and larger file sharing (before whatsapp allowed 2 GiB, now they do it habitually). My mom has about a 1000 contacts, and less than 10 of them actually use signal (there are many more who signed up(there was another thing, basically when elon said "just use signal"))
At this point it is not worth getting everyone to switch, the best i have done, is just reducing the number people i communicate with (on whatsapp), and try to just meet in person
I use Matrix with a WhatsApp bridge. Best of both worlds.
Is there any way i can host the whatsapp bridge but not the matrix instance itself, or something simpler. Even then, it does not really make my situation better. It would be adding one more layer between me and whatsapp, but not much more. As I understand, bridges help when you have multiple platforms, and you want to have one way to access them all, for me, only benefit would be the client would be free
I'm currently on holiday in Croatia and my car rental company, one apartment as well as one tour guide have communicated/provided info through WhatsApp.
signal has proprietary blobs, you want Molly-FOSS
I personally do not use them anything else now, i do have element installed, but when you have no one to talk to, you might as well write messages in a notepad
Nova launcher.
I Haven't found one that works so well with KLWP or has good app drawer organization. I like having folders and tabs to split everything up. Having one big list of apps (70% I dont use often and another 10% bloat) isn't useful.
I've used several launchers but there seems to be a halt developing them. For the most time, I used to use recently Neo Launcher, but it feels dated now, they are working on a rewrite and it's still beta (if not still alpha). Kvaesitso is a good launcher, but I'm too accustomed to the swipe up gesture to show apps and Kvaesitso just decided to make it upside down for me, and it feels odd even if you can change this to your preference. Finally, KISS launcher, which had halted development a bit but I find light and customizable enough. Not gonna lie here, as soon as Neo launcher gets to a stable state, I'm coming back.
Edit:
I wanted to mention a couple of killer features of KISS that you might probably like:
I recently switched launchers. Have you tried Kvaesitso? It's the best I've tried. It allows you to create categories in your app drawer, and organize that way. I've really been liking it.
Thank you for your suggestion.
Having just tried it, it is not for me. The categories is there, but having the search/app drawrr on the top won't work me, especially with these stupid large phone everyone makes. (I'm guessing theres a way to change it, but I didnt get that far)
The ultimate reason its not for me is how widgets are a scrolling thing. It's a different idea, but I like the widgets on my home screen where I can passively see them.
If there's a way to change that, I didnt see it. I didn't even find a way to get rid of the big clock at the bottom.
We need a NOVA replacement with how they've recently restructured the company. It looks like NOVA is getting squeezed for the last few cents they've got to offer by whom ever bought the company 1-2 years ago.
I've tried every other launcher I could find. In my opinion they all seemed to be minimalistic by design or they just lacked features.
fwiw lawnchair beta works absolutely fine for me, i guess it can't do anything fancy with the app drawer but like, that's why you have a home screen..
I tried, and tried to like it. We all work differently. I like widgets on the home screen, swipe up for apps. I guess it's the "start menu" mentality.
Same. I've been attempting to de-Google and stick with FOSS where possible, but only Lawnchair has come close to Nova Launcher, but it's not without its limitations like setting a primary home screen, and better widget padding and removing round corners.
I'm still experimenting with others, but many are no longer under active development either.
@FuryMaker @helpImTrappedOnline
nova launcher has been the last app without foss replacement for me until I found neolauncher.
Using the option 'categorize apps as tabs' I have the great drawer behavior as with Nova.
Though development is slow, you can get in contact with them on the matrix channel.
(Oh, just remembered that I still have one non foss app for my Yamaha receiver)
OpenCamera is good, but could do better. But I'd say video editing is the biggest void.
Also, gesture typing keyboards are an empty niche of foss alternatives. HelioBoard requires loading some proprietary blob unfortunately.
I guess the most heavy machine learning use cases are not filled in.
For gesture typing I use AnySoftKeyboard and it's quite ok. It has a lot of options that make it very convenient for me, despite it's reputation.
The FUTO keyboard has swipe tying, but it's not as fluid imo
Tasker, because there's no alternative.
MiXplorer (file manager), because even if not counting the features that should be a different app, it's much better than material files.
Tasker, because there's no alternative.
There are several automation apps in F-Droid, but I haven't tried any of them.
they're pretty basic compared to it, both in regards to triggers and actions
People have hit on most of them here, but here is another big one:
Fitness apps. Mainly calorie tracking, workout tracking and heart rate tracking
Health app
Sleep as Android
(No, gadget bridge is not a replacement for 99% of cases and doesn't even support the gold standard for heart rate tracking, polar H10)
For calorie tracking, the massive food databases required, barcode scanning, and crowd sourcing are generally not compatible with the open source community's privacy ideals. OpenNutriTracker has promise though!
For workout tracking, none of them have any device support and most of them are dead and abandoned. Not to mention heart rate zones, stats and training trends, etc... FitoTrack and Opentracks are good starts though.
And then a google fit alternative. Something that can integrate sleeping, workouts, heart rates, sensors, etc.. Data all in one aggregates place. It is a huge task and it makes sense that there is no open source alternative for it. Especially when the components aren't individually there to aggregate.
Sleep As Android is hands down the #1 app on my phone I cannot give up. It's THE reason I could never switch to Apple. I've gone beyond basic use and now have it automating things based on sleep actions and I kind of love it.
I was looking for Sleep As Android too!! Separately to this I saw a comment on R a while ago asking for FOSS alternatives, and to say the dev's response was out-of-touch would be an understatement. They just complained about not being able to make a living from a FOSS app...
Regarding Gadgetbridge though, those devs and contributors are running into more and more accessories using encrypted protocols which is a bit worrying. Right now I've settled on the BangleJS which has official support, just wish it had a more accurate heart rate sensor!
My dream FOSS health app would be some concoction of OpenScale and Gadgetbridge 😂
I hadn’t heard of opennutritracker before but it seems cool. Cleanslate is also good, and you can even self host it (although tbf I haven’t tried). Seems like people are working on the calorie tracking side of things!
Poweramp
There's nothing else out there that's really an equal, foss or not. The closest it gets is neutron, and that's a hot mess of an app.
It's the sound quality that's standout. It doesn't hurt that it's a decent player in every other way too, but even apps built for audiophiles don't match it in real use, in every situation.
None of the foss players are worth a damn sound wise; might as well use whatever comes with the device on that factor alone.
I can't say I've ever noticed any significant audio quality difference between this and something like Vinyl even on very good headphones.
But I would say that I've been trying to find equivalent equilizer functions that this app has on desktop. The bass boost function is the best one I've ever used. It even turned my very neutral etymotics er3se into solid thumpers.
The headphones, and any other gear, probably make some difference; I'm balling on a budget, with some tin t2s for iem, and beyer 770s (80 ohm) for cans, through a fiio DAC for the cheaper devices (but my main player is an old lg g7). Now and then I'll break out the portapros, and it's more prevalent since they tend to be a little muffled in the mids and highs no matter what they're plugged into.
But just the difference between something like gmmp, phonograph, musicolet, vanilla, etc, it can be a huge difference for me. Gmmp is decent, but there's static where there shouldn't be, and using the eq tends to distort on the low end even at low amounts of boost.
Can't recall if vinyl stood out from the rest of the pack or not, since it's been a couple of years since I did an extended comparison. All of the ones using the standard android audio processing were prone to some degree or another of mudiness to my ears. Some would get distorted playing through anything other than headphones, particularly with hip-hop and house tracks. That was with multiple aux cables, Bluetooth, and on multiple devices.
But, yeah, I would love it if max ported his eq app to other platforms.
I agree.
I try to use as much FOSS as I can, but nothing even comes close to Poweramp.
I love you can set eq per device. My phone speaker, headphones and car all have their own settings. Its fantastic.
Bank clients. Taxi aggregator clients.
I would like to find alternative to Garmin app. It is bad if you don't want to use the cloud features, also you can't plan routes without internet connection like wtf that's the only reason I bought it for.
you can't plan routes without internet
Oh fuck I hate that
Yes for the basic thing most people buy it and it is this fucked up. Also it uses Google maps, they are bit useless for cycling.
I have more mapping apps and all of them have offline planning.
I really need a libreoffice calc on my android phone. Not just opening (where currently only Microsoft Excel on Android works for me) but also editing and saving to my connected nextcloud (where I have also problems with Excel)
There already was a post like this this year but now my answer is "a standardized push notification system (most likely federated) that's actually possible to be implemented in a user friendly way". Google doesn't want to encrypt theirs afaik and apparently some people are concerned about the traditional "every app is responsible for its own notifications" approach consuming much more battery, even though I didn't notice it myself (I guess it's possible if you have 50+ apps installed but it's not something that should be a thing in the first place).
This ready exists. I forget what it's called.
Unified Push?
Basically every app that is related to a proprietary service. Amazon, Battle.net and Steam authenticators, banking apps, Spotify, etc.
FYI, you can replace Steam Guard. There is a plugin for Keepass that can generate Steam OTP codes and it's built in in KeepassXC (IIRC) and in KeepassDX on android.
for steam authenticator Aegis works too. For google's and microsoft's custom app too, and a bunch of others, even some non-standard ones
Android Auto
The default Samsung messages app. It allows custom backgrounds for each text conversation. All apps I find only allow custom colors, no custom wallpaper. Eben Google messenger had this feature... Then they took it out and replaced it with pre selected 'color themes'
I'm actually pretty happy to be using mostly FOSS apps. The exception are banking or services apps, which I'd never expect to be available as open source.
Strava, komoot and a calorie tracker that's actually decent
That one DAW for electronic music... The logo had a hexagon or something.. Caustic maybe?
Agree there are no decent daws no real actual one's on Android that are open source and or contain a loop library that's not like an infant made it, they are all primarily proprietary and pretty much a bag of t*rds so far except I hear for FruityLoops but it's expensive and still nothing comparitively to the PC version it's half a job. The only good free one is Garageband on IOS devices but again it's free to use but proprietary software made by Apple's Logic team I think. Android is looking like a complete idot on that front compared to Garageband versus any and all combined daws they have built for it so far in either/and/or open or closed source.
All these mouse cursor touchpad for big phones-apps. They seem pretty easy to do and are quite handy.
Termius
Not just Android, I want a cross-platform ssh client that shares keys. Termius is probably overkill for that, but I haven't found anything else that works on Linux and Android. The real issue that made me stop paying for it is that for rpm based Linux I have to use the snap version and snap is buggy as heck with multitasking.
I was in same boat, I ended up going with Tabby for my Linux clients.
It is by no means a like for like replacement BUT you can someshat backup and sync profiles and config across machines.
Is a huge shame it doesn't work on android though
Picsart. I'd like something that can do a bit of photo editing, adjust brightness/contrast/curves, work with layers, and conveniently slap together collages, but that doesn't interrupt me in between every other operation with an ad or a request to sign up for a subscription to the app.
Have you tried Image Toolbox? It might not tick all the boxes, but it's fairly good for me
Maybe Niagara Launcher, though I'm quite happy to pay the dev a bit of money (not required for most stuff actually, I only login on my phone)
Until recently I'd have said Symfonium for music playback from Jellyfin, but the Finamp beta gave me an OSS alternative.
Ideally banking apps, booking.com and TripAdvisor all had FOSS alternatives, but that's not realistic.
Some apps that I don't understand why no OSS exists:
And just for fun, here are some OSS apps that are better than any non-free alternative: SD Maid, Firefox/Fennec, Aurora Store (OSS front-end for a very proprietary Google store), RTranslator, Syncthing, OSS Document Scanner.
basic photo editor to crop, rotate, color correct, add text
There are so many of these it's not even funny, and yes FOSS ones. Same for video
Also Mull > Fennec and Mulch > Chromium
Great to hear! Can you name one for me?
Universal Copy and Network Signal Guru. former is used to copy on text which usually unable to copy. latter is used to modify some modem setting.
Fatmap. It was freemium, but now it's moving into Strava, who knows how much of it they'll hide behind subscriptions.
There's so many great FOSS maps, but I haven't seen any that give you the 3D view that Fatmap does. It's essentially Google Earth with overlays of routes for various activities.
All the Life360 alternatives are objectively worse and harder to use.
Two apps in particular:
Test me Anything*
I can't wake up
E: formatting
*You could create your own types of test (because sorry, not sorry, Anki sucks): Typing Practice, Multiple Choice, True/False, Fill-in-the-Blank, Matching, Short Answer.
I think that app dead now, but I'm sure there are similar apps on the Play store.
nzb360. Amazing app and a great developer but I still want a great FOSS alternative.