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?
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.
File Manager Plus:
It connects to all my SFTP servers effortlessly, and it’s an absolutely stellar file Manager.
JuiceSSH:
Manages all my SSH servers and identities, and has an extremely usable terminal. It’s got extensions too.
Try Material Files file manager. It’s the best file manager I’ve used, connects to remote servers, and is open source
Shazam (or equivalent)
Hi, thanks a lot, I’ll sure try them both!
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’
Strava, komoot and a calorie tracker that’s actually decent
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.
Obsidian
Logseq
logseq but without electron
That’s emacs with org-roam
ok, but on a smartphone, with touch screen?
Logseq is good but it doesn’t have all the obsidian features: it handles markdown a bit differently, does not just use the file tree and has no tags.
Ticktock
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 opensource 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 in either/and/or open or closed source.
Hmmm I do need a reason to learn rust… But a cross platform DAW feels like too big of a project for my level of disorganization 😹
Maybe I should try building ardour for android, it would be way easier to rebuild Ardour’s UI for mobile.
That was the one that came to mind while your at it maybe add a shortcut for extending a sound region to the full length of the track eg. Logic Pro X uses the L key for this I suspect it stands for Loop, but yeah would be awesome to have some ported daw that can also be used on Android TV OS for TV boxes like the Shield TV and these super powerful Rockchip RK3588 chipset TV OS boxes like the Mekotronics R58 mini and R58X range I have one, the idea would definitely work for those as they are powerful S series samsungs definitely to, mouse capability and keyboard for TV boxes obviously would have to be included as they don’t have touch screens.
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
Some apps that I don’t understand why no OSS exists:
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Teleprompter app that allows you to read a scrolling script while recording video
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basic photo editor to crop, rotate, color correct, add text
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basic video editor to crop, clip, and combine video
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visual voicemail
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
ImageToolbox can do almost everything you described.
basic video editor to crop, clip, and combine video
Have you tried Open Video Editor?
Image tool box doesn’t seem to be able to arbitrarily rotate or add text. Some nice features, though.
Open Video Editor doesn’t seem to be able to combine videos. I’m thinking something like CapCut, which allows combining photos, videos, and audio. It would be an ambitious project to be sure, but it seems like it should be doable.
Promising! HEIC/HEIF formats are still a challenge for this tool.
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?
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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?
I know about that but afaik almost nobody uses it. The only app I know that supports it is Mercurygram which is a Telegram client.
How does Element and Signal implement push notifications?
Idk about Element but Signal uses the Google’s insecure implementation if the device has gapps installed and it uses the traditional system which is not push if gapps are not installed.
Ah okay, thanks for the insight. I don’t have Gapps (MicroG or otherwise), so I do wonder how these services deliver their notifications.
If it’s not using GCM then it must be long polling, unless signal servers are set up to use a 3rd form of push (APNS for iOS, GCM for Android)
Molly (a hardened Signal mobile client fork) has a UnifiedPush version.
I was just thinking, how does one stop signal from sending the notifications to google, when moving to Molly with UP? is that automatic somehow?
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.
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 😂
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.
Android Auto
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.
