Long story short: I don’t like iOS but have been using an iPhone for a couple years due to lack of personally viable hardware options on the Android side of things. I’ve gotten tired of waiting and found a good deal on an open box Pixel 8 Pro which arrives in a few days, I’ll be installing GrapheneOS on it.
I’ve used GrapheneOS before on a Pixel 3a. I’m familiar with some must-haves like F-Droid+Aurora Store and AntennaPod, but are there any other apps I should check out once the phone gets here that I’ve been missing out on during my time on iOS? Or just any recommendations at all for cool/useful apps that most people wouldn’t think to search for?
Bonus question for *sonic/Navidrome users, what’s your favorite Android client? I used Substacks last time I daily drove GrapheneOS, but it looks like it might not be actively maintained anymore.
I’s suggest Droid-ify as the F-Droid client, it properly supports background installs.
Only for rooted phones, i imagine?
Nope, works on non-rooted phones too. There’a a new installation framework in recent Android versions that allows background installs by apps other than the Play Store!
have to look into this … tjx for sharing
Mihon is a great comic reader that connects to my Komga server - it’s the reason I got into android. Launch box is a pretty cool front end for roms, but I tend to not use it now that I have a dedicated retro handheld.
Oh and Revanced, of course. I can’t see myself going back to ios.
If you want to watch YouTube in a more privacy friendly way and without an account, there’s also LibreTube
Speaking of stores, there’s also Obtainium if you like living on the edge. It can pull directly from GitHub releases, which may or may not be desirable for different people.
Another obvious one is Firefox or its siblings Mull & Fennec, with their add-on support for a better browsing experience.
There’s also system-wide ad/tracker blocking solutions. I don’t actually have a recommendation on this as most of them share each other’s blocklist anyway.
Aurora Store isnt needed because of Graphene’s Sandboxed Google Play Services.
Obtainium app is best for installing APKs from github, fdroid, etc because of the auto updates.
My favorite feature of GOS is the scopes for contacts, storage, and MTE support on Pixel 8
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+1 for Obtainium
It’s super good
F-Droid: use F-Droid Basic instead. You may want to use obtainium but tbh its a total pain.
Also note the list of external f-droid repos
Aurorastore: use only session installer, dont grant access to all storage (only needed for /obb access)
Antennapod: podcini may become a better fork, more efficient and modern.
My go-to *sonic/navidrome client on Android is Symfonium. It’s not free but it’s well-maintained and has all the features I need (smart playlists, artist radio, gapless playback and replaygain).
Maybe nothing amazing, but rather basic utility:
Since you mentioned it, there’s a fork of AntennaPod with a more modern look: https://github.com/XilinJia/Podcini
MixPlorer is still one of the best filemanagers
Nova Launcher is still one of the best launchers.
There are tons of great music player apps on github and fdroid like Gramophone, Auxio, Metro Music, etc.
Revanced Manager is an app to patch different kinds of apps for different purposes like Patch twitch app to remove ads. There is a No root option or you can patch them on your PC.
XManager for spotify.
ColorBlendr is the best app to tweak Android’s Monet theming.
Clipious is a great yt app alternative. It has filters to not show videos or channels with certain titles.
Browsers:
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There are a few Chromium browsers that have extension support now, Kiwi is the most popular. Microsoft Edge is also adding extensions but it’s available on the unstable Canary builds for now.
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Firefox supports a limited selection of extensions now. Some firefox based browsers like Iceraven have a larger list and also an option to sideload any extension.
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FFUpdater is a useful app to check out all the firefox related browsers and to download and update them.
DraStic Emulator is free now.
Wavelet is a great Equalizer app.
Weather Timeline is dead 😭 but Today Weather is a great alternative. There are some good weather apps on fdroid and GitHub like Hello Weather, Breezy, Clima, etc.
Fossify Gallery is a great opensource photo and video library app.
Bitwarden is the best password manager.
Proton and Fossify have some great privacy focused apps.
WallYou Plus is a good wallpaper app.
Notesnook (Not completely free), Joplin (ugly), Siyuan (New) are some opensource Evernote alternatives. Amplenote, Upnote are some non opensource ones.
Some apps have an option to enable “Dynamic theme” or “Monet theme” or “Material You”. That tells them to match the theme colours of your system. Everytime you change the colours of your OS they are also automatically changed to match them.
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I’ve been disappointed with most sonic/Navidrome apps so I haven’t gone all in with hosting my music that way. I’ve been sticking to mp3s
From my notes: Most apps do not support or have a weird implementation of offline music. Some don’t allow you to swipe to go to next/previous track. Some just look ugly
But there are:
- ultrasonic
- Tempo
- subtracks
- substreamer
- dsub
Simple Mobile Tools the company behind Simple Apps has been bought by ZipoApps. The repo is no longer maintained by original developers, and it is speculated that ZipoApps would soon introduce advertisements in the Simple Apps.
A fork of SimpleApps is continued as Fossify Apps.
