Excellent list
netchami@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
LibreTube or NewPipe for watching YouTube videos without ads or tracking.
Seal for downloading YouTube videos.
Retro Music Player - probably the best looking music app for Android.
Pano Scrobbler - a FOSS app for Last.fm, Libre.fm and Listenbrainz. (I recommend Obtanium to download it from GitHub.)
Droid-ify is a much nicer client for F-Droid.
Obtanium for downloading apps from various other sources.
Aurora Store for anonymously downloading apps from the Play Store without a Google account
Molly - a better Signal client. (You can use Obtanium to download it from GitHub, you can add their F-Droid repo or download it using Accressent, a new experimental app store that seeks to replace F-Droid.)
Gallery - a simple gallery app that looks good and respects your Material You theme.
Murglar for downloading Music in full quality from Deezer.
Element X is a much better Matrix client than the standard Element app. (I recommend downloading it from GitHub using Obtanium)
LinkSheet - a small app that restores the old Android URL link chooser. It has many great features like the ability to remove tracking parameters from URLs or using FastForward to annoying bypass URL shorteners.
UntrackMe - a tool that can redirect YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc. links to privacy-friendly alternative frontends like Invidious or Piped for YouTube, Nitter for Twitter and LibReddit or Teddit for Reddit
Thunder, the best Lemmy client I ever used.
Most of the apps I mentioned are free and open source and many of them are available on F-Droid. They don’t collect or sell any of your data.
The last one is not an app, but an entire OS that can replace the spyware-infested ROM that’s preinstalled by your phones’ manufacturer. I’m talking about GrapheneOS. No ads, no tracking, no proprietary Google services. Just free and open source software with maximum privacy and security. It’s so great!
s38b35M5@lemmy.world 7 months ago
netchami@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I’m glad you like it
s38b35M5@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I didn’t know about most of these, and am playing with several now. Thx!
netchami@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Have fun!
Bennieboj@lemmy.world 7 months ago
netchami@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Thanks for the suggestion
Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Great list overall. Obtainium looks like it could be life-changing. :-)
netchami@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I try to get most of my apps from F-Droid (through Droid-ify) or Accrescent, but if they are not available, I turn to Obtanium to either download an APK from a website or from GitHub. It also has the ability to update your apps from your custom sources.
Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
I installed it and it is working beautifully. Thank you for the suggestion!
Xavier@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Oh no‽
Seems like FastForward has been put on ice/abandoned by the developers/maintainers (read the project GitHub header).
Any viable/preferred alternative?
netchami@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
The FastForward feature in LinkSheet should continue to work. If you need a solution for your browser, check out the Bypass All Shortlinks Userscript that you can install using Violentmonkey. There are also a couple of websites that can accomplish the same thing, bypass.city and bypass.vip. I got the information from fmhy.net/storage#skip-redirect
Trollivier@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Libretube and Newpipe, can you cast videos to like a Chromecast with these?
netchami@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
kratoz29@lemm.ee 7 months ago
LinkSheet](github.com/1fexd/LinkSheet)
I’m sorry, why do we need this one?
I have Android 13 and when I tap on a link it asks me what app to open, also you can set this within the settings app per app basis.
Is this like Better Open With?
netchami@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I have Android 13 and when I tap on a link it asks me what app to open, also you can set this within the settings app per app basis.
On many occasions, Android nowadays uses “Verified links” to figure out what app to open instead of prompting the user LinkSheet also provides other cool features that I already described in my previous comment:
It has many great features like the ability to remove tracking parameters from URLs or using FastForward to annoying bypass URL shorteners
Is this like Better Open With?
Yes
kratoz29@lemm.ee 7 months ago
I missed the bypassing URL shorteners, heck, that would have been so helpful to me back in the day when I was sailing the seas for some “obscure” content.
LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one 7 months ago
Hi, have you switched to using Accressent? Do you like it more than Droid-ify?
netchami@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
It’s in a very early stage of development, it currently only offers 11 apps. I really hope it succeeds though, it has better security than F-Droid so I would love to switch to it once it supports more apps.
LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one 7 months ago
I’ll keep an eye on it, thanks!
jvrava9@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Some alternatives and corrections to your list:
Ps: I’ve been seeing a lot of posts and comments by you in the communities that I follow, just want to tell you thx for contrubuting to them xD.
netchami@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Thanks for participating in the discussion. I have to disagree on some of your point though.
I have found the download features in both LibreTube and NewPipe to be pretty unreliable. Seal always works. NewPipe x SponsorBlock is great, I use LibreTube which also has SponsorBlock built in, I just included NewPipe in the list because LibreTube breaks sometimes. But yes, NewPipe x SponsorBlock is better than standard NewPipe. BraveNewPipe is even better.
Aves is a good option, it’s also available on Accrescent. Personally though, I dislike the design of the app and prefer Gallery in combination with Image Toolbox for image editing.
It’s not open-source and thus not available on F-Droid.
In my experience Spotiflyer has been pretty unreliable. It either pulls low quality shit from YouTube or it tries to download from Spotify and fails. So far, Murglar has worked like a dream. Just like deemix on desktop btw. You can use Deezer Premium ARLs from this guide to log in and download genuine 320kbps MP3s or even FLACs. Never had any issues.
I tried it out, personally, I didn’t really like it. Element has been pretty slow for me, but I never had these issues with Element X.
jvrava9@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Thz for the feedback. I agree with pretty much all your points. It just goes down to personnal preference and some feautures.
netchami@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Absolutely true