F-Droid is an Android application store dedicated to all kinds of free software. It has just passed its tenth birthday, and it is still only popular in the circle of free software enthusiasts, which more or less buried hundreds of high-quality applications among them. In fact, compared to many overseas app stores, F-Droid is not only more accessible in China, but also more secure. Although it cannot be used out of the box, the configuration of F-Droid is not complicated.
Add the domestic source and repository
After downloading F-Droid from the official website and opening it, you first need to adjust the repository settings. The way F-Droid manages applications is similar to that of major Linux distributions. The repository is a collection of a list of applications and installation packages, maintained by developers or organizations. The same repository has separate servers around the world for users to download nearby, which can be understood as a source. F-Droid uses a library with the same name as the software that contains the most applications by default, and its access and download speeds are usually quite slow. Fortunately, there is now a domestic source of F-Droid, which can greatly improve the access and download experience in China.
mobile phone visit Tsinghua University open source software mirror station, use F-Droid to open the long link in the first line, and click to add mirror in the pop-up interface. You can also copy the long link, and in the Application⚙Settings-Repository, click the plus sign in the upper right corner to add it manually. After the addition is complete, you also need to select the second F-Droid library in the repository, only keep the user mirror added just now, and close all other mirrors to ensure that the software only gets updates from domestic mirror sites. After
is completed, domestic users can download and update the application conveniently through the store. When using it for the first time, many users will wonder why "free software" such as Firefox cannot be searched. This is because the F-Droid official library has very strict requirements for the included software. Firefox and other applications containing some proprietary codes are not considered free and open source. In addition, there are some open source software such as Bitwarden that has not been officially included. These problems can be solved by adding a third-party repository. This post in the official forum lists most of the known third-party libraries. The method of adding a repository is basically the same as the method of adding domestic sources mentioned above. It is recommended to add IzzyOnDroid, Rakshazi F-Droid. These third-party libraries have no domestic sources, so the download speed is not as fast as the official libraries.
choose a more beautiful client
F-Droid The official client design is not beautiful, and various functions can only be said to be unsatisfactory, but thanks to the open features of free software, F-Droid has many third-party clients, and all It can be downloaded through the official F-Droid client. Compared with the official, these third-party clients are often more beautiful, and some also provide some useful features. If you don't care whether there is a Chinese interface, then I recommend the two following clients.
Foxy Droid, the official client homepage is a large icon arrangement application, and the icons are large and small, the application introduction is squeezed in a few gaps, it is difficult to be called elegant. On the other hand, Foxy Droid changed the arrangement mode to a list, deleted infrequent functions such as offline transmission, and the whole design appeared more simple and reasonable. It also sets the option of updating or not for each application individually, and users can choose to permanently ignore the update of an application. The disadvantage is that there is no Chinese interface and you cannot search in Chinese.
Aurora Droid: A sister app of Aurora Store. The interface is similar to Google Play, Material Design, and its beauty is overpowering many competing products. The functions are also relatively complete, with collections and blacklists provided. The client also lists many third-party libraries by default, you don't need to go to the official website to add them one by one, just enable them in the library settings. Since it is an Aurora series application, you can install it silently by installing Aurora Services. There is also no Chinese interface.
application searchSearch and download
As mentioned earlier, the official F-Droid library only contains free software. Among the included free software, some applications with anti-feature features are specially marked by the government, which cannot be searched by default. Need to be adjusted in ⚙Settings-Application Compatibility-including applications with anti-feature. The so-called spam feature does not mean that the marked application is necessarily harmful, but refers to functions that can cause potential harm to users, such as applications that contain promotion, are not completely free, and have data upload services that need to be deliberately closed by users. Take Telegram as an example. Although the client is free software, because the upstream server is not open source and contains promotional services, it is regarded as spam. Ordinary users do not need to care about these issues.
Although the official client has a Chinese interface, the application search does not support Chinese well. This is probably because the included in F-Droid rarely has Chinese software, and most of the software introductions are also in English. If the content cannot be found in Chinese, it is recommended to use English instead. In addition, the scope of software search is the application package name and introduction, and there is no fuzzy search function like mainstream application stores. If the function introduction of a certain software is relatively obscure, it may be difficult to find it from the search. Fennec, the free software version of Firefox, is just like that.
After overcoming these small problems, the benefits of F-Droid are gradually revealed. Most of the application packages in the software store are directly compiled from the source code . The store indicates the license and source code acquisition method used by the software in the application introduction. Users do not need to worry about security and privacy. Some developers will also release a separate branch for F-Droid. Unlike the versions released on Google Play and other places, the application packages in F-Droid are not tracked by Google, and there are no in-app purchases and charges. Get rid of the constraints of the Google treaty, developers can also publish on F-Droid similar to the ad-free YouTube front-end, ad blocking software and other applications that cannot be listed on the Play Store.
Nextcloud found F-Droid's premium application
in the Play Store for a fee
. For users who do not advertise the spirit of No-Google and free software, one of the most useful applications of F-Droid is the third-party client for mainstream services. Aurora Store is a Play Store that does not require a Google account and services, NewPipe is a fully functional YouTube open source front end, and Slide is a lightweight Reddit client. For free software enthusiasts who want to get rid of Google , F-Droid also has many applications that can run without Google services, such as the secondary verification software FreeOTP that can run normally without Google.
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