F-Droid is the best application store with free open source apps

Open source apps go the extra mile to gain user confidence when it comes to security and privacy. They publish their source code online. F-Droid is the app store that lets you discover all these kinds of apps.

F-Droid

If you are looking for the widest range of Android apps, you should of course go to the Google Play Store, but F-Droid has been the best-known app store where you will find free open-source apps for years. This is also called FOSS, or ‘Free and Open Source Software’. F-Droid helps you to easily find and install the apps and you also stay informed of updates that you can install automatically.

When you open F-Droid you will see the latest apps and you can also search directly or sort apps by category. This works similarly to the Play Store, but the categories themselves differ. If you tap on an app, you will see screenshots and a description, as usual. You can also do all release notes request and you will find a link to the source code on the developer platform GitHub. There is also sometimes the option to directly support the developers with a donation through the application store.

Anti-Features

It is also interesting that F-Droid also informs its users when an app deviates from F-Droid’s standards. With Telegram, for example, you can read that the source code has not been made fully public and that the app connects to a server whose code is also not available open-source. F-Droid calls it ‘Anti-Features’ and they are shown in bold in the description.

F-Droid also has a handy sharing function that lets you easily share apk files with people near you. Coincidentally, Google recently launched a similar feature, but for the Google Play Store. F-Droid also has a forum that you can contact with a community of users of FOSS, but you cannot consult that forum via the app. Finally, it is even more interesting to dive into the settings of the app. You will find multiple themes there that you can use and you can also add other sources that provide you with open-source apps.

Just keep in mind that F-Droid makes no guarantees about the security of apps, as Google does with its Play Protect scanner. F-Droid does take steps to make its app offering secure, but it is important that you only install apps from sources you trust. What do you think of FOSS and were you already using F-Droid? Let us know in the comments at the bottom of this article.

Theme week privacy on Androidworld

This article is part of the Androidworld theme week on privacy. Do you have a question about the topic we are discussing during this theme week or ideas or tips? Let us know in the comments below this article (also check our Android app). You can also email us via this e-mail address or leave a message on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. You can also ask us questions via this Telegram group or this Signal group. Would you rather send one of the editors a tip? Then you can!