What was your Android app of 2025?
8d 18h ago by lemdro.id/u/claim_arguably in android@lemdro.id
Which Android app stood out to you this year & why?
Could be anything you used daily, discovered recently, or just genuinely loved.
F Droid, as I made my move from ios to my new device, F-droid helped me find apps that made the transition go smoothly.
I put F-Droid on my Meta Quest 3 and then I didn't even need to use SideQuest anymore lol, I could just install a file manager and KDE Connect from F-Droid, transfer apk files remotely through KDE Connect and then install them using the file manager
I moved to Droidify, a fdroid client. Its got extra repos built in and feels more polished IMO.
You can also look into Obtanium to install APKs direct from GItHub. This generally means you get updates faster than fdroid, and are 100% sure no code had changed (fdroid rebuilds packahes and resigns them).
I wouldn't really recommend fdroid tbh. Obtanium + AppVerifier would be a better combo.
Just a few links: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/f-droid-security-issues/
https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1883895255142932816#m
https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox/-/issues/7
https://github.com/obfusk/fdroid-fakesigner-poc
https://github.com/CatimaLoyalty/Android/issues/2608
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/593
https://github.com/00-Evan/shattered-pixel-dungeon/issues/1394
Probably Street Complete, it activates the same dopamine receptors in the brain that Pokémon Go did, but it's contributing to Open Street Map in the process.
Honourable mention to Ente Photos, recommended to me by some of you as a great Google Photos alternative.
I always recommend this app to everyone who does any amount of traveling: Where Is Public Toilet
It helps you find public toilets, explains their hours and amenities, and lets you rate them. You can download the toilet map and use it offline. It's a real trousers saver.
Here is a google free alternative: LavSeeker
I tried it. It's missing a lot of features and has a pretty empty database.
I appreciate that it doesn't have ads, but that isn't really much of a selling point if it doesn't do the job.
What features are you missing?
The database is simply what people have put on open street map. So it can be extended easily by everyone.
reVanced.
Off the cuff, I'd say it's tied with Summit and How We Feel.
If you don't know, Summit is a lemmy and piefed app. It gives me the same feel of customizing as Sync for Lemmy, but with way more attentive and present dev.
As for How We Feel, it's a mood tracker that's supposedly backed by a university. It has videos and steps to generally manage my emotions (also read them if I don't want to watch them). The best part for me is that the app have descriptions for their list of emotions. Really helps me a lot when I'm just overwhelmed OR lost for words to describe my emotions. The act of looking for the right emotiol itself is IMO grounding.
obtanium
Bloody game changer, that. Been little by little whittling away at apps until the Play Store can GTFO for good.
Localsend
Termux and associated addons, especially x11. Because fuck the direction the entire Android ecosystem is going in. I'd rather have a Linux phone, but Termux:x11 is as close as I'm realistically going to get at the moment.
IRONFOX, and fennec. AND some affiliate non-google store. only because reddit started banning alot , and they are too intuned with FF to catch people easily, due to fingerprinting.
The do not disturb button
Boost for Lemmy was huge for me.
I've also been using KDE Connect, but I wish I could set filters/exclusions for notifications, because a lot of things I already get notifications on my computer for so when KDE Connect syncs the notification from my phone, that's a duplicate.
I thing you could turn off certain notifications from the PC side.
I could turn off all KDE Connect notifications, but I can't do it selectively by source phone app, notification title, or regex or anything
Oh, on the phone side KDE Connect has a checkbox for notifications from each app. Thanks for making me check lol
https://f-droid.org/packages/de.quantumphysique.trale/
It's a weight tracking app. It keeps all the data locally and keeps bugging you to back the local data up somewhere. It's just so subtly good - it has this "stats" screen which is for some reason addictive to keep checking - it shows your current BMI, how many days you have left till your goal weight. It graphs your weight. The log-weight-by-dragging-the-scale thing is also great. There's 3 total views in the app - that's it.
I don't know it's just sensorially respectful?
Cleverkeys. Super customizable, offline. 1st gestures keyboard powered by neural networks.
Seal on F Droid
Try ytdlnis
Loop Habit Tracker, KDE Connect, aCar, and Thunderbird.
Vivaldi, web browser
Connect for Lemmy.
Aucards was a big discovery for me, its come in quite handy when ive been nonverbal
KOReader (ebook reader)
Though clearly not designed for small screens, since I have a somewhat long read queue and it can sort by read progress, it helps a bunch.
Immich, I setup the container on my server and have been using it all year. The search is really good and I like the memories thing
Home Assistant
I'm embarrassed to say it was Brotato. 🥔
So nice not to see ads on any web sites or within any apps.
If it is ever off, I'm reminded how bad things are out there.
I just use NextDNS for this
I saw the obtanium comments and switched over. What sources do people use to find apps besides a post like this?
Caro is a clean, minimalist, personal organizer app thats kept me on track for all my side projects this year. I really like the widget.
Molly (Signal fork) with self hosted mollyconnect + ntfy for push notifications without Google services.