Is there any proprietary Android app for which you wish there would be an open-source alternative?
Basically, what the title says. Do you use any app, that is proprietary, but either has no OSS alternatives or they’re all not good enough? If there is an alternative, what keeps you from switching?
Poweramp
There’s nothing else out there that’s really an equal, foss or not. The closest it gets is neutron, and that’s a hot mess of an app.
It’s the sound quality that’s standout. It doesn’t hurt that it’s a decent player in every other way too, but even apps built for audiophiles don’t match it in real use, in every situation.
None of the foss players are worth a damn sound wise; might as well use whatever comes with the device on that factor alone.
I can’t say I’ve ever noticed any significant audio quality difference between this and something like Vinyl even on very good headphones.
But I would say that I’ve been trying to find equivalent equilizer functions that this app has on desktop. The bass boost function is the best one I’ve ever used. It even turned my very neutral etymotics er3se into solid thumpers.
But I would say that I’ve been trying to find equivalent equilizer functions that this app has on desktop.
Have you tried RootlessJamesDSP?
The headphones, and any other gear, probably make some difference; I’m balling on a budget, with some tin t2s for iem, and beyer 770s (80 ohm) for cans, through a fiio DAC for the cheaper devices (but my main player is an old lg g7). Now and then I’ll break out the portapros, and it’s more prevalent since they tend to be a little muffled in the mids and highs no matter what they’re plugged into.
But just the difference between something like gmmp, phonograph, musicolet, vanilla, etc, it can be a huge difference for me. Gmmp is decent, but there’s static where there shouldn’t be, and using the eq tends to distort on the low end even at low amounts of boost.
Can’t recall if vinyl stood out from the rest of the pack or not, since it’s been a couple of years since I did an extended comparison. All of the ones using the standard android audio processing were prone to some degree or another of mudiness to my ears. Some would get distorted playing through anything other than headphones, particularly with hip-hop and house tracks. That was with multiple aux cables, Bluetooth, and on multiple devices.
But, yeah, I would love it if max ported his eq app to other platforms.
I agree.
I try to use as much FOSS as I can, but nothing even comes close to Poweramp.
There are so many. By usage however:
Smart Audiobook Player: None of the apps I tried had all the features in one, like reading my complex audiobooks folder structure and auto grouping the books based on that. Timer to pause audiobook that is automatically reset by moving the phone.
Maps: No foss solutions work better where I live than GMaps
YTMusic: So this is a tough one to beat because of the nature of the platform itself.
Notes: I am looking for a P2P syncable note app that can also have a web interface or atleast a Linux version of the App. Allows drawing your notes on an android phone or tablet using stylus, and other usual features. Can also use cloud storage as a backup or sync source. I know this one is a really tall order.
It didn’t work. (not being snarky, or a dick, honestly trying to help)
It hasn’t worked. It worked. It didn’t work.
For some reason getting tense correct on words like “work” is confusing for ESL. (or autoincorrect got you)
you can’t plan routes without internet
Oh fuck I hate that
Yes for the basic thing most people buy it and it is this fucked up. Also it uses Google maps, they are bit useless for cycling.
I have more mapping apps and all of them have offline planning.
MicroG works really well
A free-as-in-freedom re-implementation of Google’s proprietary Android user space apps and libraries.
MicroG works well if you let it leak some data to Google.
I would like a free-as-in-free-from-Google Google Play Services reimplementation that lets me use any app that depends on it without hitting any Google server.
OP asked about Open Source not about privacy.
MicroG minimises connections to google servers, here you can read what addresses it still connects to and why: github.com/microg/…/Google-Network-Connections
Free software (not open-source, it’s really free software that’s important) that depends on a single for-profit vendor is not free.
MicroG is open-source but it’s not free. It fails to address two problems:
I don’t think OP cares about getting the source of the apps they run so much as the apps being free-as-in-libre in his original question. Many people mistake open-source for free software and MicroG is not truly free.
(I reread ops question and I can only see the term open source 2 times, but whatever, I understand what you say, and I don’t want to debate about semantics.)
The point with microG is it’s still the best way if you want to use android. The other options are:
The point with microG is it’s still the best way if you want to use android.
btw I’m perfectly fine without even MicroG. When I was installing my phone it asked whether I want that too, said no, and didn’t fell the need to then it on yet
Huh? Which rom asks this? Usually you have to go through hoops to get microg, and only a handful of roms have it builtin. It can only ask if you want to enable microg not installing it or not, microg to correctly work it should be installed in /system/priv-app, to do that after boot on device, you have to be root.
Do you use any app from aurora or outside fdroid? If your answer is no, than you can use android without a GMS package.
Also as I wrote, location won’t work for you underground or inside concrete buildings. If you are fine with these kind of limitations than you can obviously.
Marwin (the main developer of microg) said in some interview that he doesn’t want microg to exist, and in a perfect world we shouldn’t need such workaround. I would be also happy if android wouldn’t depend this muhc on google
CalyxOS does. It asks in a setup similar to what most common phones use with their stock ROM. MicroG is probably installed, but it’s services are turned off.
Do you use any app from aurora or outside fdroid? If your answer is no, than you can use android without a GMS package.
Yes, there’s a few. My favorite music player, a local public transport app, a file manager… such things. They work fine. I was already not touching “corporate apps” with a 10 feet pole for a long time, so I don’t get to experience their issues.
Also as I wrote, location won’t work for you underground or inside concrete buildings. If you are fine with these kind of limitations than you can obviously.
How would it otherwise? Network based location?
Marwin (the main developer of microg) said in some interview that he doesn’t want microg to exist, and in a perfect world we shouldn’t need such workaround. I would be also happy if android wouldn’t depend this muhc on google
I totally agree. This is part of the reason I don’t want to turn it on, ever. I don’t want to use apps that support that shit, even unknowingly.
How would it otherwise? Network based location?
Yes. Your phone could triangulate its location from nearby celltowers ane wifi networks. Google has a database of wifi routers (actually that was the point of google streetview, they collected wifi bssids alongside taking photos, they also collect this data from android devices).
With microg you can select from different dbs for this, they are called ‘UnifiedNlp backends’: apple has a similar db from iphones, mozilla used to collect this data with a separate app for MLS (they shut down the project in 2024 march). Microg builds an on device private db as well, it will remembers the wifi networks and celltowers you were close to, and next time you are there it won’t need gps, saves a ton of battery life. This was called Deja Vu, I love this name. Search for UnifiedNlp on fdroid you can find some more options.
Since MicroG 0.3 you don’t have to install these separately, Mozilla and Deja Vu are builtin, and they are more than enough
Bitwarden. Most people think that their application is open source, but more and more of their code has shifted from the GPL/AGPL licensed code to code in their SDK, which is under a proprietary license. This led to their new Android app being disqualified from being hosted in F-Droid repos.
Keyguard was supposed to be an open source Bitwarden client, but the dev chose to use a custom proprietary license, so that is source available as well.
Don’t get me wrong: BW is still a pretty good service, and the proprietary code is still readable by anyone, but the fact that they’re moving a bunch of their previously open source licensed code to something that’s source available is definitely a bummer.
KeePass, on the other hand, has tons of actually open source clients, which definitely gives them an edge for people that don’t mind syncing their own DB.
I use “Automation” (on fdroid) - the UX could do with some improving but it thoroughly covers the basics.
Newer versions of Android make it difficult to automate certain things though, I find root helps to get around that in some cases
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