Play Store problems
Unlike the extremely locked down world of iOS, the moderately less locked down world of Android allows users to download programs from sources other than the Play Store. This is an incredibly useful feature since it allows you to circumvent several problems inherant to the Google Play Store. And these 3rd party applications aren’t bad, in fact I consider them to be superior to the vast majority of Play Store apps. I don’t even have the Play Store installed on my phone, that’s how good 3rd party software on Android is.
I want to show you why the apps you can get from beyond the Play Store are better, and how you can start using them too. For a stronger argument, I want to describe several problems the Play Store has.
Tracking
Google’s revenue comes from profiting off of you, not just from you physically paying them. Every service they offer; Youtube (Music), Google search, Gmail, Drive, Maps, and all the others services Google operates, make money from your data. The Play Store is of course in this category too, Google doesn’t just get their money from microtransaction fees. Virtually every app on the Play Store (and Apple App store) has trackers in them, you can even check these from within the store itself. These trackers mostly belong to big data companies like Google or Facebook, but some of them go to other companies. Some examples I saw were Tencent and Huawei, maybe that’s unsettling if you’re geopolitically sensitive.
So virtually all apps you get from the Play Store, free or paid, are likely to have trackers that does who knows what. Maybe you’re too used to people yelling about trackers and privacy so you got desensitized. Not to worry, the tracking can get far spookier than this; from 2018 to 2019, a bunch of apps sold location data to a controversial data broker. These apps primarily were gay dating apps and Muslim praying apps, so not an insignficant amount of people were affected.
Now, what could the data broker have done with that data? They probably sold it to the highest bidding advertisers, or who knows where else this data could have been spread, perhaps to law enforcement or malicious groups. Think of the possibilities, I recommend a shiny tinfoil hat. Data brokers are trying to buy data from developers all the time, and the developers of apps you use would also likely easily accept a nice payment for data about you.
The profits made from tracking and privacy invasion are dirty money, but at the same time most people know this and continue to voluntarily share data. You’re not safe, and the longer you use the Play Store the more this will worsen.
Malware
Malware exists on the Play Store thanks to the lack of moderation from Google and because it’s easy to get an app published. These malware apps will typically disguise themselves as legitimate programs and then try to get your permission or credentials to accounts. They might ask you “hey, can our calculator app have access to your location?” or “please login to your facebook account to continue using our photo gallery app”. If you had some common sense, the malware problem mostly vanishes. But think of how ubiquitous phones are these days, everyone from literal infants to the wrinkliest old person uses them. If you thought that ol’ grandma was dumb for opening not-a-virus.mp3.exe on Windows, think of how many tech illiterate people use a phone; someone is bound to get fooled.
Low quality apps
Do a quick search for generic terms that might attract lots of people on the Play Store: “funny face filter photo app”, “princess doll dressup game”, “minecraft free download and mods”, “battery life extender pro”, you get the idea. Some of these are straightup malware like before, others have annoying ads in them and ask you to pay a few bucks to get rid of them, others try to push weird account creation or subscriptions, others drain the battery, some track you, many do multiple of these, and so on. The Play Store is riddled with clones and very low effort copies of popular apps, it’s disappointing to see. There’s no moderation, it’s like attempting to find something on Aliexpress that isn’t a clone product. This makes finding good apps difficult and lowers the overall level of quality.
The overall state of the Play Store
The Play Store is analoguous to the state of Windows. So many people use it that you’re guaranteed to have tech illiterates open or download files they shouldn’t have, it’s very easy to get a downloadable file on the internet, and Microsoft (Google) cannot moderate anything. Of course, an effective solution is to be smart and not download anything suspicious. Many people sadly don’t really know of this high IQ solution, and even if you’re a true genius that knows this rule, not all programs can be stopped. Some are not malware-level bad but still perform malicious activities such as tracking you; maybe your data will be sold to a data broker soon too, though it’s bold to assume it hasn’t already been sold a few times.
Introducing F-Droid
Of course, the whole reason for this article is to promote F-Droid. Putting aside the doomer-esque criticism about the Play Store, it’s time to introduce the solution to all of the problems above: F-Droid. If you’re using Android, using F-Droid can actually fix 100% of the problems found on the Play Store. It can even entirely replace the Play Store too, just like it has for me.
What is F-Droid?
F-Droid is an alternative software center to Google’s Play Store that has none of the problems above. The apps on F-Droid are all curated and must be open source (the source code is available to read), so no malware gets through. The software on F-Droid is all free (as in freedom and free of charge) and is mostly developed by individuals for non-profit motivations. This eliminates the need to monetize apps; no ads, trackers, or datamining in anything. In fact, F-Droid is strongly against these and will explicitly tell you if a program has unwanted antifeatures in it.
F-Droid also has nothing like Google account support, you can’t make an account at all. You just download programs without any kind of registration, which is a great advantage. Using F-Droid, you can use an Android phone without ever logging into a Google account.
In short, F-Droid is a software repository filled with free, high quality apps that are designed to be good software instead of making dirty money off of you. No low quality garbage, malware, ads, or tracking commonly found on the Play Store. There is no account registration, the software is all curated, and it’s simple and straightforward. F-Droid is where all of the good software on Android is.
What can you find on F-Droid?
Basically anything, the collection is rather big. Everything on my phone came from F-Droid, so we’re talking about browser, calendar, alarm/clock, camera, maps, music player, mail client, communications app, weather, a free Youtube premium frontend, video player, and so on. The average program on F-Droid is better than a Play Store competitor; the F-Droid ones will likely run faster and lighter, be better designed, and have more user-focused updates.
F-Droid specialities
Because F-Droid is independent from the Play Store, it isn’t subject to Google’s terms of service. This means there are programs on F-Droid that Google will never allow on the Play Store. One of these is NewPipe, an alternative Youtube client that has no ads, supports background video playing and other streaming services besides Youtube. NewPipe is really good, it’s the Youtube app but with the features you want and none of the bad stuff. There are more alternative clients for other services such as Reddit, Twitter, Spotify and more that are easily superior to the original apps.
F-Droid is extensible
Sometimes you’ll find a program that isn’t in the default F-Droid repositories for many reasons; maybe the developer didn’t publish it for F-Droid, or there are parts of the program that F-Droid deems unacceptable (tracking, proprietary bits, etc.) and therefore is not allowed. Let’s say this program is available in some different software repository, we’ll call it X-Droid. One nice feature of F-Droid is that you can sync other repositories to it and access all apps through F-Droid. So you can sync X-Droid’s software to F-Droid and access it regardless.
Connecting other sources of apps like this greatly opens up the software availability, even more than the already good default F-Droid catalogue. It also simplifies managing the small and scattered repositories that often contain exclusive programs. By syncing the repositories, you can access the programs through F-Droid as if it were natively there.
What you can’t get on F-Droid
F-Droid doesn’t have everything. For instance, it’ll never get any commercial apps such as any game (some games are still available) on the Play Store or programs from large companies (Google’s Youtube, Microsoft’s Outlook, Tencent’s TikTok). However, these aren’t really F-Droid’s faults since the whole point of F-Droid is to get away from the afformentioned apps and Play Store. If there’s an app that is only in the Play Store, just have both stores installed; both can coexist. Overall, F-Droid contains lots of amazing programs but doesn’t have any of the usual commercialized apps found on the Play Store. If you want to get away from social media and big tech, this might be a good opportunity to get started.
How to get started with F-Droid
Maybe you’re pretty intrigued by what F-Droid has to offer and want to try it. The great news is that installing F-Droid is dead simple, just head to their website and download the program (apk file). Open it, you’ll have to allow third party software permissions and then everything should be straightforward. After installing, browse through the store and see what’s available. You’ll never have seen these programs in the Play Store, and all of them are better too. Using F-Droid is a great way to reduce your dependency on Google and can be helpful to finding better software.
If you find F-Droid to be ugly, don’t worry. There are other apps that you can use to browse the F-Droid repositories, the one I recommend is Aurora Droid; I use it instead of F-Droid. Aurora Droid has all the features of F-Droid, can connect to more repositories out of the box, and also looks much more sleek. There’s also a companion app called Aurora Store, which allows you to download Play Store apps without a Play Store installed or being logged into a Google account. This is how I’m sufficient without the real Play Store; these two apps are how I download everything I need.
Reducing dependency on the Google Play Store
F-Droid is frankly a superior app store to the Google Play Store. It’s all free (as in cost and freedom), there’s no tracking nonsense, the apps are all made by smaller developers instead of companies, and you have cool apps that Google would ban on the Play Store. F-Droid is also way better maintained with less junk and no malware. It fixes all problems that the Play Store has and has more organic, high quality software. The only programs you would miss out are monetized and tracking ones such as games or social media.
If you’re use an Android phone, try F-Droid. It’s simply a better place to download apps and doesn’t have the rampant issues found on the Play Store. F-Droid is important enough that I will stick to Android just for it, there’s no equivalent (that I know of) for iOS. Come over and join the club of F-Droid users and start finding better software for your phone.