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Allows connecting to other devices with KDE connect and sharing files, controlling media players, sending text messages, controlling the mouse and keyboard (if the device has that), and much more.
I install it by default on every device I have and even setup a computer as a media player in my living room that I control with my phone. Just connect an old laptop or desktop with Wake On Land or with autosleep and autologin and you won't need a firestick or whatever.
KDE Connect gives you what Apple tries to sell you on, while also being free and working with whatever desktop OS you want.
KDE Connect is probably one of my favorite pieces of software, ever.
KDE Connect is real slick, but brutal on battery life for me
My favorite feature is media auto pausing when I get a call and resuming when it's done. I listen to music through my workday and it's nice to not have to scramble to turn it down or pause when a call comes in.
Kde connect is genuinely amazing.
One of the most useful apps on my phone. You set it as your default browser and any links open in that instead of in the default app. So before opening anything, it gives you a chance to see the url, remove tracking parameters (which it detects itself), unshort etc. and then open it in whatever app you want.
This is such a great tool. It's so satisfying to just delete tracking data from URLs and then just do what I wanted anyway.
Binary Eye
It's a QR/barcode/etc. reader. Very simple, and after trying like a dozen different QR readers I've found it to be the most reliable.
I know that a lot of brands' built-in camera apps can read QR codes nowadays, but I find a dedicated app faster than the all-purpose camera apps I've used, and if you use open-source camera apps like AOSP's or OpenCamera, then you won't have that feature built in anyway.
NetGuard - allows you to block network traffic on a per-app basis. Basically NetGuard is a fake VPN that connects to nothing. If you switch it on for an app, the app and Android behave as if you're using a VPN and push all the network traffic for that app into NetGuard, where it goes nowhere.
HeliBoard - an open source, configurable, private, 100% offline keyboard.
Insular - an open-source fork of Island. Insular is a sandbox environment that can be used to run apps isolated from the main user profile, preventing them from accessing user files, call logs, contacts, etc.
Aegis Authenticator - an open source 2FA token manager.
Breezy Weather - a very nice weather app.
I've tried a few step counters (Paseo, Pedometer PFA) but they kept crashing (a couple of times a week) so I'd often go to check my steps only to find they hadn't been counting.
In the two months I've been using Stepsy, it hasn't crashed once.
Fancy? No. Reliable? Yes.
Same problem with pedometer. Realy sucks when you do a long hike only to see the app only tracked the car ride and the crashed ...
PipePipe - the URL calls out the real name and function, NewPipe Enhanced. Covering more services with more reliability (including PeerTube).
See also Tubular, love the built-in SponsorBlock
I don't really use YT that often on my phone, so I can't vouch for how often it breaks, but I use FreeTube on Desktop and having a YT client that can subscribe creators without an account, can turn off all the recommended distractions, has an adblock, can play with screen off and the like is amazing.
Judging by my experience with Freetube, you do have to update it regularly since YT is actively fighting it, but so far every time I needed to watch a video on my phone, I could just update NewPipe and it worked.
Markor - text editor that treats text files as... files. Which means they can be accessed and synced by Syncthing (for example). Very fast and reliable.
Conversations/Cheogram are excellent XMPP apps for Android that are freely available on F-Droid.
This is my most used app on my phone. It does comes with a little extensive setup, because you need to have your own Matrix server, but thanks to the amazing Matrix Ansible Project, which is one of those rare docker/ansible projects that actually work and are very robustly set-up, deploying a server took me like an hour max, incuding bridge setup and getting hosting (for around 8$ a month on Hetzner).
I replaced Messenger, Discord, WhatsApp and Telegram apps with this, by setting up bridges in Matrix. The setup was relatively simple, the ansible is well documented and I mostly had to just add lile two config lines into the ansible. So far I haven't had much issues and I've been using it for the past few years.
There might be better clients than Element, haven't really looked into it. It's not frictionless and it took some getting used to, but not having a ton of spyware appson my phone is worth it.
It's closer to source-available, but grayjay is great.
Someone once posted here in a comment an app they are working on that is an K2K (keyboard to keyboard) encrypted keyboard app for android
I don't remember how it worked and only skimmed the repo, since I didn't think I'd need it, but given recent developments it might be good to have.
Does anyone remember what it was?
IIRC the idea was that you have a separate input box, and encryption keys saved in the keyboard app, and it just does I assume PGP before pasting the text into the app your inputing into. I'm curious how it did key exchange and how usable it was, but I lost the link and couldn't find it.
