Currently the best alternative to Google Play Store as an application store on Android is F-Droid, a platform where all the apps you will find are free and / or open source software and where you can add additional repositories. In the following lines we will explain what are its best applications and our opinion after using it for some time.
F-Droid: We tell you everything you need to know about the free application store for Android
What is F-Ddroid? One of the best alternatives to Google Play
F-Droid is an application repository for Android where any user can download applications and use them on your terminal without depending on Google services, because all the content published in this app store have a GPL 3.0 license.
This means that the code for these applications is free and open, allowing anyone to consult or modify it without any kind of limitation. In fact, in the file of each application we will be able to access previous versions of its version history and the permissions we grant, its source code and the incidents reported to its creator.
One of the main advantages of F-Droid is that all its content is free, even if we have the opportunity to do donations to app developers specify so that they can continue to improve it.
How to install F-Droid and add repositories
To install F-Droid on our Android phone, we just need to follow the following steps:
- Activate the installation of apps from unknown sources from the settings of our terminal.
- With that done, we need to go to its official website and click Download F-Droid.
- Once the APK file is downloaded, we click on it to install it on the smartphone.
A repository is an application store that is hosted on a server in so that they can be installed and updated easily, that is, it is the source from which we install an app.
F-Droid is an application store that allows us to customize these repositories and even add the ones we like best as long as they are compatible with it. For configure and customize the repositories from which apps will be installed, we just have to perform the following actions:
- Open the application and click on the Settings option located at the bottom right.
- Once inside, we will have to select the option Repository and mark the ones we want.
- To add any of the compatible repositories, we will simply have to click on the + sign top right e enter the web address of the same.
The best apps
Within this alternative application store we will find all kinds of apps, ad exception of the official clients of social networks and games, as they both need Google services to work. Note that some of these apps are also found in the Play Store, while others are exclusive to F-Droid.
Focusing on its exclusive applications, we must point out that all of them offer us an advantage in terms of privacy and security and after trying some of them, these are the best applications you can find in F-Droid:
- Fair mail: an alternative email client that will allow us to connect any email account from any provider and that focuses on privacy, keeping us safe from Google or Microsoft traces.
- AnySoftKeyboard: an alternative keyboard to the open source notes Gboard and Swiftkey that has all the functions necessary for our daily life such as support for several languages, prediction of words as you type, gestures, emoji keyboard, virtual keys and dictionary word editor.
- AntennaPod: a complete podcast manager that will allow us to listen to our favorite shows, automatically download episodes, organize our playlist and adjust the playback speed for each podcast. Another advantage of this application is that we can export both settings and subscriptions to import them to another device.
- OsmAnd +: an interesting alternative to Google Maps which is based on the data provided by OpenStreetMap and that allows us both to use it as a GPS navigator and to download the maps on our terminal for when we don't have an internet connection.
- DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser: one of the most popular web browsers when it comes to privacy, since blocks both cookies and trackers and even allows us to use your browser.
- NewPipe: a YouTube client through which we can view all the contents of this platform without going through Google's servers, add all our subscriptions to this platform and some features of the Premium version such as the downloading videos to our terminal and playing in the background.
F-Droid Reviews: Is It Safe?
The question you are asking yourself at the moment is whether F-Droid is so safe and reliable with the Google app store, the answer is yes, and we can also say that it is more secure than the Play Store itself.
The key to this security is that this store is made up of free or open source applications and its features explain its reliability:
- Safety: the source code of these applications is available to everyone, so we can see what he wants to do and find out if it hides any kind of malicious intent.
- Privacy: These applications are intended to protect users' private data, which they will not be sold or traded with them.
- Quality: There is a false feeling that free apps are of lower quality, but that's not the case. It may be that aesthetically they are not so beautiful, but they do the same functions, or even more, of proprietary applications.
- Free: all the applications in F-Droid are free and they do not include in-app purchases or subscriptions. Some developers accept donations, but many of them just want advertise their creation and that it can be useful to users.
This means that the applications that we can find in this alternative store are safer than those in the Play Store because they are controlled by a large number of users who use them on a daily basis. In this sense, F-Droid gives us the possibility to report to the developer any error we find in an application, such as the Google application store, even if, in this case, the communication is more fluid because we have the possibility of the bug in the project's web page on GitHub.
