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?
Bank clients. Taxi aggregator clients.
Strava, komoot and a calorie tracker that’s actually decent
Universal Copy and Network Signal Guru. former is used to copy on text which usually unable to copy. latter is used to modify some modem setting.
Some apps that I don’t understand why no OSS exists:
-
Teleprompter app that allows you to read a scrolling script while recording video
-
basic photo editor to crop, rotate, color correct, add text
-
basic video editor to crop, clip, and combine video
-
visual voicemail
And just for fun, here are some OSS apps that are better than any non-free alternative: SD Maid, Firefox/Fennec, Aurora Store (OSS front-end for a very proprietary Google store), RTranslator, Syncthing, OSS Document Scanner.
basic photo editor to crop, rotate, color correct, add text
ImageToolbox can do almost everything you described.
basic video editor to crop, clip, and combine video
Have you tried Open Video Editor?
Promising! HEIC/HEIF formats are still a challenge for this tool.
Image tool box doesn’t seem to be able to arbitrarily rotate or add text. Some nice features, though.
Open Video Editor doesn’t seem to be able to combine videos. I’m thinking something like CapCut, which allows combining photos, videos, and audio. It would be an ambitious project to be sure, but it seems like it should be doable.
basic photo editor to crop, rotate, color correct, add text
There are so many of these it’s not even funny, and yes FOSS ones. Same for video
Also Mull > Fennec and Mulch > Chromium
Great to hear! Can you name one for me?
-
Tasker, because there’s no alternative.
MiXplorer (file manager), because even if not counting the features that should be a different app, it’s much better than material files.
I would like to find alternative to Garmin app. It is bad if you don’t want to use the cloud features, also you can’t plan routes without internet connection like wtf that’s the only reason I bought it for.
Have you tried Gadgetbridge?
Thanks I give it a try, problem for me is that I need to plan route and then put it in cyclocomputer. I don’t need any other bs.
It didn’t worked.
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)
Sorry not native speaker, thanks for correction.
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.
Google Pay/Wallet
Right now tap and pay is completely and hopelessly corporate
The issue is that the digital tap-to-pay cards are actually reissued cards with their own unique numbers. They also require significant security measures to protect from cloning attacks.
So banks need a party that they can safely issue a digital card to, knowing that the card data will be stored safely.
Even a FOSS app that covers all the user’s needs is going to have a lot of trouble actually getting a card loaded into it under current standards.
I hate to say it, but crypto wallets are likely the closest thing we’re ever going to get to a FOSS tap-to-pay system. Banks are inherently corporate and capitalist, so it’s not really in their nature to make things open source.
Perhaps if there were an industry standard for issuing digital cards, instead of banks partnering with centralized wallet apps, we could procure our own digital cards to load onto our phones and watches, or integrate into other devices. But that’s a whole other battle that nobody is fighting right now.
A FOSS app for digital payments, must have a company front to sign deals with country retail store chains. Although customer kyc can be avoided, the payments from the front company to retail chains would be thru a corporate structure.
… maybe convenience is the wrong path
The advantages of PoW crypto, over digital (and PoS), it’s possible to force between seller and buyer:
- communication with end-to-end encryption
- privacy oriented marketplaces
With the goal of fostering our own private communities. Over time, might spawn a sub-culture, identity, and ultimately people hood.
Ticktock
Android Auto
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 agree.
I try to use as much FOSS as I can, but nothing even comes close to Poweramp.
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.
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.
But I would say that I’ve been trying to find equivalent equilizer functions that this app has on desktop.
Have you tried RootlessJamesDSP?
I love you can set eq per device. My phone speaker, headphones and car all have their own settings. Its fantastic.
Obsidian
Logseq
logseq but without electron
That’s emacs with org-roam
ok, but on a smartphone, with touch screen?
Fair enough. But IIRC there’s a couple well made org mode android apps. I think orgzly was the name
Edit: also emacs does run on android!
Logseq is good but it doesn’t have all the obsidian features: it handles markdown a bit differently, does not just use the file tree and has no tags.
Termius
Not just Android, I want a cross-platform ssh client that shares keys. Termius is probably overkill for that, but I haven’t found anything else that works on Linux and Android. The real issue that made me stop paying for it is that for rpm based Linux I have to use the snap version and snap is buggy as heck with multitasking.
I was in same boat, I ended up going with Tabby for my Linux clients.
It is by no means a like for like replacement BUT you can someshat backup and sync profiles and config across machines.
Is a huge shame it doesn’t work on android though
Shazam (or equivalent)
Hi, thanks a lot, I’ll sure try them both!
Nova launcher.
I Haven’t found one that works so well with KLWP or has good app drawer organization. I like having folders and tabs to split everything up. Having one big list of apps (70% I dont use often and another 10% bloat) isn’t useful.
I recently switched launchers. Have you tried Kvaesitso? It’s the best I’ve tried. It allows you to create categories in your app drawer, and organize that way. I’ve really been liking it.
Thank you for your suggestion.
Having just tried it, it is not for me. The categories is there, but having the search/app drawrr on the top won’t work me, especially with these stupid large phone everyone makes. (I’m guessing theres a way to change it, but I didnt get that far)
The ultimate reason its not for me is how widgets are a scrolling thing. It’s a different idea, but I like the widgets on my home screen where I can passively see them.
If there’s a way to change that, I didnt see it. I didn’t even find a way to get rid of the big clock at the bottom.
Same. I’ve been attempting to de-Google and stick with FOSS where possible, but only Lawnchair has come close to Nova Launcher, but it’s not without its limitations like setting a primary home screen, and better widget padding and removing round corners.
I’m still experimenting with others, but many are no longer under active development either.
@FuryMaker @helpImTrappedOnline
nova launcher has been the last app without foss replacement for me until I found neolauncher.
Using the option ‘categorize apps as tabs’ I have the great drawer behavior as with Nova.
Though development is slow, you can get in contact with them on the matrix channel.
(Oh, just remembered that I still have one non foss app for my Yamaha receiver)
Cool, first impressions are pretty good.
It took a minute to find, the play store has some not free thing. But I found the github page.
We need a NOVA replacement with how they’ve recently restructured the company. It looks like NOVA is getting squeezed for the last few cents they’ve got to offer by whom ever bought the company 1-2 years ago.
I’ve tried every other launcher I could find. In my opinion they all seemed to be minimalistic by design or they just lacked features.
fwiw lawnchair beta works absolutely fine for me, i guess it can’t do anything fancy with the app drawer but like, that’s why you have a home screen…
I tried, and tried to like it. We all work differently. I like widgets on the home screen, swipe up for apps. I guess it’s the “start menu” mentality.
I’ve used several launchers but there seems to be a halt developing them. For the most time, I used to use recently Neo Launcher, but it feels dated now, they are working on a rewrite and it’s still beta (if not still alpha). Kvaesitso is a good launcher, but I’m too accustomed to the swipe up gesture to show apps and Kvaesitso just decided to make it upside down for me, and it feels odd even if you can change this to your preference. Finally, KISS launcher, which had halted development a bit but I find light and customizable enough. Not gonna lie here, as soon as Neo launcher gets to a stable state, I’m coming back.
Edit:
I wanted to mention a couple of killer features of KISS that you might probably like:
- Its dock can pin a couple of apps and have some spaces changing depending on the frequency of use.
- You can have a list of frequently used apps associated to a gesture (I use swipe-up and single-touch).
- If you are gonna use a not too frequently used app, you can have a gesture for this too (I use long-touch).
- Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is searchable. Well, not everything, but they surely allow you to search a lot of things.
That one DAW for electronic music… The logo had a hexagon or something… Caustic maybe?
Agree there are no decent daws no real actual one’s on Android that are open source and or contain a loop library that’s not like an infant made it, they are all primarily proprietary and pretty much a bag of t*rds so far except I hear for FruityLoops but it’s expensive and still nothing comparitively to the PC version it’s half a job. The only good free one is Garageband on IOS devices but again it’s free to use but proprietary software made by Apple’s Logic team I think. Android is looking like a complete idot on that front compared to Garageband versus any and all combined daws they have built for it so far in either/and/or open or closed source.
Hmmm I do need a reason to learn rust… But a cross platform DAW feels like too big of a project for my level of disorganization 😹
Maybe I should try building ardour for android, it would be way easier to rebuild Ardour’s UI for mobile.
That was the one that came to mind while your at it maybe add a shortcut for extending a sound region to the full length of the track eg. Logic Pro X uses the L key for this I suspect it stands for Loop, but yeah would be awesome to have some ported daw that can also be used on Android TV OS for TV boxes like the Shield TV and these super powerful Rockchip RK3588 chipset TV OS boxes like the Mekotronics R58 mini and R58X range I have one, the idea would definitely work for those as they are powerful S series samsungs definitely to, mouse capability and keyboard for TV boxes obviously would have to be included as they don’t have touch screens.
