This Week In F-Droid 35, Week 51, 2018

In this edition: New automated mirror monitor, repomaker released to Flathub, unofficial F-Droid meeting at 35C3 and talk about Off-Grid Services by @_hc.

There are 11 new and 68 updated apps.

F-Droid is a repository of verified free and open source Android apps, a client to access it, as well as a whole “app store kit”, providing all the tools needed to set up and run an app store. It is a community-run free software project developed by a wide range of contributors. This is their story this past week.

New automated mirror monitor

@_hc wrote a bit of code to automatically check up on the status of known F-Droid mirrors.

Repomaker released to Flathub

Only a few weeks after our request for help, @nicoalt was able to report the release of Repomaker on Flathub. For those who don’t know, Repomaker is a web app allowing you to create F-Droid repositories without needing any special knowledge.

Repomaker hasn’t had an official release so far, but it’s already usable, and we’ll make an official release soon. If you’re interested in trying it out before then, you can go to Flathub and install it easily on all major Linux distributions.

We would like to thank @Persival, @Marko10_000 and the Flathub staff for their help on making this release possible!

Unofficial F-Droid meeting at 35C3

The annual Chaos Communication Congress, called 35C3 this year, is taking place soon, from Dec 27th to Dec 30th at the Messe, Leipzig, Germany. As there will be a few F-Droid developers and community members present this year, we are planning to organize an informal meetup during the event. If you want to join us, keep your eyes on our Mastodon, or join #fdroid via Freenode IRC, Matrix, or Telegram.

Talk about Off-Grid Services by @_hc

@_hc will be speaking at 35C3 about Wind: Off-Grid Services for Everyday People - Integrating nearby and offline connectivity with the Internet on Dec 28th at 16:10.

“The internet has become an essential service, and offline methods of sharing data are rapidly disappearing. Other networks are often better suited when connectivity is not available or affordable. Radios, sensors, and computing are available in the cheapest of smartphones and routers. Wind is integrating nearby/offline data exchange with the internet services that we all rely on.”

Downgraded apps

• Vespucci was downgraded to 11.2.2.0 because the auto-update process accidentally pulled in a buggy beta. (See here for technical details.)

New apps

• PanicTrigger: Helps you and others in case of an emergency.
• Suntimes Calendars: The “Calendar Integration” and permissions added in Suntimes v0.9.0 have been removed in v0.10.0. The feature is now available separately via this add-on app.
• SMS Gate: Backup all your sms to an imap server or a local folder.
• LessPass: Generate unique passwords for your accounts based on a master password.
• (F-Droid) Kaltura Device Info: Gsf, widevine l1/2/3, treble & a/b device infos (+other ids).
• MoneyWallet: Expense manager.
• Senior Launcher: A launcher app intended for oldies.
• Vädret: Weather app for sweden.
• HACS: Hackspace access control system.
• TowerJumper: Casual ability game.
• Monochromatic: Enable the built-in black and white mode.

Updated apps

In total, 68 apps were updated this week. Here are the highlights:

• Many changes in Suntimes 0.10.0, the most notable of which is the splitting off of the calendar integration into a separate app (see above) with the appropriate changes in required permissions. Other changes include: support for themes, theme import and export, imperial/metric switch in General Settings, support for third-party apps through a ContentProvider, and many other UI/UX changes and bugfixes.

• Tusky, a Mastodon client, updated to 4.1 with the following changes:
  • Detailed statuses will now have a icon next to their timestamp indicating the privacy setting of the post
  • Improved accessibility of the emojipicker - it now has content descriptions and can be closed with the back button
  • Other minor improvements and bug fixes

• Simple Gallery Pro updated from 6.0.4 to 6.1.0, with an initial widget implementation for creating homescreen folder shortcuts, optional grouping of direct subfolders, custom crop aspect ratio, and many other UX, stability and performance improvements.

• StreetComplete 9.0 is out, with new quests for: Track type, Underground building, Traffic signals sounds, Traffic signals button, Motorcycle parking capacity, and Motorcycle parking covered. The “Max Speed” quest was disabled. Other improvements include the deletion of old cached quests, restore view position on exiting quests, and several other improvements and fixes.

• Mastalab was updated from 1.39.0 to 1.41.2:
  • Accessibility: All images and buttons now have a content description
  • You can transform your tag timelines into media timelines (like the art timeline) by long-pressing the tab
  • Remove NSFW media by default (but you can allow them independently for each timeline)
  • Better customization of the time for notifications
  • Improved refresh for art and tag timelines
  • Other smaller improvements and bug fixes

• Syncthing Lite 0.3.10 is out with updated translations, encrypted temporary data, updated path validation, fixed file type detection for filenames with umlauts and/or spaces, several crash fixes, and other improvements.

• G-Droid is an alternative app to access F-Droid repositories, and was updated from 0.3.2 to 0.4.3, with correctly formatted, translated, described and clickable permissions, a run button for installed apps, clickable tags and categories, complete and up-to-date screenshots in the correct language, new search algorithms “search harder” and “search even harder”, and several smaller UI/UX improvements and bug fixes.

• My Expenses was updated from 2.9.7.1 to 2.9.8, with a redesigned account list, saving goals and credit limits, scroll to current date on app start, custom colors, budgeting, and custom currencies.

• PDF Converter converts images to PDF (no internet required), and was updated from 8.4.7 to 8.5.2, now with the ability to add images to an existing PDF, easily sort images, bug fixes in image cropping and rotation, and several other bug fixes and performance improvements.

Beta updates

The following updates won’t be automatically suggested to you unless you have “Unstable updates” enabled in the F-Droid app settings, but you can expand the “Versions” tab and install them manually. Note that these are marked beta for a reason: proceed at your own risk.

• F-Droid F-Droid was updated from 1.5-alpha0 to 1.5-alpha1, with UX and language cleanup of App Details.

• Fennec F-Droid was updated from 63.0.2 to 64.0.1, with faster and more responsive scrolling, Symantec certificates no longer trusted and several bug fixes including security fixes.

Removed apps

• ICEcons was moved to the archive as it has been discontinued. You should use its successor Frost instead.

Tips and Feedback

Do you have important app updates we should write about? Send in your tips via Mastodon! Send them to @fdroidorg@floss.social and remember to tag with #TWIF. Or use the TWIF submission thread on the forum. The deadline to the next TWIF is Thursday 12:00 UTC.

General feedback can also be sent via Mastodon, or, if you’d like to have a live chat, you can find us in #fdroid on Freenode, on Matrix via #fdroid:f-droid.org or on Telegram. All of these spaces are bridged together, so the choice is yours. You can also join us on the forum.

Thank you for reading, and Merry Christmas on behalf of all F-Droid contributors!