F-Droid

One new, one broken, one beta, more updates

Posted on Feb 08, 2024 by Licaon_Kter

TWIF generated on Thursday, 08 Feb 2024, Week 6

F-Droid core

Last week we talked about FOSDEM and the newer Client update. FOSDEM has ended, and we have a news post for that. So let’s focus on the Client for a bit.

The big news was that 1.19.0 brings “unattended updates for everyone”, and we described it as “On Android 12 or later, apps will be autoupdated after the first install or first update, no root, no unlocking, no PrivExt needed”, so let’s break down what this means so our Fediverse fans are not confused any more:

  • Why Android 12 or later only? Because Google said so! In short they’ve added a bunch of useful functions starting with this version that F-Droid (and other app stores or random plain apps) can use to make unattended updates of other apps or themselves. (Why would Google add such a nice thing you ask? Well… see TWIF 50 in 2023 for some very long informative links, but in short, it rhymes with “*opoly” and “trials”).
  • So no more root, unlocking, PrivExt needed? Yes, basically in the past we used Privileged Extension as a helper. Installed as a system app, it would grant to certain apps only, like F-Droid, the power to update other apps. But to be able to setup it as a system app one would need to either unlock the device and manually install it (flash a ZIP file, use a Magisk module, etc) or unlock the device and get an Android version that already includes it (random ROMs or Calyx). Also note that Calyx already moved away from PrivExt for newer devices.
  • But why will apps be autoupdated only after the first install or first update if I am on Android 12 already? Each app has a new property about which app installed it last creating a bond between them. This property is set on install or on the next manual update. You can check this for your apps now, go to: Android Settings -> Apps -> Pick one, scroll all the way down. (NOTE: Currently Google Play behaves erratically and tries to update F-Droid installed apps without the user approval. Please use the “Submit Feedback” button and report this to Google!)

How does this look in practice? You’ve enabled autoupdates in F-Droid -> Settings, once the index is updated, you’ll see some apps, you’ll get the annoying pop-up to update them one by one. Next index update, you press update for some other apps, but not the previous ones. Each new cycle that brings new updates will have you press fewer buttons, even none. If you’ve enabled the “update notification” you’ll see that apps were updated, if not, everything will happen seamlessly in the background.

You want to know which apps were updated, will you feel nostalgic about reading changelogs? Well, you lose some, you gain some. Remember you can still see the latest updated apps in the Latest screen, pressing Search or by subscribing to the TWIF RSS feed in your favourite application.

Community News

@linsui sees that one app finally live:

Acode editor - Android code editor was updated from 1.8.7 to 1.8.8, yet the newer version will fail to start. Luckily we fixed the build recipe and the next version should be fine. In the meantime, affected users can uninstall and re-install older 1.8.7 by expanding Versions in F-Droid Client and then skipping the broken update from the upper right menu.

F-Droid hosts some big apps, say the “huge” Gao&Blaze at 166Mb, or the “immense” Tux Paint at 142Mb (down from 250Mb back in January!) but those are truly lightweight compared to the newly merged Katawa Shoujo: Re-Engineered, A fan-made modernization of the classic visual novel, weighting a whooping 456Mb. KSRE is a visual novel based on Ren’Py. We have gone through the mess of building Ren’Py so if you know any other FOSS visual novel apps based on Ren’Py, feel free to submit them, maybe they are easier to include now that we have the experience.

Given the way F-Droid downloads and installs apps, and the way Android works, one might need at least 2.5Gb of free space on system storage (not SD card!) to be able to actually install KSRE.

By the way, the smallest app package in F-Droid is only 6Kb!

Back in TWIF23 week 47 we explained why Androidacy Module Manager was no longer in F-Droid, but the app had no replacement readily available. That is until this week as MRepo, A Manager for Magisk Modules, was merged, so take a look at which module updates you’re missing.

PiliPala, A third-party Bilibili client developed in Flutter, was included back in January but its recipe needed more work: was initially built from a problematic commit and had no launcher intent, then it was disabled, then the next version was built successfully in our local tests but failed later on the buildserver due to a Flutter bug. And now after all these adventures in compile-land, it’s finally live.

While the newly added SiYuan, A privacy-first, self-hosted knowledge management app, is a local-first note-taking app, remember you can’t simply disable its network permission. It runs a server on background and the UI is a simple WebView. Without network permission it can’t connect to its local server and won’t work.

@Licaon_Kter might use betas:

For K-9 Mail as the app was updated to 6.715 but many will still use currently deemed “stable” 6.603 as the developers like to bump versions when ready. If you want to try the latest version you might know how to already. 😏

Rocket.Chat was updated too, but by the time you read this the app might already be gone from F-Droid. Two issues were raised: users being worried about the new server conditions and limitations (see the forum thread with all the info), and second, based on that, we digged deeper and found non-FOSS licensed code in the client also, hence all the app versions were disabled pending upstream development. (#3183)

SimpleX Chat was updated from 5.5 to 5.5.1 and now in reverse of last week’s situation armv7 is live but arm64 is postponed one more cycle. FYI, this app uses the Nix build system and takes more than 8 hours to build all the tooling (Haskell!) needed for one architecture only, and sometimes not all the ducks are in the same row.

Spring Cleaning ⛅

Newly Added Apps

6 more apps were newly added
  • KUKSA Companion App - The Companion App for the KUKSA Databroker
  • Micro Timer - A tiny, microwave-inspired timer app for Android
  • Obtainium - Get android app updates directly from the source
  • Swatch .beat clock - Internet Time clock and converter
  • Tempo - An open-source and lightweight music client for Subsonic
  • whoBIRD - Recognize birds by their sounds, anywhere in the world!

Updated Apps

140 more apps were updated

Thank you for reading this week’s TWIF 🙂

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