F-Droid

Shadow of the cycle

Posted on Aug 07, 2025 by paulali

This Week in F-Droid

TWIF curated on Thursday, 07 Aug 2025, Week 32

F-Droid core

Looks like the past still haunts us. We’ve covered, or better said uncovered, the cycle in more detail in the last two weekly posts. Last week we explained how “when we stop a cycle the apps will stay and wait, then the next cycle will start and it will process all the apps changed on top of the queue in the mean time and after that it will process the apps that did not get built in the stopped cycle.”. The waves of those problematic cycles still echo, as apps come to be built, and apps that did not get a chance are stuck on the event horizon of the build server queue. Several devs pinged us and we are working on a solution to bring all the delayed apps up to the surface and prioritize them by the next cycle.

@HStill probes our thoughts:

As part of our announced Open Technology Fund’s FOSS Sustainability Grant, we are doing a little research into FLOSS donations management best practices and preferences and want to hear from you! If you have time, check out our 5 minute survey. Thanks!

@linsui aptly raises a point:

In more delayed updates news, the Android Gradle Plugin version 8.12.0 released recently brought a new AAPT2 version. This version of the tool requires a CPU instruction set (SSE4.1) not supported on our old build server. Some updates of apps are blocked by this problem. We are researching it and working with app devs to rollback the AGP update as a workaround for now. This issue is tracked in #593.

Community News

As long time partners, the Calyx project has been supportive of F-Droid since forever. They’ve been sponsoring work on the infrastructure, been integrating our libraries and outright sponsor client maintenance. Hence we are sad to hear that the people we worked with for years are leaving Calyx. You can read more about the changes in “A letter to the CalyxOS community plus the top update.

Delta Chat was updated to 2.9.0 upgrading everyone to the new shiny stuff. Big jump in version number, for multiple reasons, as now you’ll get a major security upgrade, beautified contact profiles, new email action and direct app access in chats. Read more in the dedicated post. NOTE: As mentioned above in our Core section, ArcaneChat version 2 updates are delayed.

Back in Spring 2023 we introduced the new index format (the thing you download to see what’s new in F-Droid and that holds all the info about apps), meant to cope with the growing catalog, making it easier to improve and more secure. Since then only F-Droid and Basic were using it while users of other clients were deprived of the enhancements available.

As of this week, Neo Store was updated to 1.1.0 and implemented this support. Take a peek in the lengthy changelog and enjoy faster index updates and more.

NewPipe was updated to 0.28.0 adding Android Auto support (there will be loops to jump through for integration into this proprietary system), Feeds and likes improvements, translation work and bug fixes as usual. See the release notes about these and what comes next.

SimpleX Chat was updated to 6.4.2 and brings more improvements for contacts, group members and security. The dev team has a post to explain what’s new.

The Battle for Wesnoth, A turn-based strategy game with a high fantasy theme, was just added. Yes, we had a fork in the past but now it’s the real deal straight from the source. Enjoy! NOTE: The UI fits more on a tablet size device for now, developers are at work to make it accessible to everyone. And more important, F-Droid client might refuse to install it, bugs, bugs everywhere. You can get the APKs straight from the webpage for now, while we work on a fix.

Removed Apps

4 apps were removed
  • huggingAssist: WebView wrapper for HuggingChat
  • M3U: FREE stream media player for Android
  • Xabber: Jabber (XMPP) client with multi-account support, clean interface
  • 拷贝漫画: Third-party client for copymanga with better reading/downloading experience

Downgraded Apps

1 apps were downgraded

Intermezzo from Licaon_Kter

As usual the next section is this huge dry wall of text listing the other updated apps. Many of you have complained that it’s a boring section, and we agree. The sections above are full of exciting (and hopefully new) information, but truth be told we can’t really follow up all the 100-200 app updates that get pushed weekly. We might use one of those apps so we follow its development, we might fix a build and thus get a spicy detail from the commit messages, but otherwise, it all might be on autoupdate and working surely, yet quietly. Each update can hold some beautiful or amazing feat that only you know about, because you care, so if it’s game-changing, or just scratches an itch, please drop by our special forum thread and let everyone else know about it. 🎁

Updated Apps

163 more apps were updated
(expand for the full list)

Thank you for reading this week’s TWIF 🙂

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