F-Droid

Safety in typing, no cloud needed

Posted on Apr 25, 2024 by linsui

TWIF generated on Thursday, 25 Apr 2024, Week 17

Community News

@linsui is forced to tap the sign:

We are sad to read articles like the latest one from The Citizen Lab, “The not-so-silent type: Vulnerabilities across keyboard apps reveal keystrokes to network eavesdroppers”, and rather baffled to see that “cloud-based keyboards” are even a thing. While the F-Droid repo does not hold millions of apps we are users ourselves and we include and maintain apps that, while being FOSS, are also user-centric, from like-minded developers.

A keyboard is the way we talk with our computing devices, telling them our fears, hopes and greatest secrets, it can basically read our minds, hence having all that sent to some server, and allowed to be spied upon in transit or at destination, is a great betrayal of our trust.

While Latin based keyboards abound, like the latest HeliBoard which was updated to 1.3, we have something for IME users too, Trime and Fcitx5 (and its plugins) can cover everyone’s needs to type in their own locale. And, if being FOSS is not enough, these don’t even have the permission to connect to the Internet, nor a need for that. Eg. Trime can even sync user data without Internet, via self hosted apps like Syncthing.

Breezy Weather was updated to 5.2.1_freenet, bringing Fused location support for all flavors, available natively since Android 12.

The YouApps Suite already had six apps in F-Droid, and this week CalcYou, Privacy Focused Calculator app built with MD3, joins too.

Many Gitlab users were waiting for a LabCoat update, and while the newly 2.7.9 is from an year old codebase, it took three and a half years to drop (wow!). The new icon might be fancy, but the date bug fix (posts from one second ago were dated 19 hours in the past) is sweet.

maid, Interact with artificial intelligence models (llama.cpp models locally, and with Ollama, Mistral, Google Gemini and OpenAI models remotely), was just added. Now you can run LLMs on your smartphone with a nice UI (no more messing with Termux and command lines!). But if you don’t have a powerful device, the LLM is very slow: it may take tens of seconds to spell out one word. Maid also supports remote models so you can still enjoy its results no matter the device used.

@Licaon_kter doesn’t split the atom, but gives us protons:

After being mentioned in the news two weeks ago, Proton Pass: Password Manager, created by the scientists who met at CERN behind Proton Mail, is finally live for everyone to enjoy. The Proton team has a blog post about it too, that you can read here. The app description is missing, and upstream is aware.

Standard Notes was update to 3.193.9, but did you know that its developers were acquired by Proton? You can read more on their blog.

And since we are deep in Proton news, SimpleLogin - Anti-spam, also acquired back in 2022, will be moving its legal domicile to Switzerland.

Newly Added Apps

13 more apps were newly added
  • Accelerrace - Simple HTML5 racing game made just for fun
  • Aria for Misskey - Dive into the interplanetary microblogging platform
  • Asteroid’s Revenge - Endless survival bulletHell (highscore based)
  • Flexify - Track gym progress, visualize graphs, enjoy offline support & timers
  • Fossify Notes - To do list widget with a notebook organizer, checklist, simple shopping list
  • GPS Locker - Keep the GPS locked at all times
  • Mat-O-Id - Pay beverages with RFID-Tag
  • Metadata Remover - Protect your privacy by removing metadata from your photos!
  • OpenDefault - Help opening URLs with your default App
  • Shiori - Client for Shiori, the bookmarks manager
  • SpamBlocker (Call & SMS) - Silences unwanted calls/SMS messages without replacing your default apps
  • Stream Player - A simple HTTP stream player
  • eQuran - An enriching way to connect with the Holy Quran

Updated Apps

153 more apps were updated

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