also includes: me talking about the one CD player i mentioned in a past blog post.
obsidian says this takes 11 minutes to read.
Ever since the developer verification bullshit was announced, I been researching quite a bit to figure out how the new changes will affect me. And it seems for the most part, I should be fine. Then I realized I have a lot of apps installed from the Play Store via the Aurora Store, and then I realized something: Google is capable to go all the way and to kill off privacy respecting front-ends like Aurora Store. If Google’s goal is to have a full and complete control over the operating system, they can pretty much change their servers in a way to make something like Aurora Store impossible to exist. Aurora Store has always operated in a grey area too, with them clearly stating that Aurora Store is technically against the TOS, not to mention that Google has a history of messing with Aurora Store by blocking access to those anonymous accounts. Also the whole using anon accounts to get apps that way is something that causes me quite a bit of concern. Like there is no way something like this is cleanly implemented, and there is bound to be some jank somewhere along the line that compromises privacy, security, or both.
I guess the point of this post is to talk about the alternatives that I found during my search for a Play Store replacement. And what I am referring to a “Play Store alternative”, is an alternative that does not use the Play Store in anyway, shape or form. This pretty much disqualifies Aurora Store as an option since it completely depends on Google servers, and Google can pull the plug, at whatever time it wants. Thankfully there are alternatives to the Play Store. There is F-Droid, Aptoide, APKMirror, APKPure, and a large number of these so called alternative app stores. I must mention that none of them offer paid apps since that is a thing that only the Play Store can handle at all. In my case however, I decided to go for a mix of F-Droid and Obtainium, only really using APKPure for those apps I just can’t manage to get any other way. There is also another app store called Accrescent which claims to be good on security and privcacy, but there is barely any apps, with only 30-ish apps available to download.
F-Droid/Droid-ify
F-Droid is pretty well known in the Android community as a good place to download FOSS apps. Back then I wasn’t so crazy on privacy or anything, so I would just use the Google Photos app together with the Google Play Music app to play music and the Google app to search stuff on Google. It was pretty bad back then. Ever since then, I been slowly yet surely migrating to a more FOSS oriented mindset, and replacing a bunch of apps with better FOSS alternatives. I eventually ended using F-Droid for most of this, and sometimes I would just hop on there and see what apps were on the F-Droid app front page. I sometimes found interesting stuff, downloaded it, and then realized that it was better than anything I was using at the time. The client of choice for me now is one called Droid-ify, which I think works and looks better than the official F-Droid app. Droid-ify also includes a couple of useful repos already added, like the IzzyOnDroid repo, which offers some useful apps that aren’t usually on the official F-Droid repos, directly from built binaries from application developers, at the cost of some security. Currently I use around 60-ish apps installed via various F-Droid repos, such as:
lug’s note: this is not an exhaustive list
| App | Usecase |
|---|---|
| Breezy Weather | Good weather app that can work with Smartspacer |
| FairMail | Mail client that actually gives me notifications of incoming mail. |
| AntennaPod | Podcast player app |
| DAVX5 | App that can integrate multiple services to Android (like Nextcloud) |
| Element | Matrix based chatting app |
| Fennec | Firefox based browser |
| Floccus | Bookmark syncing |
| Jellyfin | Client app for the Jellyfin media server |
| KDE Connect | Good app to sync multiple devices |
| KeepassDX | Password manager based off Keepass |
| Signal | Chatting app |
| Lawnchair | Android Launcher |
| microG Services | FOSS Replacement for Google Play Services |
| Nextcloud app, Nextcloud Deck, Nextcloud News, Notes | Various apps made to work with Nextcloud |
| ProtonVPN | VPN app |
| Seeker | Android Soulseek client |
| Syncthing-Fork | Android port of Syncthing |
| Tasks.org | Tasks app |
| Termux | Terminal app |
| Tailscale | VPN that I use to connect between most of my devices and server. |
| Tubular | Newpipe fork |
| Tuta Mail | Email Client for Tuta Mail |
| VLC | Media player |
| Xed-Editor | Advanced text editor with syntax highlighting (I mostly use it for markdown file editing/creation) |
| Fossify Gallery | Gallery app |
A lot of these apps were found by my simply looking in the recently updated tab on F-Droid, and sometimes I would download these to try them out. Sometimes I would end up liking them quite a lot, to be honest.
Obtainium
The idea behind Obtainium is that you can get apps from the source (for example, the releases tab on a project’s Github page), making it not an app store, but more of a utility that can help you install and keep apps updated. The thing about this app is that it can be pretty tricky to use for someone using it the first time. Essentially you are supposed to just copy the link to the releases page of GitHub, Gitlab or whatever, and then you paste it into the sources, but it is often not very clear. I think my favorite feature that Obtainium has is that it has a crowd-sourced section of difficult apps to install, like Steam, Whatsapp and Telegram. These can be a pain to keep updated without the Play Store, so I am glad that the community made these easier to deal with. Obtainium has become my second most favorite way to install and manage apps because I can simply skip the middle man and download it directly from source. The downside is now it is your problem to make sure if you trust the developer, since you’d won’t have a central auditing authority (kinda) like the Play Store and F-Droid. And a lot of the times these alternative app sources are often insecure (like Aptoide’s user built repositories, also Aptoide has been breached in the past), full of ads, can be privacy invasive (like Huawei’s AppGallery), do not offer closed source apps (F-Droid) or inconvenient to use (like APKMirror, which Obtainium cannot download files from and can only really let you know so you can manually download them and install them).
lug’s note: so back 2015-16, there used to be this cool feature that Aptoide used to have which is to host a sorta app repository that a person can maintain. It was of course very fucking sketchy, since you can find pirated apps, hacked versions of some apps, and malware. I remember I downloaded a modded version of Pixel Gun 3D from there which would give me a shitload of coins and gems in-game. I still don’t know how I never managed to get any malware at fucking all back then, lmao.
This is an non-exhaustive list of apps where I use Obtainium to update them.
| App | Usecase | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Steam | Mobile app for Steam | Directly off Steam’s website |
| AppVerifier | App to verify multiple apps. | Github |
| Onlyoffice Documents | Document editor for Android | Github |
| Filen | App to access Filen’s cloud storage | Github |
| Obsidian | Personal Database / note taking app | Github (Obsidian is not FOSS but they host releases on Github) |
| Proton Mail | Mail app for Proton Mail | Github |
| Revenge Manager | App manager for Revenge, a Discord client mod. | Github |
| Seal | Video downloader | Github |
| Smartspacer | Customizable widget for the “At a Glamce” that works with Lawnchair | Github |
| Telegram | Chat app | Directly from Telegram’s website |
| Chat app (that i fucking hate) | Directly from Whatsapp’s website | |
| FUTO Keyboard | Good keyboard replacement to replace Gboard | Github |
| Dollphone | A cool icon pack that I really like. | Gitlab |
Paid apps and apps that I can’t get anywhere else strikes once again
As I mentioned in the last post here, paid apps are very hit or miss on degoogled devices. While you can download them with Aurora Store, there is no good way to get paid apps elsewhere without depending on the Play Store in some way, shape or form. And while I did manage to give up most of my paid apps, there are many of them I just cannot switch, since I don’t really like the alternatives that are available, or there are no ways to download them (legally, at least). I should also point out, is that to download paid apps in the first place, you need to sign in to Aurora Store with your current Google account, and this kinda just defeats the purpose of using Aurora Store anyways.
Musicolet is a music player that I really love. Ever since I found it, it has been my go-to player and I have recommended it to many people. The thing is that, there are some nifty features that require payment to use, and one of them is the ability to see more entries in the “top of all played” playlists. And while the developer offers a way to get the app without the Play Store, it will forever be locked to the free version.
FX File Explorer is my go-to file explorer for Android, since it has a split-view folder system that lets you see two folders at once and copy files across each other. The app also has a lot of cool features, like the ability to access SMB shares, the ability to access cloud storage, APK exporting tools, storage management, and more. These are offered in the paid app, which I paid for. I haven’t really found any app that can fully replace the file explorer yet, sadly.
Because of this I can’t fully ditch Aurora Store, and I would have to keep using it so I can eventually get rid of the app. But I did manage to migrate a large part of the apps off of it. I will continue to find alternatives for these two apps and figure out other alternatives.
Tangent 2: HiFi Dreams update: lug finally dusts off that old CD player.
As I mentioned in the last post about this, I mentioned that we had a music player stored on top of the living room cabinet, just collecting dust here. So I just took it, connected it, and it surprisingly worked. I was kinda expecting something to be already broken, since it has been so long since it last had power running through the system, but the fact that it actually shows signs of life is amazing.
When it came to playing discs, however, initially it didn’t work. I tried a couple discs, 5 discs that I burned a couple years ago which didn’t work (not surprising, since the CD player is from 1993 and prob. doesn’t know what CD-Rs are), one CD-ROM that came from a English school book, and two different CDs that my sister purchased a couple years ago, which in hindsight was pretty fucking stupid risking them with an untested CD player but was still worth trying, I suppose. None of these would play at all, and I was wondering what the issue is. So I was like “fuck it” and decided to take a screwdriver and take the cover off and see what the issue was.
So immediately I found the issue. For whatever reason, the CD player would take the disc from the changer tray, tries doing something 3 times (something clicks inside the player, not sure what it was) and then rejects the disc and goes to the next tray. I imagined that it could be something related to the motor that didn’t work, so I decided to take the CD reader assembly apart and see if anything was out of the ordinary.
Taking the thing apart, I noticed that the laser was very dirty, essentially caked in dust. I took a q-tip dipped in alcohol and gave the laser a good clean. After letting the alcohol evaporate for a bit, I decided to try again, and this time, the CD player started to recognize discs. So uhh, success i guess? lmao. Another issue that I realize that I have is that we don’t really have anything that has an RCA input, since like phones and laptops exist. And the TV that we do have, if I remember correctly, has non-working RCA audio connectors. So I won’t be able to test the thing if it actually plays music, until I get my hands on an amp and speakers. At least for the amp, getting a used one would probably be pretty easy, the speakers however? Probably not.
I think another thing that I noticed is how easy and nice this player is to take apart. There are no weird screws, no awkward motherboards in the way, no hidden screws, nothing. It was a nice breath of fresh air compared to the recent news of how Android is getting locked down (still fucking pissed off at that one).
Another thing I want to do to is to reuse an old PC from 2007 as the audio player for my FLAC and MP3 files that I have amassed throughout all these years. I think the processor should be enough to handle FLAC playback, and it is also a SFF PC which makes that computer nearly the same size as the music player itself. Musicbee still has a Windows 7 release, which is the OS I plan to use on this machine, and it also supports using SMB shares for music library loading. I should also mention that I do plan to get an SSD for this PC, since the current hard drive that is installed at the moment is very slow and old (it is from 2009, after all).