Saturday APPreciation thread (Jul 1 2023) - Your weekly app recommendation/request thread!

Obtainium is one that I have been using for over a week now. It keeps all my FOSS apps up to date. I have 30 apps added now, and 80% of them are now updated directly from their github page!

I would love to know what apps you have added to it!
- Heres the list
  
  And I just added AntennaPod, Vinyl Music Player, Lawnchair, and Liftoff to the list as well!
- The easiest way is to look at your Installed apps through F-Droid as it will show both apps installed through F-Droid and apps from the Play Store that are available through F-Droid. You can copy-paste each source link into Obtainium.
- I use Obtanium to keep Liftoff and Thunder up to date, since the updates come faster than they do from the Play Store :) Very easy to set up...even if you originally installed from the Play Store, you can still use Obtanium to update going forward.

https://wefwef.app/ advertised as mobile-first client for Lemmy

https://lemmy.world/post/367599

Things are moving fast. Let’s see how it turns out to be atleast until we get Apollo/Boost/Thunder etc with multi-platform feature parity.

I'd love for wefwef to have a Material Design theme automatically applied when using an Android phone, but other than that it's right now the perfect Lemmy app and it's extremely fast when you install it with Chrome!
- I want to use wefwef but I just can't get past the fact that it looks like a single page app designed exclusively for iOS. I think it's the permanent back button which you basically never see on Android because it has a dedicated back button/action.

Here's my personal list of recommended apps for a few things:

Aegis (Play Store / F-Droid / GitHub) - 2FA FOSS app that's minimal and simple
Auxio (F-Droid / GitHub) - No-nonsense music player for local files
ConnectBot (Play Store / F-Droid / GitHub) - Simple SSH client
K-9 Mail, soon to be Thunderbird (Play Store / F-Droid / GitHub) - No-nonsense e-mail client
NewPipe (F-Droid / GitHub) - YouTube client for privacy, has no ads, supports background playing, local subscription lists, and ability to download videos
Techmino (GitHub) - FOSS Tetris clone with no ads and multiple modes, definitely my favourite
Waistline (F-Droid / GitHub) - Calorie counter app that stores all data locally. Need to add products yourself but have full control.

K-9 Mail, soon to be Thunderbird

Wait, what.
- K-9 has joined Thunderbird family. Development speed has increased and it will be officially renamed to Thunderbird Mobile soon.
- I know - TIL!
- Me too... wait, what?
- K-9 Mail and Thunderbird ended up partnering about a year ago at this point, and they're planning to turn K-9 Mail into Thunderbird on Android (and also iOS and macOS).

Connect for Lemmy has a sync for reddit feel and is working quite well for me as I make the switch from reddit

I think I like connect the best so far but the logo for it changed today and the change is horrible lol I miss the goofy mascot lol. 1/10
- On connect i can only choose all or local for scrolling. I can't get subscribed.
- I did not like the old one. Do not love the new one. Hoping third time is the charm!
Connect has been my favorite Lemmy app as of late. Jerboa is my old reliable one though 😅
- I just switched from Jerboa to Connect and have no few regrets so far. Still feels like the wild west out here.
  
  Can't wait for Sync though!
  
  EDIT: I do have at least one regret, no easy way to report comments on Connect, AFAICT. Guess I need to keep exploring my options.
Same here, besides the pack of animations it's really getting me used to using Lemmy. Till sync for Lemmy comes out, that is. I can't wait
Seconding this, Connect for Lemmy also feels a lot like RIF.

Antennapod is a Free Open Source Software (FOSS) podcast app. The app is well designed with great features. You can also use it for playing audio books locally as well.

I quite like it, my only complaint is that the Android auto support is not great. It seems to lose track of what podcast I'm playing s lot of the time. The customization and queueing features are great though.
- Yes that definitely used to be an issue. But I haven't quite experienced/noticed that lately (maybe since they revamped the new home tab?)... If it's been a while, maybe give it another shot.
I really like it, solid app.
Neat! Gonna have to give it a shot, looks polished.
Just downloaded it. I really like that it highlights and lets me skip the podcast using timestamp in the description!
+1 for capability to sync to gpoddersync on Nextcloud
- 💯
  
  Also, I recently learned about this standalone server but haven't had a chance to try it out: https://github.com/bohwaz/micro-gpodder-server

With all the social media corps going full ham on advertising, I'm going to make the switch from Chrome to Firefox with ad-blocking add-ons. However, I'm at a crossroads since there are many variations ranging from the official Firefox app to Firefox Nightly and even Fennec or Fenix.

Any recommendations?

If you are trying to switch from Chrome, then just use regular Firefox with the ublock extension (and maybe some of the other privacy extension officially supported). If you are a "power user" and want modify/access about:config and other settings then you need Firefox Nightly. The Fennec and Fenix (iirc) are just stripped down Firefox that either only have private mode or additional settings for privacy (that are already present in regular version, but way not be enabled by default). Hope that helps.
Just get the regular Firefox with uBlock Origin if all you're concerned about are advertisements. The default settings out of the box are fine for most users.

Get the Mull browser if you're concerned about privacy as well, as this is a hardened Firefox similar to LibreWolf. Not sure if this is on the Play Store, but it's definitely on F-Droid.
Using since few months Iceraven Browser with ublock origin and no-script addons
Before jumping ship from Chrome completely try Vivaldi, it's built on the Chrome engine (so you can continue using your extensions and what nots) but it's made by one of the guys that created Opera but jumped ship before it got sold off to big money.

So like old Opera there's a huge emphasis on not only pushing what a browser can do (Opera pioneered speed dial for instance and tabs too iirc) but privacy and security as well.

I've been using it for a while now with Firefox really not being able to scratch the itch left by Opera and I'm really impressed with just how good it is for being built on Chrome.
I use Fennec it disables telemetry and updates pretty quickly from Firefox upstream releases. Also supports custom sync server and add-ons collection without having to run nightly builds.
I liked IceRaven, but it's not regularly updated anymore. I would go with Firefox Nightly, since that lets you install any extension you want (through an arduous process), where regular Firefox only lets you install add-ons on Mozilla's approved whitelist.
I use Kiwi browser, which is a Chromium based browser with extension support! I currently have uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Sponsorblock, Bypass Paywalls installed.
I personally use Mull

I've been using Trunks as my go-to Mastodon client for a couple of weeks now and I'm really liking it.

Trunks is great! I use Moshidon nightly.
- I was using Moshidon, but the official Mastodon app just got Material You so I switched back to it
Have you used Tusky? How do you compare the two?

Does anyone have recommendations for an app that does heart/step/etc health tracking but is FOSS supporting WearOS watches.

I have no idea if it works but you could try your luck with Gadgetbridge
- Thanks I'll take a look. Didn't expect it to pretty much take control of the whole device haha
I think your best bet is this: http://gadgetbridge.org/

Medito is a free meditation app that's developed and run by a dutch non-profit.

I had no idea that it was a Dutch app! It's really great, I've been using it on and off for a year now to great success.

I think Birday is a great app because it's so simple, just reads birthdays from your contacts and notifies you a preset time before.

Musicolet is my favorite local music player because of the ability to switch between queues without losing the position of the last played track. I don't understand how not all music player have the same feature

For self hosted music lovers, I would like to introduce you to Tempo, an open source and lightweight music client for Subsonic, designed and built natively for Android.

I'm waiting for more comprehensive offline support, but it does look promising. DSub and Ultrasonic are other good FOSS subsonic clients ~~(although DSub isn't being actively developed)~~.

EDIT: Actually looks like there has been some recent activity with DSub, which is great to see.

Any app with mark as read or mark as read on scroll?

Looking for a good Lemmy and/or KBin app.

Connect is working really well for me, but I prefer jerboa. Unfortunately that isn't working right now with lemmy. World being on an older version. Once they go to 18.1, I should be able to use it again.
I'm personally waiting for Sync for Lemmy to come out, but in the meantime, Liftoff for Lemmy and Thunder have been pretty good for me
Connect, liftoff, thunder, jerboa are the best ones at the moment
Wefwef, truly amazing and polished experience!
There are a lot of options for Lemmy, but beware they still need to mature a bit. The two apps I keep using the most are Thunder and Connect for Lemmy. Lots of users swear by Liftoff but I find the aesthetics a bit lacking for me. There's also Lemming which is the most barebones but has a great UI for something that has only had a couple of alpha releases. Most if not all of these are available to download from Github.
wefwef is the smoothest right now and it's just a webapp
All the apps I have tried so far have been great. Liftfof however is on a class of it's own. A unique feature it has is the ability to combined feet from different accounts on different instances.
Jerboa is decent, still in its early stages though.

Komoot - great bike route planner and gpx recorder.

Mapy.cz - great hiking navigation with trails colors/indications. Mosty Europe I guess.

Fdroid ->Catima - simple loyalty cards / barcodes instead of supermarket apps

Fdroid -> StreetComplete very easy contributing to osmMaps. You know your neighbourhood? Answer questions if that trafic lights have sound indication for blind people or about the type of surface that bike line has.

I've never heard of StreetComplete before but I'm always up for another crowdsourcing app. It looks like it's this one on GitHub and I think this is their website?

Really dumb question, but do they have an anonymous/unregistered mode or do you also need an OSM account?
- I checked right now and I'm logged in and I think it's necessary to contribute. But it's a simple form to register and you should try. It's pretty addictive to answer questions about your surroundings :)

Pocket paint

Moshidon is a fantastic Mastodon Client. Kotatsu is my personal favorite Manga reader on Android. Image Toolbox is a great choice for an open source mobile image editor with a good amount of features.

Just a few of my personal favorites right now.

Any reasons why you chose Kotatsu over Tachyomi?
- I like that the extensions on Kotatsu aren't seperate APK files. No other reason in particular :)

I'm looking for a Mastodon app. The official app and website really sucks for viewing threads. I prefer the comments to be nested like on Lemmy, but the official one stacks them all. Are there any recommendations?

I use Fedilab, since I prefer a native app to a PWA
Not 100% sure it’s on an android, but toot I like more than ivory.
I don't think I have seen the UI you want on mastodon clients, but another good app is Tusky
- Yup! One guy in this comment section recommended Tusky, and it does nest comments! So I think I'm going to use that for now Thanks!
I personally recommend Moshidon. It's served me well in my short time on Mastodon. Very clean UI and fairly feature-rich.
Have you tried megalodon? Does more than the official app, but with a similar layout so the learning curve is a non issue.
- I'll take a look. Thanks!
  
  Edit: It still stacks all comments like the official one. Maybe I'm too used to the Reddit/Lemmy comment nesting style. That's the gold bar for me, but at least something like what Twitter has would be better.