I’m currently looking to develop an open source app that can help somebody. I’m currently out of ideas, so I’d like to heard if from you guys.
Sorry if it seems to lazy to ask for ideas like that, I just thought that I could do it since the result will be a free app.
I would really want to have a really good open source SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) app, with good secure key management and excellent transfer performance. So far, I haven’t found any such app.
An equivalent to iOS Shortcuts for Android and Linux.
Don’t any linux DE have something like a shortcuts app?
I can’t wake up or a similar app.
I would’ve wanted an alarm clock app with ‘tasks’ you need to do before turning it off.
I know about one app that requires you to solve math questions. I want all the *other* tasks.
So what i use works is a bit different kind of task but it gets you out of bed…
Something that comes up a lot but probably can’t be made open source is a wallet app. But if we ignore the payments part, Google wallet has some really nice features when dealing with plane tickets which I’d love to see in a standalone open source app.
I use fWallet for my plane tickets
If you’re interested in something that doesn’t even exist, and should be more-or-less straightforward:
Music/podcast app that will accept VST plugins (there are many FOSS ones, as well as non-FOSS ones) so that we can compress/limit the sound range on podcasts while in the car. Or even a built-in compressor/limiter that’s based on FOSS compressors.
I was listening to a hysterical podcast episode between three people, but one of mics was way louder than the other two. I had to take it into Pro Tools and fix it myself before listening to it.
There are apps that allow EQ, but none that do actual compression, from what I can tell.
The ability to automatically detect commercials (via sound level / machine learning) and skip them would be amazing as well. There’s an app for iOS that does this, but nothing for Android.
WhatsApp
What about signal?
The signal app does not let me send messages to WhatsApp users.
Use the web app version then
The web app version requires you to install the nonfree app. This is circular logic.
Oh I didn’t know it couldn’t work without the app. Nvm then
Yeah and not just once. Iirc if their proprietary, closed-source app doesnt call home to their mother ship at least every 2 weeks, then all your WhatsApp Web sessions get deauth’d.
We really need a way to use WhatsApp without using the original spyware app.
Well even if someone creates it, it will still act like a web session. It will just be a frontend. You can’t create a separate app with authentication and everything because it’s proprietary (so you can’t see how authentication works) and messages are E2EE
Signal I suppose would be the closest analog
No, I’m not looking for an alternative. I’m looking for an open source client that let’s me talk to folks on WhatsApp.
I see, fair enough. I don’t know if you’ll have any luck with a FOSS third party client which does t violate their TOS. There was something on fdroid years ago, a wrapper that effectively allowed you to use WhatsApp Web on another phone (or perhaps even the same one), but it ultimately requried the use of the official clients
If you use one of those WhatsApp web apps, you still have to use the closed source app. It doesn’t solve the problem
Yes, I already aluded to this. Point being, I don’t think you’ll find a viable FOSS front end since it would violate their TOS.
Most people don’t care about violating ToS. Its not a risk to an open source project.
It is to
A: the continuity of said project (DMCA) and B: to the individual end users.
You can use FOSS clients for things like Discord or the Google play store but you still run the risk of getting banned.
This and so many others that are irreplaceable because of the Network effect. Google Maps, Uber and so on…
However if you are looking for a self contained app to bring into the Foss ecosystem then I would recommend making a game that you like?
My first game that I bought on Google Play was Osmos making a version of this that is open source would make me happy…
No, I’m not looking for an alternative. I’m looking for an open source client that let’s me talk to folks on WhatsApp.
ah, hopefully with the Digital Markets Act in the EU, reliable bridging to Matrix with E2EE intact will come quickly. You can already bridge (e.g. I run mautrix-whatsapp), but its not in an ideal state
Even with a matrix bridge, you still have to run WhatsApp – the official closed source client. It doesn’t solve that problem
I want a way to not have to run closed source software to communicate with users on WhatsApp
Yup, that’s what DMA should solve (edit: or, rather, will solve, when Whatsapp fully complies with it)
A closer analogy would be XMPP since that’s what whatsapp is based on.
The best open source client for it is Conversations for Android ($0 on F-Droid, $3 on google play except during christmas when it’s $0)
depends what you mean by closer – by features and ease of use, Matrix is the closest you can get to Whatsapp right now. XMPP is good, though!
Matrix is kinda janky and unstable
What I mean by closer is code-wise. On the backend, WhatsApp literally uses XMPP. The big difference is that WhatsApp also has a few proprietary plugins, and a singular client that uses these and hides away the fact that it’s all XMPP.
Telegram is pretty good, and has open-source clients.
Doesn’t let me talk to people on WhatsApp
It soon will
Deadline for that was a few months ago. I’m skeptical
Edit: someones already mentioned these below… nevermind!
If youre in the EU then EU parliament forced whatsapp to start developing cross-app communications with Signal, telegram etc. (Source). This was in 2022 and was due to be released in March 2024. Im not sure where it got to though since i dont use whatsapp, though i might start asking some friends to see if its rolled out.
Alternatively there are “matrix bridges”. Namely via Matrix which can link messaging apps through matrix accounts and send messages between
Make an Android app for Redlib please :)
Xplore file browser
It’s trivial to replace the independent pieces of xplore, but it has so many features in one app that I just can’t let it go. It’s got dual pane file browsing, disk usage chart, smb, ftp, and many other cloud storage connections. It also handles many types of compression.
It’s become my main offline music player as well, because it has the simple ability to shuffle a folder of music, which is all I really need.
It can also view installed apps, export them to apk, and view and modify appdata (as non root!).
Same but with FX File Explorer
It just has so many useful features
I want to crop screenshots easily :(
What android OS do you use? On stock Android 14 (GrapheneOS, but it’s not a GOS feature) this functionality is built into the stock screenshot tool.
pwr+voldown -> tap screenshot that appears in the overlay after you take it -> tap the crop tool . I suppose step three could be removed but what if you want to do something that isn’t cropping? There are lots of other features so at some point you have to tell the tool what you want to do.
Grapheneos. Do you mean “markup”? Look in the “apps” app for it. It’s a proprietary app by google
No, I don’t have markup installed (it is there in apps but not installed from the mirror).
I think in my case the screenshot functionality is built into AOSP and the editor you get when tapping the resulting preview overlay in the lower left corner of the screen is part of the “gallery” app since using the “edit” feature from gallery launches the same editor. Maybe GrapheneOS just sets that as the default editor, I’m not sure.
Which gallery are you using? fossify?
AOSP gallery that comes with GrapheneOS. The app info says it’s called
com.android.gallery3d. There’s some info here in the docs about the relationship between camera, edit functions, and the gallery app.Thx.
It currently opens an external editor activity for the edit action.
I don’t have a dedicated gallery app or editor installed. I can’t find anything in apps either besides markup. Maybe my installation is too old.
Check “Image Toolbox” on fdroid
Thx but it is not as fast as “markup” or huawei’s screenshot tool. You need multiple steps in order to crop a simple image.
Sailforms Android app!
https://groups.google.com/g/sailforms-users
Use like 12 years for keeping track of lots of personal stuff. It’s a generic database / table / forms app that’s very powerfull. Buttons, queries, reports, calculated fields etc.
But: the app developer stopped despite a rather enthusiastic community. Now it isn’t even on the Play Store anymore and I guess everybody must have an exit strategy.
Have you heard about grist?
There’s lots of FOSS music players, but none of them have a volume slider / preamp. The Android volume slider is always either too loud or quiet so I have to make fine adjustments using the preamp in JetAudio. If someone could add that to an existing music player that’d be cool.
And one that could handle a decent sized library (10s of thousands). One of the few places I’m happy to pay for it, Poweramp will let you buy a licence without google services. If you’ve already bought it and are on GrapheneOS you can enable play services for (3?) days and it stays good after you disable play services. I seldom shill, but here we are…
You can do this in VLC, though it’s not very practical. VLC’s equalizer has a preamp slider, it’s just not great if you want to change it all the time.
AnyType , AppFlowy, Affine - alternatives to notion LibreSpeed - alternative to Speedtest.net And Penpot - alternative to Figma
A modern replacement for OpenScan. It’s workable, but sie feature don’t work on Modern Android, and a good Scanner app is probably something most people could use. Could look at Adobe Scan and Office Lens for feature inspiration.
Any image/video editor in Android. I’ve been trying Image Toolbox, but sometimes it doesn’t work or crashes :(
“Pixels” mood tracker. I love it but I also love self-hosting all my services.
Seems interesting, but it only allows you to track mood once a day. But my mood changes throughout the day, so I don’t see how it’s useful.
You can add multiple entries per day but if I remember correctly it’s not great at displaying them in a useful way which is unfortunate
