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.
This is not an answer to your question, but I would love if somebody would make InputStick software for platforms other than android if possible
Another idea would be a e-book reader. I don’t like Librera, because it acts more like a image viewer and less like a eBook reader.
- Librera Reader
- KOReader
- Myne
More FOSS apps: https://github.com/Psyhackological/AAA
try koreader I’ve tried a few e-book readers this is the best one I found so far I think it’s available in fdroid
You could give KOReader a try :)
Is there a way to get colour there? B&W bums me out… I’m on GrapheneOS so have MoonReader (install google services, install, disable network on it, uninstall google services, and you’re good) but ebooks is one of my major use cases on mobile and everything FOSS sucks in comparison…
Can’t answer that question as I am only using KOR on my ereader, which only displays black an white :D What would be your usecase for color in ebooks?
I like green on black on my phone, nice screen, good for the eyes. I’d love to sync between that and my kobo, but not happening at the moment. Currenly read new things on the kobo and old faves on the phone, it’s fine, but could be better…
I really don’t like gesture-based tap-zone control on KOReader. Is it possible to have buttons on-screen?
If you don’t need anything special, Book Reader on fdroid might work for you.
I like this. Only downside is that it isn’t Material You ready, but I don’t care about cosmetics as long as it work.
Edit: no release available, which is a bummer.
A mood tracking app. There’s no open-source alternatives that exist for the time-being (disregarding non-native apps).
Check out logseq for journaling. You could easily make a #mood page/tag and it auto organizes it for you
Not a mood tracking app, but I’ve been using Loop Habit Tracker for like the past two years and quite like it.
Unfortunately not OSS, but i’ve been using Daylio forever now, with an active streak of 1600 days, and can’t give this app enough praise. Worth looking into
I don’t have any idea of how conplicated it would be, but a phone app would be a nice option. The stock dialer that comes with FOSS ROMs is OK functionally, but visually looks like it was from 2010. Plus it’s not available through F-droid or other open source app store. Koler is the only serious dialer alternative I’ve seen, and while it looks nice it has always been super buggy.
I’ve been using Emerald Dialer for a good six months now and I love it.
Have you tried the fossify dialer?
Their whole set of apps is nice.
I tried it back when it was under the simple tools developer. I couldn’t get in to his apps (aside from the calendar) for some reason. They all felt half-baked. It’s nice to see that the fossify forks are getting some love, I’ll check it out again.
I like the fossify forks much better than the simple tools, I used to only use the gallery (and even for that I switched to Aves) now I have many of them as default. Dialer is nice, though the integration could flow better.
I’m thinking of this too. I heard there’s only one good alternative dialer app (don’t remember if it was Koler or not). We have a lot of FOSS SMS apps but no dialer ones for some reason
Fitbod, a fitness app that monitored my progress and health data and auto generated appropriate workouts taking muscle group fatigue into consideration
I can’t really think of anything now because Android FOSS apps ecosystem is really good. What I want to suggest is contributing to already existing projects sometimes. It’s faster and just another thing you can do to help open-source ecosystems
Yes, I don’t think I have another app but more features on some apps I use (Smartdock, Joplin, Librera, Rimusic) would be slightly life-changing.
A really good launcher!
Also, weather app!
I think Lawnchair is currently the best FOSS launcher. For weather, check out Breezy Weather
Every time I pivot away from Trebuchet, I always pivot back. It does what I want; app folders, hidden apps, multiple screens, widgets.
All the alternatives sacrifice something
Mlauncher is stellar, and its open source.
I’ll have to check that out, thank you!
KISS launcher on minimal mode with nice icons and a geometric weather widget for me. Been rocking it for years and its amazing
I do find Breezy Weather quite nice ;)
I’ve been on Breezy for years now. No regrets.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll have to check that out!
Searching around online, I found NeoLauncher looks pretty good: https://github.com/NeoApplications/Neo-Launcher
I haven’t tried it though.
Kvaesitso has won me over as a nice looking and very customizable open source launcher
Interesting, thanks!
It’s a bit unorthodox but I use Pie Launcher from F-Droid.
As for weather, I use RadarWeather (also from f-droid)
AnyType , AppFlowy, Affine - alternatives to notion LibreSpeed - alternative to Speedtest.net And Penpot - alternative to Figma
KineStop - After Apple announcef Motion Cues, I went looking on Android because I cannot use my devices in a moving vehicle. KineStop is all I found. I went ahead and bought it because it helps (doesn’t completely get rid of motion sickness). I would gladly switch to an open source alternative if one were available.
I’m sorry, I don’t have any specific suggestions for you, but I am wondering: is there no open source app you yourself wish existed because you would need it?
Working on an open source app because some else (and not you) needs it, is not a good way of staying engaged and caring about the solution. Being the user and target of a project yourself is usually a much netter way of caring and proposing something tailored to at least one individual, maybe more.
Of course, if you are looking for a programming exercise, go for it, but then you don’t need ideas, you can reimplement something which already exists, perhaps which you like, but in your own way. But if you want to have an impact in the open source, it starts by needing something which you don’t really find anywhere and taking matter in your own hands to fix it :) this is not meant to disincentivize you, quite the opposite! I hope you stay attentive to your digital ecosystem to see which holes can be plugged :)
I maintain a private list of ideas I just think of as I go about my day, of things I would like to write/create for myself and while I won’t be going through with all of them, I hope to be able to pick up one or several of them whenever I have time. I can through some ideas here, not as a hint that you should do it (I’ll probably do them myself regardless), but just to inspire you, maybe:
- I am subscribed to a teachable program which has no app and the program is just static information. I want to pull it all and represent it to me offline, not requiring internet to manage my progress. It is also intended to help me archive what I paid for and not depend on the goodwill of teachables to allow me to continue access the resource.
- an RSS feed manager which uses embeddings to automatically organise the content by topic rather than by source.
- an anki plugin to highlight content in the browser based on words from anki that I have and have not learned, to improve my language learning and reading ability.
I have a few more, but this should give you some hints, I hope! Good luck!
It would be a huge undertaking, but a Fitness and Health tracker / aggregator that could replace Google Fit and the likes.
I really can’t bear how Google, Apple, Samsung, and all these big companies are the primary holders of our most intimate information. I’ve put some measures in place to limit who gets what, but it would be a huge boon to be the sole maintainer of my own info.
The problem is that the various apps and devices which report data won’t immediately support syncing with a FOSS upstart…
The app I use for grabbing my weight and BMI can only sync with a few other apps. The app I use for calorie and diet tracking can likewise only sync with a few apps. They happen to have Google fit in common, so I use that as an intermediary to transfer weight to the calorie/diet app. All my steps, exercise, and sleep stay in Zepp, separate from them all.
It sure would be nice to have one service/application to rule them all and a secure method of storing one’s own personal information without having to give it to the tech companies. Sure, use one of the many cloud services but encrypt all the data so that they can’t steal it. Yadda yadda.
One can dream.
I develop a self-hosted service designed to do exactly this! It’s not quite finished yet, but it’s at the point where enough functionality works that it can be used for testing.
https://github.com/connervieira/HealthBox
The docs/USAGE.md file gives an overview of how HealthBox works. Feel free to poke around in the other docs/ files as well.
would probably never happen considering how hippa compliance and privacy
Fitness data is typically provided by services like Google Fit as non-diagnostic non-medical information. Therefore HIPPA compliance is not required.
https://developers.google.com/fit/terms#hipaa_use_limitations
oh sorry i thought the op was talking about an open source version of google fit itself.
More than once I’ve wondered if I can make something look like google fit to other apps, obviously would have to be on a degoogled rom, which limits its utility for a wider audience.
the devices would have to be degoogled so that the app can gather the necessary information? I never used google fit, so I don’t know how it works nor how it gathers the user information.
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 :(
The Transit app, used for bus/train route info and buying tickets. I imagine the ticket buying part would be difficult to OS, but I just want the live transit routing info. A few apps exist for other cities, but not mine. Worst part is Transit relies on Google Maps.
I believe google maps pulls its data from municipalities setting up and streaming realtime data using this: https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs-realtime
For my city, I was able to pull this GTFS data into my home automation system to show next arrival times for a couple of convenient stops near my home.
Yea, I’ve looked into how it works to see if I could add it to an existing app, but ran into a wall I can’t recall right now.
The local stops would be good, but what I really need is the ability to figure out new routes, like visiting a friend.
Oh yeah, then you definitely need something else to take the transit schedule and realtime updates to plan routes for you.
Google lens.
I love point and translate. Faster more pin pointed reverse image search is cool too.
