Recommended Apps
Apps I recommend
So what apps do I recommend? It all depends. I still use proprietary apps for a number of reasons. Below are going to be the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) apps I recommend for a variety of reasons.
This list will assume you're running fully degoogled firmware such as LineageOS. You can do this on a stock Pixel and I do recommend doing so, but this is going to be geared towards the degoogled crowd. Neither browsers nor FFUpdater are listed because I already have a page up with my recommended browsers. I also won't list KeePassDX, Aegis, or any other "security" level app because they will get their own dedicated pages in the near future.
F-DROID
This one's a no-brainer and should be the very first app you install. F-Droid is the main repository list for FOSS apps on Android. You can even add other repos under Settings.
AURORA STORE
This is a Google Play frontend, meaning you can get whatever apps you need off of Google Play without first signing in.
NOTE: You will need to sign in to your Google account if you want to download any app you paid for in Google Play.
NOTE: Aurora Store is technically in violation of Google Play's Terms of Service but is really in a sort of "gray area" with them.
NOTE: Many "anonymous" accounts have recently been disabled by Google. The app developer is working on this. There's currently no evidence that this is Google "declaring war" against Aurora.
TUSKY
A Mastodon client that supports multiple accounts. Just be aware that it doesn't support FIDO2 2FA, so make sure you also have TOTP set up on your Mastodon account.
SIMPLE MOBILE TOOLS BY TIBOR KAPUTA
No longer recommended due to a sale to another app developer who riddles apps with ads.
NEWPIPE/PIPEPIPE (formerly AnimePipe)
YouTube frontends. PipePipe was forked from NewPipe, so if you want the original go ahead and use that. There's nothing wrong with either one of them.
TRANSISTOR
Radio streaming site. If you have the streaming URL for your favorite online station, you can add it manually. Try searching for it within the app first. Sometimes they're already available.
EXODUS
Exodus will tell you about each and every single tracker included in your apps. Just a word of warning if you're installing this on a stock or Googled ROM: Google Play will flag this as hostile. There will be an option on the warning pop-up allowing you to install it anyway. This is because it cuts into the revenue of so many other companies by allowing you to block those trackers through something like NextDNS (I explain briefly about DNS here).
SHELTER
An app that will let you use a "Work Profile" on your Android phone to sandbox apps away from everything else while still using it in the main profile.
APP MANAGER
If you're going to degoogle your phone any other way than by flashing a degoogled ROM like LineageOS or CalyxOS, then this app is a must. I'll go over how to degoogle manually in another page.
That's it for now. If there are any others I can think of I'll add them here.
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