F-Droid:Pimp your Android(-fork) with the best Free Software apps
2018-12-29, 17:00–17:50 (Europe/Berlin), OIO Vortrags-Arena
Sprache: Englisch

After a short introduction about software freedom on Android and Custom ROMs, I will demonstrate the Free-Software-App-Repository "F-Droid" with its anarchic and anti-censorship features. But as F-Droid offers you access to hundreds of Free-Software-apps and the sheer amount can be overwhelming in the beginning, in a next step I will also come up with the 10 or so most important apps (IMHO!).


F-Droid is a Free-Software-App-only repository for Android systems and every Android-based fork and a powerful client that is designed to be resilient against surveillance and censorship. For its competitive character, F-Droid is not available via other "app stores" (like Google Play). You have to download it via your browser once but then it is easy to install and easy to use - and without the need for any account!

Once installed, F-Droid offers you access to hundreds of Free-Software-apps in compiled form and their sources. It also allows you to share (your) apps in mulitple ways, including offline methods and via onion repositories. You can add your own Free-Software-project to the official F-Droid catalogue or even set-up your own repositories and offer access via F-Droid.

Unfortunately, F-Droid misses any kind of rating system, so the sheer amount of available Free-Software-apps can be overwhelming in the beginning. So, after a short introduction about software freedom on Android and Custom ROMs, I will demonstrate F-Droid with its anarchic and anti-censorship features. Next, I will come up with the 10 or so most important apps (IMHO!).

Update: Slides by Erik Albers, CC-BY-SA

Erik Albers is communication and programme manager for the Free Software Foundation Europe and engages since many years for users' and software freedom. Erik regularly publishes articles about diverse aspects of Free Software on different channels and occasionally writes on Netzpolitik.org. In his spare time, Erik researches about digital sustainability with a special focus on sustainability of an by software as well as therein implied dependencies or solutions.