Worth mentioning that Fossify also has an amazing Contacts and Calendar app (using both right now on Android 15).

https://www.fossify.org/apps/

Fossify is a FOSS project with a handful of volunteers and they do take donations:

https://www.fossify.org/donate/

> Organic Maps - Open Source navigation (not as good as proprietary ones though)

Note that a community fork done by some core contributors was just spawned: CoMaps [1]

> K9 Mail / FairMail - Mail client

And now there's Thunderbird, which is branded version of K9 Mail IIUC (I don't know if there's any reason to switch from K9 Mail to Thunderbird for existing users)

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.comaps.fdroid/

Does the fork solve the issue with inputting addresses? Organic Maps will happily route to the correct street, but falls over when entering a standard format address (i.e. XXX Streetname Ave)

I don't think the fork is very different right now, and I doubt inputting addresses works differently.

You might want to try:

- writing the city name at the beginning

- putting the street number at the end

Note that OSM might not have the street number. If it doesn't, searching for it will fail for sure.

You should probably file an issue: https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/issues

Can also recommend:

  PassAndroid: to open apple/android wallet files (airplane/cinema tickets etc.)
  Find My Device (FMD) on F-Droid: replacement for the google version, works via sms commands or a self-hosted app
  AntennaPod: Podcast App
  Breezy Weather: with multiple weather sources, great ui

Aegis: TOTP 2FA code manager

SuperCards: stores shop loyalty card barcodes

KeePassDX: password manager

ReadEra: eBook reader

Magic Earth: another maps app

Vivaldi: power-user's browser

JuiceSSH: SSH client

Termux: like running a Linux term

AntennaPod: podcasts

I do not use Aegis anymore, I use KeePassDX instead. It works for TOTP just fine.

JuiceSSH is still under development?

Some people don't like to keep passwords and TOTP in the same place.

Why? Both are on my phone, although KeePassDX database is exported and backed up. I do not use the desktop application, but I might.

If it is compromised, both your passwords and TOTP are compromised, which kind of negates the point of multiple factor authentication. If they are in separate apps, hopefully both won't be compromised, at least not at the same time.

If my phone is compromised, probably neither of them are compromised, or both are. I do not see how a separate app helps. I see where you are coming from, but I think using KeepassDX for password and TOTP should work. Keep in mind you can have multiple databases, you can store the TOTP only in one of the databases.

>Magic Earth: another maps app

>Vivaldi: power-user's browser

Propietary. Get Fennec with FDroid with Ublock Origin and some addons.

Exactly. My favourite extension is Consent-O-Matic to auto accept annoying (and meaningless) pop ups.

CoMaps: another maps app

StreetComplete: help update CoMaps and OpenStreetMap

Catima: for loyalty cards

I'm surprised no one mentioned NewPipe, the best YouTube App. A few other apps I use Feeder - RSS App Fedilab - For Mastodon

I prefer Tubular which is a NewPipe fork with not only an ad blocker, but also with SponsorBlock and ReturnYouTubeDislike.

I also use PipePipe.

How do push notifications and similar things work on GraphenOS? Do they work reliably out of the box on most apps, or did you have to set up MicroG/whatever GrapheneOS's equivalent is?

> How do push notifications and similar things work on GraphenOS?

Some apps require Google's FCM for push notifications. You need to install Sandboxed Google Play services from the GrapheneOS App Store and grant them unrestricted battery access (so they can run in the background, which is required for maintaining a network connection to FCM and delivering notifications). https://grapheneos.org/faq#notifications

Other apps like Signal use their own background connections, for example WebSockets, to deliver push notifications, but keeping a connection open for each app consumes more battery life than just having one background network connection. Also, not every app supports this.

For Signal specifically, the GrapheneOS project recommends either using FCM via Sandboxed Google Play, or installing Molly (https://molly.im/), a fork of the Signal client for Android, which makes some changes to reduce battery consumption when using WebSocket-based notifications. It also allows you to use UnifiedPush (https://unifiedpush.org/) for notifications instead, but that requires an application called mollysocket (https://github.com/mollyim/mollysocket) running on a server.

Awesome! Thanks for sharing this.

Push notifications work on GrapheneOS whether apps do it themselves, use UnifiedPush with the user's choice of provider or use FCM. UnifiedPush and FCM are a more efficient design where apps share a push connection. Unfortunately, many apps only support FCM and some support their own push as a fallback, but few support UnifiedPush. FCM works very well via sandboxed Google Play, which is an approach where Google apps can be installed as regular sandboxed apps with zero special access or privileges. Nothing FCM does actually requires special privileges and our compatibility layer makes it work without it.

GrapheneOS does not include sandboxed Google Play but rather includes an open source compatibility layer providing support for installing Google Play as regular sandboxed apps. They can't do or access anything more than other apps including the Google Play code running inside apps using Google Play which is the reason for choosing this design. It simply uses the same app sandbox and permission model which are both greatly improved by GrapheneOS for supporting running the rest of Google Play not bundled with apps using it.

Worth noting apps don't need Google Play services to use Google services and many Google libraries like Ads and Analytics work without it. FCM requires Google Play services but many of their libraries do. There are Lite variants of Ads and Analytics for keeping apps smaller which lose the ability work without Google Play services. The general reason for the design is they don't want to have huge apps and want to be able to update the clients for their services without app developers doing it and shipping an app update. FCM is one of the special cases requiring the central design for efficiency. UnifiedPush is an alternative with choice of implementation / provider.

Everything works out of the box, and it doesn't use a third party layer like MicroG. The difference is that Google's apps/services are not given admin privileges like they usually are, so you can selectively enable or disable things.

For example, installing an app on Google Play works like F-Droid. Once the download finishes, you have to open the Play store app to trigger a system dialog to accept the installation. On other Android devices, GPlay can install apps without your approval.

NextCloud - sync photos, calendar, notes and contacts to your own server.

Does the NextCloud app now sync contacts and calendar? Last time I tried, years ago, it did not. I use DAVx5 to sync my NextCloud contacts and calendar, via CardDav and CalDav.

No, not directly. It has server support, but I also use DAVx5 on the client.

for someone who doesn't want to replace Google services, does it still make sense to move to Graphene?

Absolutely. You can basically get almost the same experience as you would on a stock OS device, but with much better privacy. On the stock OS, Google apps get privileged access, so they can still access photos and your camera and all that, but what people don't realize is that their privileged access also includes things like usage data, hardware identifiers, etc. Using Google apps on GrapheneOS makes a lot of sense.

The only problems you might run into would be some features might require privileged access, things like Now Playing. Makes sense because normal apps cannot have unrestricted access to the microphone like that. Google Wallet works, but you cannot make payments because the app refuses to work on alternate OSes.

Besides that kind of stuff, though, I've used all sorts of Google apps without issues.

According to Terence Eden, Curve Pay allows NFC payments, at least in the UK

Over the years, Big Tech has given me reasons to trust them less and less. So I encourage you to be a rebel: cut Google out and live outside the system.