whoBIRD

An app that recognizes birds singing near you, all on device, and has an option to show a photo of the bird too. It's exclusive to F-Droid (not on Google Play), and the only bird recognizing app I know of that does it all immediately on your device (without sending it to a server). https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.woheller69.whobird/

Organic Maps

Highly detailed OpenStreetMap maps local on your device. Wonderful for walking directions, as it has on-device routing and maps out walking pathways (which is something that even Google Maps does not do well) https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.organicmaps/

AntennaPod

The best podcast client also happens to be Free Software and on F-Droid. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/

HeliBoard

This is the best FOSS keyboard that's under active maintenance. It even supports swiping, but that requires a non-free binary library from Google. (Maintained fork of OpenBoard.) https://f-droid.org/en/packages/helium314.keyboard/

Breezy Weather

Good weather app that has so many details (including pollen too) and fetches from multiple sources. It looks great as well. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.breezyweather/

• Aegis for MFA
• Aurora Store for Playstore apps
• Breezy Weather
• Fossify apps for basics
• KeePassDX for pwd mgmt
• K-9 Mail
• LibreCamera
• (Oeffi for public transport)
• OSMAnd~ for navigation
• QickDic(tionary)
• Molly (fork of Signal messenger) or Threema
• Tracker Control

Ooh, good one! I'll try to stick to the very basics that I've installed, different strokes for different use cases and all.

• MicroG — a non-Google framework to circumvent annoying GSF dependencies.
• DAVx5 — will sync calendars and contacts from your own cal/cardDAV instance.
• ICSx5 — helps add external ICS calendars into your calendar.
• Syncthing — keeps documents, pictures, etc synced between devices.
• KISS launcher — search based launcher. No bloat, no muss, no fuss. Everything else seems to try too hard after KISS.
• Fossify apps. There's a whole suite but I only use
  • Fossify calendar,
  • Fossify contacts,
  • Fossify SMS messenger.
• Fennec — a Firefox that passes F-droid privacy muster.
• K-9 mail — um, is this top grade email app named after the robot dog in Doctor Who? Affirmative.
• Open camera — so much better than a basic Android camera app.
• Authenticator Pro — 2-factor authetication (dunno why it's called "Pro", it's not like there's a paid tier)
• Obtainium — another app manager, for the fringe cases where an app isn't on F-droid but you trust its source enough to download it from there.

Edited to add:

• NewPipe! — third party YouTube player that puts a stick in Google's tracking and profiling.

Additional repositories

F-droid is great and all but its best feature really is that you can add other app repositories alongside the flagship one. IMO you absolutely need to add the following repos for the best selection (ie., adapted to my list above 😉)

• IzzyOnDroid
• MicroG
• NewPipe

Suggestions for more repos?

Aegis Authenticator, AntennaPod, Aurora Store, Auxio, Bitwarden, Exodus, Forecastie, Fossify Contacts, Fossify Phone, Fossify File Manager, Fossify Gallery or Immich if self hosting pictures, Gmaps WV, Hypatria, Jellyfin client if self hosting media, Kvaesitso, Libre Camera, LocalSend, Mull, New Pipe, OpenBoard, OpenCalc, OsmAnd~, Pedometer, QKSMS, RHVoice, RustDesk, Send Reduced, Simply Translate Mobile, Tailscale, TrackerControl, VLC, WifiAnalyzer.

Url check is pretty good

Another notes app

App Manager

Aves Libre

Barcode scanner

BiglyBT, Torrent Downloader

Breezy Weather

Briar

Catima

Deepl

Florisboard Beta

LibreOffice Viewer

Linphone

LocalSend

Material Files

mpv

muPDF Viewer

QuickDic

SuperTuxKart

WIFIAnalyzer

Wormhole File Transfer

YTDLnis

https://masto.ai/@noodlejetski/111286317918572174

Ente Photos - Google Photos replacement with encryption and privacy
Ente Auth - Good multiplatform authenticator.
^^ These are paid for service (you get both with same sub), but extremely good.

AntennaPod - Podcatcher
K-9 email

organic maps

Drip - Keeping track of menstrual cycles (If you have it lol) Tempo - Music client for navidrome Clima - Weather app Telegram FOSS - Alternative to the proprietary client Aegis Authenticator - 2FA app

From official F-Droid & IzzyOnDroid repos (except for Molly):

1. Aegis Secure + encrypted 2FA

2. Calculator++ Powerful scientific calculator

3. Clipious or FreeTube Android Clipious: Privacy focused invidious client that syncs with your account and lets you pick backup instances in case yours goes down FreeTube: Ad-blocking cross-platform privacy-focused YouTube client that imo looks better than NewPipe + Clipious

4. FluffyChat (if you use Matrix) Secure, private (although not as good as Signal), client for Matrix (the messaging service) that imo looks better than Element and lets you seperate rooms + DMs, which some clients don't let you do iirc as well as a couple other features like pinned messages and video calls.

5. HeliBoard Best open source keyboard I've used so far

6. KeePassDX KeePass compatible password manager

7. Moshidon and/or Mastify Mastodon clients. Mastify looks really good but is till in Alpha releases so is missing quite a bit of features. Moshidon is extremely feature rich.

8. Molly Security-focused fork of Signal

9. Podverse My personal favourite podcast app, run by 1 person afaik with a lot of free features, or a very cheap paid plan that is basically just a donation because it only adds like 2 features that I can remember. Has a very generous trial too and the dev has said if you can't afford it they're willing to adjust pricing for you.

10. QUIK SMS Best actively maintained, open source SMS client.

11. Twine Beautiful cross-platform RSS feed app.

I suggest Proton's full suite. It's $99 a year or $13 a month, but absolutely worth it for the VPN and password manager alone.

If you like NewPipe but want your videos to skip the annoying bits, there's a fork called Tubular that incorporates SponsorBlock.

Looking through the ones I have installed, I think these are useful to most people:

• AnySoftKeyboard
• Calculator++
• K-9 Mail
• Open Camera
• Orbot
• OsmAnd~
• VLC

Conversations

Librera Reader

Depends? What is useful to me could be useless to you.

But.

Fluffychat

Organic maps

Mull

Pocket Broomball is a really fun offline game.

Once you have your list, check out fdroidcl so you can get it all installed from your laptop via adb

Markor

I like the Fossify apps. I use the phone, sms, contacts, gallery and file manager. It's SO nice to not have google nag about cloud backups all the time, when I just wanted to look at some pictures I've taken.

Also whenever I can I download apps from F-Droid instead of play store if they're available both places. For example I use Home Assistant, KeePassDX, Syncthing, Termux, VLC, and more from F-Droid.

Found a couple of new apps to try out in this thread as well :)