But also on the main F-Droid repository. I can see both results when I search (see screenshot in my other reply).

I can. Have you tried updating the repository information in your app?

There is already a paste button, although not directly shown. I can access it in 3 different ways (but I have made some changes to the default settings, so it might not be exactly the same for you):

• on the toolbar on top of the keyboard (you need to extend it by tapping the > button on the top left). You can customise the buttons that show up here in “Settings/Preferences/Additional keys/Select toolbar keys”
• by long pressing the comma key (my favourite way), a pop up shows with several keys, among them the paste key.
• by long pressing the enter key

I followed the recommendation of the developer and installed the file from GApps packages (“swypelibs”). They provide a link in Heliboard’s README, scroll down to the FAQ section and look for “How to enable glide typing”

Not necessarily: you can choose to have several languages separated as different input methods (you can switch between them very quickly by sliding vertically from the space bar) OR you can go to “Settings / Languages” and select one of your active languages and inside its submenu add languages for multilingual typing. This way when you select that original language as input method it will use and recognise all the languages you added at once. I must say this can be tricky with glide typing, but still works pretty well.

I have Heliboard set to English (UK) and it suggests British spellings (highlighting the American ones as typos), so I think you should be good. However, I’m not sure if the spellings come from my phone’s system or from the keyboard…

I would nevertheless recommend trying it: it has some very nice improvements over OpenBoard and is under active development, so you could request new features or report bugs and expect them to be taken care of.

Heliboard can do multilingual typing, and I believe there is some kind of haptic feedback… I don’t use that function, but it was mentioned in the latest release notes

Heliboard https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard

If you have some kind of Android TV device you can probably install SmartTube to have no ads and sponsorblock: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext

I just installed Anytype to give it a try, and on first launch it tried to connect to:

• sentry.anytype.io
• api2.amplitude.com
• amplitude.anytype.io
• telemetry.anytype.io
• graylog.anytype.io

Their android app seems to be full of trackers, not very privacy friendly.

Which bugs have you found in LineageOS? There’s quite a big community behind it, so maybe you can find some help. There are also other LineageOS-based ROMs worth checking: CalyxOS, DivestOS, iodéOS, /e/OS.

THIS! OsmAnd and Organic Maps are not worse apps because you cannot find some addresses. The data comes from OpenStreetMap, and if it’s missing there it won’t be available in these apps. That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. How? OpenStreetMap data is open and free for everyone to use and edit, it’s like the Wikipedia of maps. No, you don’t have Google mapping everything for you, you should probably chip in and help add addresses if you want a map that doesn’t depend on a huge corporation, a map where you can correct mistakes, and a map that’s free for anyone to use in their apps or websites. Otherwise we depend on what Google wants to map, how they want to map it, and the app that they offer us to access that data.

Yes, I feel like F-Droid has been getting some shit lately for no reason. I think it’s good that Obtainium exists and that we have more options of easily getting apps outside the Play Store, and even better: FOSS apps.

However, I see a trend towards “F-Droid is bad and Obtainium has arrived to save us from it” and get the feeling that many times people don’t even understand how both things work. Obtainium is basically doing what some people were doing for long time using RSS, it’s not a revolution. When I tried it, it failed to properly detect the latest versions and updates of several apps, so I was personally not impressed.

Thanks, I know about reproducible builds, but I still don’t see how the GitHub release is more secure than the F-Droid build. In both cases you need to trust whoever built the apk.

It is known that F-Droid uses the published source code, reviews it for anti-features, and they build hundreds of apps used by thousands of people. If they did any tampering or had a security hole we would learn about it pretty fast (we just need one user of one of their built apps to report).

On the other hand using a GitHub release we need to trust the developer of the app: trust that the source code has no malicious code in it (or review the code ourselves, does anybody do that?), there’s no third party reviewing it, and trust that the apk they release uses exactly the published code. The user base of an individual app’s GitHub release is way smaller than that of all apps built by F-Droid, so by chance it would take way longer for users to detect any security problem.

So, as I see it, it boils down to either trusting a big community with a long story of building and providing FOSS apps, a good reputation, and offering reproducible builds on all apps that managed to achieve them; or trusting dozens of different developers, most of whom we know nothing of.

Why is using the GitHub release more secure than using the F-Droid build?

I use a phone holder and my phone sits there with my maps app showing me the navigation.

I’m interested in reading about those. Dou you have a link or a list of some of those issues?

With the Fairphone (…) the ROM options are CalyxOS and /e/OS

Don’t sleep on DivestOS and iodéOS. There’s more OS options for the FairPhone.

As @netchami said, Bromite hasn’t been updated in months, it shouldn’t be used. Cromite is a proper successor forked by one of the contributors of Bromite.

This doesn’t prove much. I don’t trust Facebook nor Meta, but it could be a problem with that file, the formatting, encoding… that fails on WhatsApp. We need more proof.

You’re both right: most people don’t know what any of this means, but also people who know often don’t care. In my group of friends there are 2 programmers, they perfectly understand this yet they still share links full of trackers in the group chat.

My strategy is to friendly scold them (a programmer should know better) and in the same message share the same link without tracking rubbish. This way my non-technical friends can also see how short the same link can become.

So?

Area is pretty outdated in OSM

Well, we can all actively contribute to OSM to improve the maps. I personally enjoy doing it and knowing that the map data doesn’t belong to a private company like Google.

No bus/train schedule

I am used to check those on an external app from the service provider. I understand how that is an issue for you, but in my case I don’t miss it.

(no) car accident alerts on place

this could be useful, indeed, but it is hard to implement while keeping user’s privacy. It can also be unreliable if users don’t report them properly.

(no) places reviews from users.

I personally prefer it like this: it means less clutter on my maps, and unfortunately online reviews have become quite useless in the last years: businesses push to remove negative review and buy fake positive reviews. I no longer trust them.

But the comment you’re replying to is talking about day-to-day life. Not for most of us, but unfortunately some minorities are being targeted in some places, and the trend seems to be getting worse, not better, in the whole world.

Why did you feel that Organic Maps was not good enough for you?

Is your area not properly mapped on OpenStreetMap or was the app not good enough for you?

It is available through the IzzyOnDroid repository if you want to download and update the app using an F-Droid client.

To be fair both are small repositories, yes, but I managed to find them both when looking for a way to install Signal via F-Droid. And no, I’m not running CalyxOS, but a different degoogled ROM :)

I might be wrong, but TwinHelix’s Signal-FOSS seems to still be active, the latest update I found on their F-Droid repository and their GitHub is from yesterday: https://github.com/tw-hx/Signal-Android/releases/tag/v6.32.5.0-FOSS

But anyway, I just wanted to share these 2 sources since I saw the Signal / F-Droid discussion happening. It could be useful to someone. I don’t know enough to judge what option is better.

Signal-FOSS is on the TwinHelix F-Droid repository https://fdroid.twinhelix.com/fdroid/repo/?fingerprint=7B03B0232209B21B10A30A63897D3C6BCA4F58FE29BC3477E8E3D8CF8E304028

Signal is on the CalyxOS F-Droid repository https://github.com/CalyxOS/calyx-fdroid-repo

That’s not the only reason, you can also unlock the bootloader of a FairPhone very easily and they’re still not supported.

I would add iodéOS to that list

https://iode.tech/en/

Then let each user choose what they like

Honest question: is using those 3 addons better than sticking to just uBlock Origin?

I have read multiple times that the best is to just uBlock Origin and nothing else, since other addons are redundant and together will make your fingerprint easier to recognize.

Yes, it’s the fork of Bromite that uazo is maintaining.

https://github.com/uazo/cromite

No, no, no. Private browsing isn’t private like that. Your ISP and network adminstrator (in this case your employer) can still see every website you access. This is usually explained on the “New private tab” on browsers.

As others have said: Mull (which is based on FireFox) + uBlock Origin is the way to go.

If for any reason you need a Chromium-based browser: Cromite.

I am sorry to read that. Most people in western countries say “I have nothing to hide” and shrug it away. They confuse having something illegal to hide with privacy: no company or government should be able to read my personal messages to my partner or my parents, period. That’s why postal mail is been protected for ages.

They then also fail to see that “I have nothing illegal to hide” will suddenly change when your country becomes an authoritarian regime that jails you for criticizing the government, and these things unfortunately still happen and will continue to happen.

And it’s very unlikely to happen, since our governments are very interested in spying us / buying our data.

OK, thanks for your reply. I’ll get the APK from GitHub and try it soon then. I hope there’s some way of removing words that the App’s dictionary has learned too. It drives me mad that OpenBoard has learned some of my spelling mistakes and now autocorrects to them.

Interesting, do you know if it’s in F-Droid? Or did you install the APK from GitHub?

When I follow your link and tap on the F-Droid link it takes me to the original OpenBoard instead of this fork. I guess they might just have kept the original Readme file with the F-Droid link to the original app…

For privacy I would always recommend FOSS apps. I personally like Transistor, it is lightweight, simple and private.

You are right, I ran the test on Mull + uBlock Origin on a phone running an ad/tracker blocker at OS level, and this tool reported connections that I couldn’t find in my logs.

It however helped me identify appmetrica.yandex.ru which was not blocked.