F-Droid

8151 readers

17 users here now

F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform. The client makes it easy to browse, install, and keep track of updates on your device.

Website | GitLab | Mastodon

Matrix space | forum | IRC

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

How do you switch clients? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm using the official F-Droid client now but I'd like to switch to another one. The problem is I have some third party repos added and I don't really know how F-Droid works (it seems to have a lot of modules for app installation). I don't want to break it or reflash my whole OS. So can I just uninstall the previous client, install the new one and add the repos back or are there any additional steps I must follow on order for it not to cause any issues?

EDIT: thank you to everyone who replied. I did what was recommended the most (installed 2 clients alongside and deleted the old one after copying all repos and settings) and it seems to be working fine.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I recommend F-Droid Basic, it is more modern.

You just copy the repo URLs and install the other client and add the repos there.

Android apps are handled by the android package manager. That uses the signatures that were used to sign APKs. The stores just download them.

The source of the APKs is important though. F-Droid builds them on its own, this results in a more consistent build that may be more secure. But you need to trust F-Droid AND the developer.

Also, F-Droid is often multiple versions behind, where the developers might release newer versions.

F-droid uses a single key to sign all APKs, normally every dev has their own key.

If you use Obtainium, you normally get the APKs directly from releases of the devs. The same goes if you have external repositories, btw I updated this list recently and there are a lot of EOL repos.

Once an APK is installed, you can only update it, if the key matches. This means if you want to switch for example from Mull (F-Droid) to Mull (DivestOS repo) you need to reinstall the app.

But if you still use the apps from the same sources, you dont need to do that, and the client doesnt matter.