Is there any closed source android app that you wish had a good open source alternative?

I’m currently looking to develop an open source app that can help somebody. I’m currently out of ideas, so I’d like to heard if from you guys.

Sorry if it seems to lazy to ask for ideas like that, I just thought that I could do it since the result will be a free app.

Harvest5634,

AnyType , AppFlowy, Affine - alternatives to notion LibreSpeed - alternative to Speedtest.net And Penpot - alternative to Figma

SomeGuy69,

Discord. I hate that premium costs so much and all the ads they put in place to sell useless junk features.

Google maps. So open street maps but with reviews like maps has. A few days ago people suggested apps, but they lack reviews. I disagree that they are useless.

desktop_user,

even if alternatives existed it would still be a hassle to convert friends to it unless it is better in every way.

SomeGuy69,

Yeah this is the biggest issue.

AceFuzzLord,

I would just love it if I had the bus routes for my city readily available in open street maps, like how goog|e maps does it. I think goog|e maps might be my answer to the question if I can’t find anything else.

MalReynolds,
@MalReynolds@slrpnk.net avatar

Discord needs to die in a fire, so much knowledge lost… But their momentum is something awful.

GolfNovemberUniform,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

Speaking of reviews, aren’t there special review websites in most of the countries?

SomeGuy69,

It’s about a quick glance on a location and reading some reviews quickly. There is a workaround with open street maps integrating google reviews but it’s again relying on google at this point.

GolfNovemberUniform,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

Well if openstreetmaps implemented the same thing it would be useless because there are not many people using it

SomeGuy69,

It would grow. Just to have the ability would be nice. A lot of people also would start to write reviews to be the first etc. We got to start somewhere, same as with the Fediverse. We could even combine it.

GolfNovemberUniform,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

Yea having the ability would be nice. I’m not sure it’s possible to implement without sacrificing privacy though

Asudox,
@Asudox@lemmy.world avatar

Discord has an alternative called Revolt that is open source. It has all the premium features in discord for free, but is still in early stages I’d say.

toastal,

I use Mumble + XMPP with an IRC gateway to cover everything voice & chat related …but there are plenty of options to replace Discord, you just need to let folks know you don’t want an ad-filled proprietary experience & that you wish to be contacted in a manner where your privacy is a priority.

Google’s reviews have a lot of junk in them except the ones stating business closed/moved (OSM you can literally delete or move the POI, but less users). The integrated crowd-sourced images of establishments however is missing which makes it hard to understand POI in comparison—a picture is worth a thousand words.

loudWaterEnjoyer,
@loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Matrix?

SomeGuy69,

Alternative messenger exist, I should’ve been more precise. At this point an alternative would require at least the same features than discord, to get people away from it. I don’t see that happen.

flying_wotsit,

complete feature parity isn’t a good goal, or the alternatives will always be behind. Partial parity, with some features Discord doesn’t have (e.g. E2EE) is an achievable goal which does successfully encourage migration

kilgore_trout,

Not an alternative, but to make Discord on suck less I recommend Bunny.

fruitycoder,

Google lens.

I love point and translate. Faster more pin pointed reverse image search is cool too.

not_amm,

Any image/video editor in Android. I’ve been trying Image Toolbox, but sometimes it doesn’t work or crashes :(

bitwolf,

Readably

No RSS reader is quite like it.

Synfonium

Best music player out there.

trevor,

An equivalent to iOS Shortcuts for Android and Linux.

balder1993,

Don’t any linux DE have something like a shortcuts app?

trevor,

Maybe, but the thing that makes iOS Shortcuts so great is that it basically offers an extensive GUI to interact with all of the system’s APIs.

padlock4995,

Komoot and strava… General route planning and teavkinv software…

powermaker450,
@powermaker450@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Symfonium. Don’t get me wrong, I like Finamp, but it just does not come close to the amount of features that Symfonium has.

dko1905,
@dko1905@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Definitely one of the apps where premium is worth it.

dessalines,

Tempo is pretty good.

Maroon,

FLOSS Shazam? I really love discovering music when I travel, but I see no open source version of it.

hydration9806,

Just an open source frontend for Shazam, but Audire is pretty nice for this

abominable_panda,

One of those “smart” alarms that monitor and graph your sleep. E.g movement, sounds, snorings, sleep talking etc.

At a minimum one that wakes you up in the 30 minute window of your lightest sleep phase

HessiaNerd,

I paid for AMdroid because I can set profiles, Geo fence, have math problems to turn off alarms, fade in music, turn on my flashlight… All the bells and whistles. I would love a FOSS version, but many try to be single feature. I like all the things.

istanbullu,

My banking apps. They are the only reason I can’t fully de-google myself.

MalReynolds,
@MalReynolds@slrpnk.net avatar

My philosophy is if I can use a web page for it, I won’t install an app (couple of exceptions, but a good rule). Less convenient, more secure.

As KMFDM have it, “Those who sacrifice liberty for security Deserve neither and will lose both”

GolfNovemberUniform,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

Unfortunately in some countries web banking apps are not allowed afaik. Very good answer though

istanbullu,

My bank uses the app to auth logins to website bank.

n2burns,

So, if you don’t have an Apple/Android device (and the app installed), you just can’t use web-banking? That’s pretty crazy!

istanbullu,

yes, that is pretty much it. all actions, including logins need to be done with 2-factor authentication, which means Google Play Store.

LiveLM,

God, you know what I really wish I could do?
Run an Android VM on my phone. Imagine being able to do whatever you want with your device and still having a “stock” device for those pesky apps without having to actually have two phones.

It is seemingly possible, but the only app I’ve ever seen do it was “VMOS”: a proprietary app, impossible to trust.

istanbullu,

I’m running Android apps on my laptop using Waydroid. Works really well

lud,

You usually want to use banking apps when you are away from home though.

Fuzzypyro,

It’s not an Android app but ServerCat is the best multi device monitoring/ssh software for mobile that I’ve come across. Sadly none of the alternatives on iOS or Android compare. Totally room for a proper competitor that fits a lot of information in an intuitive and clean ui.

eugenia,
@eugenia@lemmy.ml avatar

A video editor…

tchnqs,
eugenia,
@eugenia@lemmy.ml avatar

That’s a video cutter, not an editor. There’s a difference.

tchnqs,

Ah, my bad.

cyberwolfie,

Is Kdenlive no good? Always heard good things, but I don’t use those kinds of software.

eugenia,
@eugenia@lemmy.ml avatar

Kdenlive is a desktop app, not an android one, that the OP is asking for. Regardless, kdenlive crashes easily, has no hardware acceleration, and it doesn’t have good color grading tools (particularly in regards to film emulation, which is what most people want to do artistic videos – I used to shoot music videos). For basic videos, it’s ok.

Emerald,

I can’t find an equivalent replacement for Musicolet. There are plenty of open source music players out there for Android that just don’t have the little features that Musicolet does. Such as multiple queues, lyric editing, metadata editing, format conversions, stop after the track finishes, easily reorder songs and clear queues, etc.

Pherenike,
@Pherenike@lemmy.ml avatar

+1

zolax,

+1

wildbus8979,

SleepAsAnAndroid as well a broad support for generic smart watches

mranderson17,

broad support for generic smart watches

Gadgetbridge is pretty well on it’s way to this. They roll out support for new devices monthly it seems like. Of course there are always feature X and Y that fitbit or garmin does that it doesn’t, but it’s quite an impressive project. I use it with a pebble 2 HR.

cole,
@cole@lemdro.id avatar

I built an open source app a while back that had some similar functionality to sleep as android called “Go to Sleep”. Haven’t updated it for a long time, always wanted to add more things

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