F-Droid app store thumbs its nose at Google's dev crackdown

Undeterred by a looming Google policy change that could effectively destroy it, open-source Android app store F-Droid has released its largest upgrade in a decade. 

F-Droid, a third-party app repository that only distributes free and open-source software packages for Google’s Android mobile platform, on Thursday announced version 2.0 of its Android app. The F-Droid team describes version 2.0 as a complete redesign on both the visual side and beyond. 

“For more than a decade, F-Droid has helped people discover and install free and open source Android apps,” the team said in its announcement. “F-Droid 2.0 builds on that foundation with a modern interface, better app discovery, improved search, and a simpler experience that works well, whether you’re new to F-Droid or have been using it for years.”

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As mentioned, the F-Droid interface was overhauled to bring it in line with the platform’s current Material Design paradigm. Aside from adding a bunch of new features, the biggest under-the-hood change is the rewriting of key parts of F-Droid in Kotlin, the language that has become standard for modern Android development, with the UI built using Jetpack Compose. The F-Droid team says that transitioning to Kotlin “will help us deliver improvements more quickly in the years ahead,” again standing up to the possibility that it could be lights out for the initiative in short order. 

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Looking at the release, one can’t help but notice a big banner across the top of the F-Droid site describing pending changes from Google that threaten the future of the open-source app distribution platform. 

Those changes have been a long time coming, and don’t only threaten F-Droid: They threaten indie Android developers who would prefer not to register with Google or subject their apps to its verification regime.

Google announced plans to extend developer verification to every single Android app that could be installed on an Android device in August 2025, and the countdown to when that takes effect is growing short. 

What the Chocolate Factory’s plans mean in practice is that developers who want their apps broadly distributed outside the official Google Play Store will need to register with Google and verify their identities. Google’s Full Distribution option includes paying a one-time $25 fee, handing over a copy of a government-issued ID to verify one’s identity, and conforming to Google’s terms of service. Google also offers a free Limited Distribution option that doesn’t require government ID verification but restricts distribution to 20 authorized devices, while apps from unverified developers can still be installed by users who enable Android’s advanced installation flow.

Marc Prud’hommeaux, an F-Droid board member, said in September of last year that Google’s plans would likely spell the end of the F-Droid project.

"If it were to be put into effect, the developer registration decree will end the F-Droid project and other free/open source app distribution sources as we know them today," Prud’hommeaux said last year. F-Droid deliberately operates without user accounts so that it doesn't need to identify or track its users.

F-Droid faces oblivion with its 2.0 held high

The potential death warrant hanging over its head hasn’t stopped the F-Droid team from rolling out a bunch of new features for an app it says it intends to keep working on for years to come. 

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Alongside the visual update and Kotlin migration mentioned above, F-Droid 2.0 ships with a redesigned Discover screen that showcases the most downloaded apps in the entire repo alongside redesigned and expanded categories that break apps down into more specific spaces to make finding the right open-source solutions easier.

F-Droid’s search feature has also been improved, allowing users to search by app descriptions, categories, and translated content. New filters have also been added to help users narrow search results.

The team also credited the EU’s many Digital Markets Act decisions against Google for making the installation experience smoother for users. F-Droid can now use a unified installation service for its apps thanks to the availability of a pre-approval API that allows users to approve an installation when they request it, rather than waiting until the app has finished downloading.

That, said the F-Droid team, “brings the F-Droid install experience on official Android devices much closer to what the built-in app store can provide.”

Additionally, F-Droid 2.0 can fetch and install app updates automatically, which it now does by default.

All of those changes, however, won’t matter much if Google pushes ahead undeterred with its plans to force registration onto non-Play Store developers. F-Droid’s announcement on Thursday makes it seem that the team isn’t going to go quietly. However, Google’s compromise after developer blowback on the plan isn’t exactly likely to extend F-Droid’s reach.

Google said in March that it would still allow unverified developers to have their apps installed on Android devices, but the workaround is extreme, to say the least: Android users have to confirm no one is forcing them to install an untrusted app, enable developer mode, reboot their device, sit through a 24-hour waiting period, acknowledge a whole bunch of other screens meant to terrify them into not installing the apps, and decide whether to allow their desired software to live for a week or indefinitely. 

As a coalition of open-source advocates notes on their website pushing for Google to keep Android open to third-party sideloading, that entire workflow runs through Google Play Services, meaning Google could still kill the process at any time without user consent. 

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And here you thought you actually owned your device. 

The first wave of these restrictions is due to take effect at the end of this month, per Google’s page on the pending lockdown, with Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand the first to be forced to adopt the new developer verification scheme. The rest of the world will be subjected to the new rules beginning in 2027.

F-Droid 2.0, in the meantime, will be rolling out in the coming weeks. If you want to give it a try and support all the open-source devs who’ve made their apps available through the platform, now is your chance. As the Keep Android Coalition notes on their site, the more people who install F-Droid and similar open-source apps from outside the Play Store, the better.

"Google is clearly shifting the management of Android from the technical people to the competition lawyers," F-Droid technical lead Hans-Christoph Steiner told The Register in an email. "They have to defend those immense monopoly profits. It is sad to see that happen to a platform that I helped build, being involved since 2008."

Steiner told us that he sees signs Google knows it needs to change tack on its plans to lock Android down, but he believes the danger that it stays the course is still very real. 

"Given the anti-trust scrutiny from around the world, I'm optimistic that Android can still be good for users," Steiner said. ®