F-Droid

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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.

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How do you switch clients? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Many apps can act as installer aps. Installing an app is basically the process of unpacking the APK file into a directory where all the other user.apps are stored and registering it with the system. The challenge, such as it is, is making sure two different installer apps aren't trying to manage the same app package.

So if you've installed an app that's available from one of the F-Droid repos that's also available on Play Store, both apps may try to update it. Its not a common conflict since the F-Droid versions tend to have a different signature than the Play Store versions, so the other installer tends not to try and overwrite it.

As for how the F-Droid scene works, there are different collections of packages curated by different teams. These curated collections are called repositories, or repos as I mentioned above. Each repo tends to have a unique focus for the apps they support. They build and sign the apps so the installers know the provenance of a given package.

As for the installer apps, they are simply clients that can subscribe to different repos and collate the indexes of applications available on each. When you search for an app, you're really searching the index and in the event you get multiple hits, your client app should let you select which repo you want to pull the APK file from. That client app may then attempt to update that app as newer versions become available.

Finally, to come to the point and answer your question: You can install the new app (e.g., Droid-ify) alongside F-Droid and begin configuring it. Maybe just only have auto-updates enabled in one of them. They will both provide similar functionality for supporting multiple repos, installing and auto-updating apps, though they have different UIs with different ergonomics and workflows.

~~Myself, I have both F-Droid and Droid-ify installed, and I still use the Play Store. I mainly use Droid-ify because I like the cleaner UI, but I understand F-Droid finally updated their UI as well. (It was needed, IMO). Droid-ify has the auto-update job for now.~~

edit: Apparently I forgot that I uninstalled F-Droid some time ago. Just checked and its not there anymore. Oops, I lied.

Hope this helps;