this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 5 months ago (5 children)

It would be a huge undertaking, but a Fitness and Health tracker / aggregator that could replace Google Fit and the likes.

I really can't bear how Google, Apple, Samsung, and all these big companies are the primary holders of our most intimate information. I've put some measures in place to limit who gets what, but it would be a huge boon to be the sole maintainer of my own info.

The problem is that the various apps and devices which report data won't immediately support syncing with a FOSS upstart...

The app I use for grabbing my weight and BMI can only sync with a few other apps. The app I use for calorie and diet tracking can likewise only sync with a few apps. They happen to have Google fit in common, so I use that as an intermediary to transfer weight to the calorie/diet app. All my steps, exercise, and sleep stay in Zepp, separate from them all.

It sure would be nice to have one service/application to rule them all and a secure method of storing one's own personal information without having to give it to the tech companies. Sure, use one of the many cloud services but encrypt all the data so that they can't steal it. Yadda yadda.

One can dream.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I develop a self-hosted service designed to do exactly this! It's not quite finished yet, but it's at the point where enough functionality works that it can be used for testing.

https://github.com/connervieira/HealthBox

The docs/USAGE.md file gives an overview of how HealthBox works. Feel free to poke around in the other docs/ files as well.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

More than once I've wondered if I can make something look like google fit to other apps, obviously would have to be on a degoogled rom, which limits its utility for a wider audience.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Obsidian.

Markor is a great open source markdown editor for android, but I wish we had some decent WYSIWYG options, like obsidian, typora, etc.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Doesn't have exactly the same features but I've simply been using Logseq syncing my notes with Syncthing

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Joplin already does a great job for this, at least for notes.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (8 children)

I used Joplin extensively for ~2 years, but I was constantly put off by the desktop applications UI and how my notes was stored in SQLite. The move to obsidian felt natural and I felt more in ownership over my files in their existing structure. Granted, obsidian is closed source and could go rogue, but when that happens, I am prepared to jump ship without too much pain.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

Logseq is pretty close

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I am not an excessive note-taking guy, but I am using Notesnook for some time now and it does everything I needed so far.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago (2 children)

SleepAsAnAndroid as well a broad support for generic smart watches

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (4 children)

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"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (19 children)

Nova launcher - there isn't a good one for one FOSS replacement. Every launcher I tried from fdroid has at least one shortcoming (if not more).

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (15 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (10 children)

A really good launcher!

Also, weather app!

[–] [email protected] 40 points 5 months ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

KISS launcher on minimal mode with nice icons and a geometric weather widget for me. Been rocking it for years and its amazing

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Every time I pivot away from Trebuchet, I always pivot back. It does what I want; app folders, hidden apps, multiple screens, widgets.

All the alternatives sacrifice something

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I can't really think of anything now because Android FOSS apps ecosystem is really good. What I want to suggest is contributing to already existing projects sometimes. It's faster and just another thing you can do to help open-source ecosystems

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Yes, I don't think I have another app but more features on some apps I use (Smartdock, Joplin, Librera, Rimusic) would be slightly life-changing.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago

Google lens.

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

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (5 children)

Right now im looking for an alternative to the Google Maps Timeline. I know there is OwnTracks but I dont think that everything has to be hosted on a server somewhere (especially when all its saving is a timestamp and a coordinate, its not like that takes up alot of space)

Basically just your own location tracker and then the option to see your own history displayed in a map e.g. where you have been on the 02.july.2019 at 11:50.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

A modern replacement for OpenScan. It's workable, but some features don't work on Modern Android, and a good Scanner app is probably something most people could use. Could look at Adobe Scan and Office Lens for feature inspiration.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Poweramp

The way it handles its own audio engine is pretty much the best available.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (6 children)
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

There's lots of FOSS music players, but none of them have a volume slider / preamp. The Android volume slider is always either too loud or quiet so I have to make fine adjustments using the preamp in JetAudio. If someone could add that to an existing music player that'd be cool.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Nice question, you've got a lot of answers, most being major projects outside the scope of an individual, still, interesting pain points.

May I suggest you edit your OP with a list of viable options for individual devs or small teams to try ?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I'm sorry, I don't have any specific suggestions for you, but I am wondering: is there no open source app you yourself wish existed because you would need it?

Working on an open source app because some else (and not you) needs it, is not a good way of staying engaged and caring about the solution. Being the user and target of a project yourself is usually a much netter way of caring and proposing something tailored to at least one individual, maybe more.

Of course, if you are looking for a programming exercise, go for it, but then you don't need ideas, you can reimplement something which already exists, perhaps which you like, but in your own way. But if you want to have an impact in the open source, it starts by needing something which you don't really find anywhere and taking matter in your own hands to fix it :) this is not meant to disincentivize you, quite the opposite! I hope you stay attentive to your digital ecosystem to see which holes can be plugged :)

I maintain a private list of ideas I just think of as I go about my day, of things I would like to write/create for myself and while I won't be going through with all of them, I hope to be able to pick up one or several of them whenever I have time. I can through some ideas here, not as a hint that you should do it (I'll probably do them myself regardless), but just to inspire you, maybe:

  • I am subscribed to a teachable program which has no app and the program is just static information. I want to pull it all and represent it to me offline, not requiring internet to manage my progress. It is also intended to help me archive what I paid for and not depend on the goodwill of teachables to allow me to continue access the resource.
  • an RSS feed manager which uses embeddings to automatically organise the content by topic rather than by source.
  • an anki plugin to highlight content in the browser based on words from anki that I have and have not learned, to improve my language learning and reading ability.

I have a few more, but this should give you some hints, I hope! Good luck!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Support for all the hardware so we can quit using garbage Google-provided Android on every single phone instead of just the half-dozen or so phones some of these Free Android builds support. Amazing that I can install Linux on every single freaking configuration of PC that's ever existed with a very tiny amount of systems not having support for all of its hardware even if said hardware has never been freed or even officially documented, but not with phones.

The damn things will still be a privacy nightmare because your cell signal tracks you everywhere you go, but at least we'd have a Free OS for everyone's phone.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I think an open-source general device benchmark would be cool. Including CPU / GPU / Battery life metrics. As far as I know, everything that does this is proprietary.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

A nutrition tracker where you can enter what foods you eat into a small database. And then when you eat meals you can check those foods off in order to calculate all of the nutrition facts consumption per day. And it could be expanded even further by adding graphs and reports such as Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly.

Could track Calories, Vitamins, Minerals, and other specific nutrition stats. Most nutrition apps I've seen only track Calories... Or don't have accurate nutrition applied to specific foods as it is generic. Letting the user add the food as a item in a small database would give the user more control of how the stats and reports are calculated.

Could be helpful for some to see their intake and then figure out ways to change it to become healthier.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Isn't this literally what Waistline is for Android? You create your own local food database (which you can automatically fetch info from Open Food Facts or USDA if desired, but not required) which lets you put in as many nutriments to track as you wish, all with graphs and information with different timelines.

No clue if there's anything like this for desktop.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)
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