IzzyOnDroid

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apps
fdroid
howto
interna
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privacy
review
security

© IzzyOnDroid

Half a year has passed since our last blog post. You might be curious what we achieved since then – and we have not been idle! Be prepared for more reproducible builds, download statistics, and other nice things 😃

© Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

2024 waves goodbye, 2025 knocks at the door: what did we achieve in 2024, and what are our plans and hopes for 2025? Join us to take a look back at security measures established, at progress with Reproducible Builds – and for a look ahead of what might come next!

© Vic (CC BY 2.0)

Exciting news at the IzzyOnDroid repo! Now we have Reproducible Builds, specific support by some of the most popular F-Droid clients, and more!

© CarbonNYC [in SF!] (CC BY 2.0)

With the library scanner in place for multiple years, it was about time to establish some additional APK checks with the IzzyOnDroid F-Droid repository. This article will give you an idea what other information can be obtained from APK files, even without accessing their sources.

© Metatrans Apps

With F-Droid, everybody can host their own repo: like the apps at F-Droid, the software is completely free and open source. Some enthusiast supporters already do so, also some developers. Read in this guest article how Metatrans Apps discovered this possibility for themselves, and what their experience was on the path.

© Richard Scott (CC)

Most apps ship with additional modules. Some of those are required for the functionality, others are not. This article will deal with the latter – and how to find out which of those might be used by an app.

© Exodus Privacy (CC-BY-SA)

Meanwhile, at least two thirds of all Android Apps are tracker ridden. Even the paid ones. More than ten trackers in a single app are no rare cases – even apps with 20 or more than 30 trackers have already turned up. And they endangering our privacy. Play Store doesn’t point them out – but thanks to Exodus Privacy, we track them down.

© William Theaker / Izzy

The previous articles showed what F-Droid is and how it works. Now we want to see how to host our own app repository, and make it available to other F-Droid users. For this task, the F-Droid team offers a fine and easy-to-use tool: Repomaker.

© Izzy

This article covers advanced topics: you can use 3rd-party repositories and have the privileged extension to take care for automated updates. Further it will be shown how new apps can be added to F-Droid.

© William Theaker / Izzy

With Google Play Store you´re tracked without end: by the Play Store itself as well as by the most apps you can find in it. But you can escape that – e.g. by turning your back to Play Store and instead use an alternative focusing on free and open software as well as privacy. One such can be found in F-Droid – which this article introduces.