F-Droid 2.0: The Biggest App Update in a Decade

The F-Droid project has announced F-Droid 2.0, a complete redesign of its official app and the largest update in ten years. The work took more than a year and went through 14 test releases; the rollout to users begins over the coming weeks.

This is more than a visual refresh. Key components have been rewritten in Kotlin using Jetpack Compose, the standard toolkit for modern Android development. The aim is twofold: to bring the interface closer to Material Design, and to lower the barrier for new contributors — joining the project should now be easier for anyone familiar with today's Android ecosystem.

What changed for users

The main navigation is reduced to three sections: Discover, Search and My Apps. Categories are folded into Discover, while Settings and Nearby Swap leave the main menu but stay one tap away. With the catalog now holding thousands of apps, particular attention went into discoverability — done without tracking users or trying to keep them glued to the app.

The category system has been substantially expanded: instead of a handful of broad buckets there are now specialized ones — VPNs, firewalls, password managers and more, grouped under higher-level meta-categories. Games alone are split into 17 genres. Search now covers descriptions, categories and translations rather than just names, with markedly better support for Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts. Combinable filters have been added — for instance by device compatibility or anti-features.

Installation and automatic updates

Thanks to pressure from the EU's Digital Markets Act and antitrust actions worldwide, Android now offers third-party stores a smoother install path. F-Droid 2.0 uses a unified installer and the new pre-approval API: on supported devices the user confirms an install right away rather than after the download completes. Updates are now fetched and installed automatically, and the pull-to-refresh gesture is gone — the best refresh button is the one you never have to press.

Privacy and losses

Features for users in high-risk environments remain: Tor support (now via generic proxy settings) and "panic" removal of sensitive data. The app-disguise feature has been simplified — instead of turning into a working calculator, only the icon and name change, so users understand the real limits of the protection. Not yet returning are app-wiping via a panic trigger like Ripple and support for the F-Droid Privileged Extension; the developers invite community input on both. Dropping Android 6 stems from new tooling depending on fixes made in Android itself.

The project also flags an external threat: Google is changing how apps get installed, and F-Droid is rallying support for a campaign to keep Android open.

Source: Hacker News