⏱️ Lectura: 11 min
F-Droid just released the biggest update in more than a decade of history: fourteen beta versions later, the app arrives with an interface completely rebuilt in Kotlin Compose. The project itself made the announcement on September 24 on its official blog.
📑 En este artículo
The change comes at a delicate moment. Google is modifying how Android installs apps outside Play Store, and the F-Droid foundation launched a campaign asking the community for help defending that freedom. F-Droid 2.0 arrives, then, as a bet on staying relevant in that context.
TL;DR
- F-Droid 2.0 is the app’s biggest redesign in a decade, after more than a year of development.
- 14 beta versions were released before reaching the stable version.
- Key components were rewritten in Kotlin Compose, Android’s current standard toolkit.
- Main navigation was reduced to three sections: Discover, Search, and My Apps.
- Game categories went from one generic bucket to 17 distinct genres.
- Search now indexes descriptions, categories, and translations, not just app names.
- Search support for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) improved notably.
- The project faces pressure from Google, which is changing how Android installs apps.
Introduction
F-Droid is the most widely used open source app catalog for Android outside Google Play, with thousands of audited apps and no user tracking. Since its first stable version, the project kept a functional but outdated interface, designed for an Android that no longer exists. F-Droid 2.0 is the first complete redesign since then, and it aims to solve a concrete problem: with thousands of apps in the repository, finding the right app had become increasingly difficult.
The team itself clarifies this in its official announcement. It’s not just a visual facelift, but a rewrite of the key components using Kotlin Compose, a foundation that, according to the project, will allow delivering improvements more frequently in the coming years.
What happened
The announcement confirms that F-Droid 2.0 arrives after more than a year of work and fourteen test versions. Main navigation was reduced to three sections: Discover, Search, and My Apps. Previously, categories, settings, and features like Nearby Swap competed for space in the same menu; now Settings and Nearby Swap are a tap away from the top bar, without taking up a spot in the main navigation.
The Discover screen now combines three signals to help find apps: recently added ones, recently updated ones, and, for the first time, the most downloaded ones in the repository. My Apps became the central panel for managing installations, pending updates, and issues with already installed apps.
The category system expanded notably. Instead of a few generic categories, F-Droid 2.0 adds specialized categories (VPNs, firewalls, password managers, browsers) grouped under meta-categories that serve as entry points for exploring the catalog. The most visible example is Games, which went from a single bucket to distinguishing 17 distinct genres, from action to puzzles.
Context and history
F-Droid was born as an alternative to Google Play for those who want to install audited free software, without hidden telemetry or proprietary dependencies. Unlike Play Store, every published app declares its anti-features (whether it depends on non-free services, whether it includes ads, whether it requires an account) before the user installs it. That transparency is why public administrations, NGOs, and privacy-conscious users choose it as their main source.
For more than a decade, the client app changed little in its visual design, even as Android evolved from Material Design to Material You and the app catalog grew to thousands of packages. The project itself calls it the biggest app update in 10 years, which gives an idea of how much time passed since the last deep redesign.
The regulatory context also changed around F-Droid. For years, installing and updating apps outside Play Store involved manual steps and security warnings that Android showed only for alternative stores. That started to shift thanks to pressure from the European Union’s Digital Markets Act and antitrust actions elsewhere in the world, which forced Android to offer all app stores a more automatic and smooth installation and update experience.
Technical details and performance
The technical foundation of the redesign is Kotlin Compose, the declarative toolkit that replaced Android’s traditional View system. The project explains that rewriting the key components in Compose wasn’t just a matter of aesthetics, but a codebase that’s simpler to maintain, which the team expects will translate into more frequent improvements.
Search received the deepest change in this version. Before, searching only compared the app name. Now the search index also includes descriptions, categories, and translated content, so searching for what an app does (for example, offline photo editor) has a better chance of finding results than searching by a name you don’t remember exactly. Search also saves recent queries so you don’t have to retype them.
A less visible but significant change is improved support for CJK writing systems (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean). The new search engine handles these languages better, something the previous version handled poorly.
Combinable filters are the other strong piece of this version: you can cross category, device compatibility, and anti-features in a single query. The example the project itself gives is filtering only action games compatible with your device, excluding those that depend on non-free network services. So these advanced features don’t stay hidden, F-Droid 2.0 introduces contextual onboarding screens at different points in the app, instead of burying everything in a settings menu.
| Aspect | F-Droid 1.x | F-Droid 2.0 |
|---|---|---|
| Interface | Traditional Android Views | Kotlin Compose |
| Navigation | Categories, settings, and Nearby Swap in the same menu | 3 sections (Discover, Search, My Apps) with quick access from the top bar |
| Search | App name only | Name, description, category, and translations, with improved CJK support |
| Games category | A single generic category | 17 distinct genres |
| Filters | Basic, no combining criteria | Combinable: category, compatibility, and anti-features |
💭 Key point: F-Droid doesn’t track the user or try to maximize time spent in the app. The redesign prioritizes finding the right app fast, not retaining attention.
How navigation is organized
flowchart TD
A["Main screen"] --> B["Discover"]
A --> C["Search"]
A --> D["My Apps"]
B --> E["New, updated, and most downloaded apps"]
C --> F["Search by name, description, and category"]
D --> G["Pending updates and issues"]The diagram summarizes the central change: before there was a single menu with everything mixed together, now each section has a clear function, and secondary tools, like settings and Nearby Swap, live outside that main flow.
Getting started
Trying F-Droid 2.0 doesn’t require anything special beyond an Android device: rollout started this week for those who already have the app installed, and it can also be installed from scratch by downloading the official APK from f-droid.org.
If you prefer to install the APK manually via ADB, the command is the same on Windows, macOS, and Linux, because ADB is a cross-platform tool:
# Windows (PowerShell), macOS, and Linux: same command
adb install -r FDroid.apkThe -r flag lets you reinstall over an existing version without losing your configured repositories or your list of apps with pending updates.
For those who prefer the terminal over the graphical interface, fdroidcl is an unofficial command-line client that talks to the same F-Droid repositories and runs the same way on Windows, macOS, and Linux:
fdroidcl update
fdroidcl search "password manager"
fdroidcl install org.fdroid.fdroidThe first command syncs the app index, the second searches by free text (it works similarly to the app’s new search, though without a graphical interface), and the third installs an app by its package identifier.
💡 Tip: before installing a manually downloaded APK, check that the file’s SHA-256 hash matches the one published on F-Droid’s official page. It’s the only way to confirm nobody modified the package along the way.
To confirm you’re already on version 2.0 and not an earlier beta, you can check the version number directly from a terminal with ADB access:
adb shell dumpsys package org.fdroid.fdroid | grep versionNameThat command prints the installed versionName, which should start with 2. instead of 1. or a beta number.
Impact and analysis
The redesign doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The project itself opens its announcement with a warning. F-Droid is under threat, because Google is changing the way Android installs apps on devices. The foundation is asking the community for help through that campaign, though the version 2.0 announcement doesn’t detail which specific Google measure is the concern.
What the announcement does describe is the other side of that coin. Regulatory pressure, at the same time, gave F-Droid a boost. For years, installing and updating apps from alternative stores on Android had a deliberately worse experience than Play Store’s. That changed in part thanks to Europe’s Digital Markets Act and antitrust investigations in other jurisdictions, which forced Android to offer any app store, not just Play Store, a more automatic installation and update path.
For a project that depends on volunteers and donations, competing on user experience against a store backed by one of the world’s largest corporations is an uneven fight. F-Droid 2.0 is betting that if the friction of installing and updating drops, and if finding the right app gets easier, more people will choose to stay.
The real limitation is in the catalog. No interface redesign expands what software can be distributed, that depends on each app’s license and source code. F-Droid only distributes software whose code is free and auditable, so popular apps with proprietary components simply don’t make the cut, no matter how much navigation improves for finding them.
What’s next
According to the announcement, F-Droid 2.0 will roll out gradually over the coming weeks to the existing user base, rather than reaching everyone at once. This is a common pattern when changing the interface engine of an app with millions of installations: it allows catching problems in a small group before exposing everyone else.
With Compose as its foundation, the team says it expects to iterate faster from now on. That opens the door for features left out today, like more meta-categories or additional filters, to arrive in incremental updates instead of waiting for another complete redesign within a decade.
📖 Summary on Telegram: View summary
Try it yourself: download the APK from f-droid.org or run adb install -r FDroid.apk in your terminal to see the new Discover on your own phone today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is F-Droid?
It’s an open source app repository for Android, an alternative to Google Play, that audits each app’s source code and publicly declares its anti-features before installing it.
How long did F-Droid 2.0 take to develop?
According to the official announcement, the team worked for more than a year and released fourteen beta versions before reaching the stable release.
Do I need to reinstall the app to get F-Droid 2.0?
Not necessarily. The project is rolling it out gradually to those who already have the app installed. If you want to get ahead, you can download the latest APK from f-droid.org and install it manually with adb install -r.
What changes in app search?
It now also searches descriptions, categories, and translated content, not just the app name, and it especially improves results in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Does F-Droid 2.0 still not track the user?
Yes. The project maintains its policy of not including telemetry or engagement mechanisms within the app, something it explicitly emphasizes in the redesign announcement.
What is fdroidcl?
It’s an unofficial command-line client, maintained on GitHub, that lets you search for and install apps from F-Droid repositories from the terminal on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
References
- F-Droid 2.0: A New Chapter for Android Freedom: official announcement of the redesign on the F-Droid blog.
- F-Droid: official site of the open source app repository for Android.
- Keep Android Open: F-Droid’s campaign about Google’s changes to app installation on Android.
- fdroidcl: unofficial command-line client for F-Droid repositories.
- F-Droid on Wikipedia: history and context of the project.
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Imagen destacada: Foto de Zulfugar Karimov en Unsplash
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