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Android Guideline

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WARNING: I take absolutely no responsibility for any damage done by following this guideline. Think for yourself before applying any of the suggested steps.

Why privacy matters

Closed source apps often contain trackers to display the the right advertisements, identify you throughout the web, to analyze where you go, what you like and who you know. This might seem ok, as long as the only use is to display you the right advertisements. But this means you allow anyone to known almost anything about you.

Its not about seeing no ads but has much wider implications like freedom and human rights. Enough has been written on the matter and I don’t want to do it again here.

Read why privacy matters at privacyinternational.org to learn more.

Donations

The reason these apps are listed here is because they are trustworthy and open source. Their developers have no intention to spy on you and no financial interest in your data. On the other and this means they give away their time and hard work for free. Pleaser consider at least 1, 2 or even 5€ to them. Of course more is better.

Many of the apps in the curated list are from the Fossify app suite. Please donate some money at the Fossify website if you plan to use the pro features. You can get the pro features for free on F-Droid. But it’s just fair to donate some € if you can afford it (and I think everyone can).

App Store

Using a trustworthy app store is the first step to a safer, privacy and security friendly Android experience.

F-Droid is an open source Android app store that applies strict rules on included apps - including tests to make sure the does not spy on you, has not trackers and so on. You probably won’t find a place where you can be as sure as here that the apps you get are safe to use.

If you have more questions, refer to F-Droid’s FAQ.

Installation

Download the F-Droid APK from the official website. Do not install it directly from the downloads section (you don’t want your browser to have permission to install apps). Open your file manager, navigate to your downloads folder and open F-Droid.apk. Now give your file manager the permission to install apps from unknown sources and install it. After the installation has finished, withraw the permission from your file manager again. We don’t need it anymore.

Now open F-Droid and draw the first page from the top. This will refresh the package sources and check if there is an update for F-Droid. If so, you’ll see a bubble with a number on the bell icon in the tool bar at the bottom. Click it and apply the update.

You will have to give F-Droid the permission to install apps from unknown sources. Keep it like that.

After restarting F-Droid you are ready to explore its list of apps and install whatever you like.

New app store (optional)

Although F-Droid is enough for most use cases it lacks some functions like auto-updates. Here comes Neo Store to the rescue, which again can be installed via F-Droid.

The Cloud

It’s convenient to have your contatcs, photos, notes and calendars in the cloud. You may lose your phone or pc, but your data is still accessible. By default all this is automatically uploaded to Google or other services pre-installed by your smartphone manufacturer. The cloud provider then analyzes your data to show you advertisements, incluence what you see in a search engine or even change the route your navigation app calculates, to lead you along a store you might like.

In a country where data protection laws are weaker than in the EU your provider might hand over your data to political opponents or the government which can use it to put you to jail.

Long story short, there are many reasons why you should stay in charge of your own data. There is a handful of steps you need to follow, to gain back control over your data.

Remove cloud services

Uninstall all apps and services that might upload your data against your will to some companies servers. Navigate to “Android Settings” > “Apps” > “Show system apps” and remove or de-activate at least the following apps:

No worries. You’ll find apps to replace these in the app list in the next chapter.

Get a trustworthy cloud provider

If you don’t want to use a cloud, you can stop here and go to the next chapter.

Else you need a new cloud provider. Either search the web for a trustworthy Nextcloud provider or setup your own cloud with a Raspberry Pi or a pre-configured home cloud device.

If you just want to synchronize Contacts, Calendars and Tasks there are many free choices online. If you want to backup your photos as well, you’ll probably need a paid plan.

Sync your device with your cloud

In the last step we install DavX5. This app synchronizes your Nextcloud instance with your smartphone/tablet and even PC.

  1. Install DevX5 from F-Droid
  2. Go through the setup assistent
  3. Disable battery optimization for this app

That’s it. You can now sync your data with a cloud service you can trust. See the curated app list for apps to use with this setup.

Curated App List

This list contains apps for everyday use. All entries have been tested for stability, user-friendliness and privacy and security aspects. Every app is able to replace your pre-installed app for the specific task.

Each entry contains information about:

General purpose

Launcher

Right now there is no open source launcher which I can recommend for everyone. Of course there are great apps. But many of them might not suite everyone. Therefore I’ll just give some examples.

Browser

Browsing the web.

Additional steps

Set your default search engine to DuckDuckGo, Ecosia or Qwant.

File Manager

For all file managing tasks (browsing, copying, deleting, moving, …).

Tools

Calendar

Viewing and managing your dates and birthdays.

or

Navigation and maps.

and

Calculator

Calculations of any kind.

Keyboard

Writing.

QR Code Scanner

Scanning QR codes and opening links.

Communication

Phone / Dialer & Contacts

Calling people, browsing and editing contacts. This entry consists of two apps that are best used together.

E-Mail

Receiving and sending E-Mails.

Instant Messenger

Encrypted secure instant messaging.

and

SMS

Writing and receiving SMS.

Multimedia

Managing and viewing your photos and videos.

Music

Playing your locally stored music.

Radio

Listening to online radio stations world wide.

Podcasts

Downloading and streaming podcasts.

YouTube

Watching videos on YouTube.

Additional steps

If you use Neo Store you can enable the NewPipe source from its settings.

You can install NewPipe from F-Droid. But since YouTube often changes its API’s it is much better to always have the latest NewPipe installed. The newest version has some days delay on the official F-Droid repository, therefore we do the following:

  1. Add the official NewPipe F-Droid Repository to our F-Droid.
  2. Refresh the repositories (draw down from the top in the first F-Droid tab)
  3. Search for and install NewPipe

Feed Reader (RSS/Atom)

Keeping up to date with projects you are interested in.

Document Viewer (PDF, …)

Viewing several document formats.

Privacy and security

Traffic Filter

Blocks trackers and domains that are known to undermine privacy, security and performance in a non-tolerable way.

ATTENTION: Do only use this if you know what you are doing and how to disable it. Sometimes this app may cause your apps to not get any internet connection at all. This might happen due to wrong configuration but also because of bugs. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

HINT: RethinkDNS creates a local VPN. That means, it does not transfer any of your traffic somewhere else. It simply uses the VPN on your phone to filter the traffic directly in your device. If you have trouble using a specific app, you can also whitelist/exclude it in the Apps settings.

Additional steps

  1. Use local blocklists
  2. “Configure” > “DNS”
  3. Enable “System DNS”
  4. Enable “Use In-App downloader”
  5. “Device internal blocklists” > “Configure”
  6. Await download
  7. Select the blocklists you want to use

Password Manager

Managing and generating strong passwords and login credentials.

Additional steps

Take your time to read through the instructions and information in the wiki to properly setup you password manager.