F-Droid rolls out its biggest update in a decade
Open-source Android app store F-Droid has released version 2.0, featuring a redesigned interface and a smoother app installation process. It marks the first major overhaul since the store's early years.
F-Droid, the community-driven store for free and open source Android apps, has announced the rollout of F-Droid 2.0 — its first major update in ten years, following a multiyear development effort.
The client was rebuilt from the ground up using Kotlin Compose, the current standard framework for modern Android app development. This change makes the store noticeably more responsive and adds optional support for Android's Material theming. The interface has also been simplified, surfacing the most-used functions while tucking less common options into overflow menus.
Easier app discovery
The update's main focus is making it simpler to find and install apps. What started as a small catalog has grown into a library of thousands of open source apps. Unlike the Play Store, F-Droid does not track user activity to serve ads or recommendations.
The new version introduces a much wider range of categories, including niche ones such as firewalls, password managers, and VPNs, all browsable from the search tab, alongside broader categories on the main Discover page. Search results can now also be matched against app descriptions, not just app names.
Smoother installation
Google has long placed restrictions on sideloaded apps, citing security concerns — the same reasoning behind its upcoming developer verification system. Even so, by using Google's pre-approval API, F-Droid 2.0 streamlines installation: instead of downloading an APK, opening it, and confirming a warning pop-up, users simply tap "Install" in F-Droid and then confirm with a second tap in a system prompt. That's one extra step compared with the Play Store, but still an improvement over the previous process.
