Simple Mobile apps have been very popular among FOSS enthusiasts. I’ve personally been using the Gallery, Contacts and the Phone app since a few years now. It’s a shame that it has come to this, will be on the lookout for their forks.
Terrible news. These apps are really great. Reminds me of what happened to Quick Pick and ES file explorer and u could also add Nova Launcher. More apps assigned to the graveyard. Hopefully they get forked quickly and updated when needed.
Is there something in the making with Nova Launcher? I love it and didn’t hear any bad news
https://www.androidpolice.com/nova-launcher-acquired-by-branch/
Kind of old article, but yea, they were sold.
Darnit… Thanks
ES File Explorer, those were the peak days of the XDA rom and root scene
The death of Quik Pic was when it was sold
I swapped the Simple after that, so this blows fucking ass.
Fucking hell now I need alternatives to my dialer, my gallery (this will be the hardest one to replace because the editing for simple gallery was amazing), contacts, and clock. Does anyone have any suggestions?
For Contacts and Clock, use YOU apps. I don’t think anything can replace the Gallery, I’ll continue using the current version for as long as there’s a new community-maintained fork. It’s quite stable really, doesn’t really need changing this very moment.
I’m not finding them. Link?
I found Koler dialer that matches the UI of those two https://github.com/Chooloo/koler
Wow these apps have an amazing UI, kinda wish they had a dialer and SMS app too so the colors are in sync with the contacts app (the built in SMS to the contacts app does not work properly at least for me)
Thanks will check Aves out: https://f-droid.org/packages/deckers.thibault.aves.libre/
I’ve been using Material Files and am happy with it.
+1 for Material Files
Amaze can’t handle WebDAV :(
For WebDAV, you can use DAVx⁵ or Round Sync
Aves does not have any editing features
I think that functionality should be separate from a gallery app. Check out Image Toolbox for mobile photo editing.
do you have anything for editing videos?
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/protect.videoeditor/
Simple, but closest we have for now.
Yeah, that’s true. But it’s not a problem for me because I rarely edit photos on mobile. When I have to, I just use the stock app.
I guess I don’t need a gallery app…
Everyone has a price.
Living is expensive.
That’s the beauty of FOSS. Just download the existing app and blacklist it from updates. Someone will archive the existing code so it can be downloaded later.
Thankfully I only have them via Obtainium. Flip the “track only” option to on and wait and see. Like someone else said, I’m hopeful there’ll be forks for these soon enough. I’m off to fork the repos for myself anyway, just in case.
Edit: for those that are self-hosting some form of git, is would be great if more people did this, for archival purposes. I’ve simply left the public fork of all 19 repos in my Github account, but have mirrored those to my private Forgejo instance.
At any point I can sync the GH forks then mirror those down to my local instance. Until the original repos get dismantled, of course.
It’s kind of a bad idea to not keep a file browser up to date. You don’t really want security flaws in a program that has access to all the files on your device.
It’s even worse idea to get an inevitable update that pushes ads through the file browser.
Better switch to the F-Droid version.
This is terrible news! I am going to struggle to find a replacement for the gallery app.
Have you ever herd of Aves? Kinda the opposite of “simple” in terms of feature set, but can be downloaded from F-Droid and is highly customizable. I really like it’s tagging system/feature.
Damn it. There was a big extension that did this too. The first thing the guys did? implement a credentials stealer.
Time to disable auto update for these apps in the stores
This is why you should always install the F-Droid version whenever possible. They won’t update just because upstream did without vetting it first.
FFS just started using these apps
For anyone looking for an alternative to Gallery, Gallery by Iacoblonut looks better, and you can use Amaze to edit images.
It’s a little janky, but seems to be heading in the right direction. The UI feels right unlike Aves. Thanks for the recommendation.
Guess I’ll use Image Toolbox for simple edits (pun intended). Hopefully the developer improves the user experience for that.
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I tried, but I don’t know how to get linka from the F-Droid app.
Wow I was never comfortable about the marketing vibe around those apps on f-droid, so I avoided them. I’m glad of that now. Still, someone can snag the source code for a fork if they want, and I’m sure there are alternatives.
Terrible News!!!
The developer of these apps I’ve been using for years, and who hasn’t seen a single penny in donations from me in all that time, has decided to sell them!
Now I’m really mad at them for selling out, and am forced to move to another set of apps someone else has made for me to use free of charge.you know, I’d really love to get a good app that i pay for and that in turn doesn’t collect or sell my data and has no ads, but there’s so many but’s.
- one time payment is not sustainable for development
- i can’t have a subscription for each and every app
- with free and fairly decent apps from big Corp like Google photos, most people won’t bother
just to say: I’m not sure there is a good solution where everyone wins :/
What could be more sustainable for the development is to make updates with new features paid. People have a one time payment for the app and then pay for new features.
It’s absolutely ot perfect. But, it’s not a subscription and the dev still earn something.
This would cause a maintenance nightmare for the devs though. And from what I hear, the app stores discourage multiple versions of the same app these days.
Yea, fair point
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