F-Droid 2.0 Arrives as Google Verification Plan Threatens Third-Party Android Stores

Google's plan would require developers who want their apps broadly distributed outside the official Play Store to register with Google and verify their identities. Under the Full Distribution option, developers would pay a one-time $25 fee, provide a copy of a government-issued ID, and conform to Google's terms of service. Google also offers a free Limited Distribution option that does not require government ID verification but restricts distribution to 20 authorized devices. Apps from unverified developers could still be installed by users who enable Android's advanced installation flow.

The F-Droid team credited the European Union's Digital Markets Act decisions against Google with making installation smoother. F-Droid can now use a unified installation service because a pre-approval API lets users approve an installation when they request it rather than waiting for the app to finish downloading. The team said this brings the F-Droid install experience on official Android devices much closer to what the built-in app store provides. F-Droid 2.0 can also fetch and install app updates automatically, and it now does so by default. The team said it intends to keep working on the app for years to come.

Those changes may not matter if Google proceeds with its registration requirements for non-Play Store developers. F-Droid's Thursday announcement suggested the team does not intend to go quietly, according to the reports.

Ars Technica noted that F-Droid had gone 10 years without a major update and spent more than a year developing version 2.0. The new client was redesigned from scratch in Kotlin Compose, the standard for modern Android apps, making the store more responsive. It includes optional support for Android's Material theming. The interface has been cleaned up, with the most important functions easier to access and some others moved into overflow menus.

Unlike the Play Store, F-Droid does not track taps and installs to push ads and suggestions, the reports said; it aims to help users find apps and then get out of the way. F-Droid now includes a large number of categories, including specialized niches such as firewalls, password managers, and VPNs. These groups appear in the search tab, while higher-level categories are listed on the main Discover page. Search results can now be based on app descriptions rather than only app names.

"One of the goals of the rewrite was to lower the barrier for new contributors," F-Droid said in its announcement. "We are excited to begin rolling out F-Droid 2.0 to users over the coming weeks after 14 test releases." The organization said the 2.0 release is available on its versions page for users who want it immediately.