cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10796117
Fossify Gallery (fork of Simple Gallery), Fossify File Manager (fork of Simple File Manager) and Fossify Calendar (fork of Simple Calendar) are now available for download on F-Droid.
(Simple Mobile Tools suite was acquired by an Israeli adware company)
About Fossify: Fossify is all about community-backed, open-source, and ad-free mobile apps. A fork of the SimpleMobileTools, which is no longer maintained, and we’re here to continue the legacy, bringing simple and private tech to everyone.
Oh cool! De-googling never seemed easier … I think we are finally ready for open source phones
I was waiting for the F-Droid release of the calendar. The switch is as easy as you can imagine: Export your settings from SimpleCalendar and import them into FossifyCalendar – that’s it.
I’m waiting for the Contacts manager. Untill then I’ll keep using the last “good” (pre-sale) version of Simple Contacts.
But don’t worry, take your time.
Yup… Me too waiting on contacts.
Most of the simple mobile tools apps on the play store have already added ads and internet permissions. Get off them asap
Woot! In-stalled!
Oh thank you so much for posting this. When Brodie Robertson covered this on his YT channel, I was so upset at how the fiasco with SimpleMobileTools played out, but also so glad somebody took over the mantle. Cheers!
For someone who is completely out of the loop, what happened ?
If I recall correctly, the whole suite was sold to a company that has a history of acquiring existing tools just to park them in maintenance mode and fill them with ads.
The “simple” suite of apps was bought by zippoapps, a company that buys popular apps and adds incredibly aggressive monetization that is basically just trying to scam users. You know those “free trials” that cost like 300€ per week once the trial is up so you forget to cancel and pay a bunch of money for an app you don’t want? Yeah that.
Others have already given you the summary, but if you’re interested in Brodie Robertson’s talk, going a bit in depth on the topic, here is the video.
I’ll be waiting for the dialer, sms, and contact apps in f-droid. Gallery is there already. Too bad I donated a couple of times to Tibor; wish you all the best anyways !
Hopefully they get to Simple Launcher soon. I switched to that because Nova Launcher seemed to he dead and I couldn’t find a better open source alternative. I certainly will take suggestions if someone knows something better on fdroid.
Been using KISS Launcher very happily. Worth a look.
Lawnchair also works, if you want the stock android look
Abandoned, unfortunately.
I’m using Lawnchair.
Thanks for the recommendation, unfortunately it seems that one is no longer maintained either.
How do you like it?
I kinda want to try it because you can supposedly import and export your icons / shortcuts to apps. I kinda want to be able to like save a folder of urls so that they are viewable from the launcher, but I am not sure if that will be doable. The idea is that hopefully there would be a way to take a folder of bookmarks from exported firefox and make them easily accessible and organized from the launcher.
I guess I should just try it out and see.
The calendar isn’t showing up when I search for it on F droid
Interesting, when browsing fdroid they show up, but not when I search for them.
Oh thank you for this! I could only find the Gallery with the search.
Maybe need to update the search index first
How do I do that?
F droid is slow. But on IzzyOnDroid it is already available.
I’ll keep the last pre-sale version of simple gallery until fossify gallery implements some kind of editor (no, rotating and cropping is not editing).
well, seems to me that you need a non-simple gallery app
It already has annotations I believe…
What else is there?
any idea if they’ll also fork the SMS, caller, and others? that’s what I use.also, I’m OK if I don’t update or no?
edit: the rest of the apps are already on their github , just no packages yet
Caller (Phone) has a package available on their github you can grab now, and f-droid should recognize the install once it hits the repos. They’re releasing pretty quickly, all things considered.
oh nice. I mostly need SMS, but hopefully soon
I use qksms
The simple sms app had some issues with not sending some messages for me even though it showed me it did.
I wonder what they think will happen. j feel like smt is only good because its Foss. if I don’t care about Foss, trackers, etc, google s product suite is much better, more feature rich.the only reason I use smt is because its Foss. I’d love to be able to use google messages, with RCS, and whatnot, but trackers and google prevent me from doing so. I feel like by doing this they’re killing it
They’re hoping that the current install base will be too lazy to remove their malware.
lol I think people who use fdroid sent the kind of people to keep known malware
but yea maybe ¯_ (ツ) _/¯