2025-07-12
Google sucks. I mean, everyone knows that, but I still wanted to preface this post with it because it's true.
I have an Android phone these days and like it way better than I ever liked iPhone. I miss some apps, however, and I'd like recommendations. If possible I prefer FLOSS alternatives, and cloud connections (even for backups) and AI integrations are total deal breakers. If my experience with the app is very good I can consider paying a one-time fee to remove ads, but no subscription fees.
The default messaging app doesn't allow me to select and copy part of a message. It's the full message or nothing. This feature has apparently been requested since 2011, and considering every other messaging app has had it since their first version I'm sure Google will get to it any century now. Any good alternatives out there? Is it hard to change your default messaging app?
In Google's eternal wisdom they have decided to sunset the default podcast app, aptly named "Podcasts". Instead they want me to use the Youtube Music app for podcasts.
Youtube Music can subscribe to podcasts. Wait, you wanted to search for a specific episode? Nah, the search is for all of Youtube, but not the podcast archive. This is only one of many flaws. Basically it's the absolute worst experience I've ever had for podcasts, and I used an RSS reader to subscribe to pods for a while. Youtube Music isn't even a tenth as good as that was. I hardly know how to compare it to any regular, decent, podcast app.
I don't need a full on LibreOffice Calc competitor on my phone, but it would be nice to run a few formulas on columns and rows and maybe generate a graph sometime. Offline.
I found Markor in the F-Droid store and like it very much. I use it multiple times most days for all kinds of notes. It's a no-frills text editor. No cloud sync, no ads, no dumb stuff. It has syntax highlighting for some of the most common markup languages and templates for some of the most common markup files. A .txt file is just that, but you can open a new file from a markdown template that adds a short yaml preamble with metadata, for example. I love this app.
-- CC0 Björn Wärmedal