F-Droid 2.0 released: the free Android app catalog gets its biggest update in a decade

On September 24 the F-Droid team released F-Droid 2.0 — a complete redesign of its Android client and the project's largest update in ten years. The work took over a year and followed 14 pre-release builds; the rollout starts now.

A new navigation: Discover, Search and My Apps

The interface was rewritten in Kotlin and Jetpack Compose and follows Android's Material Design. Navigation is down to three areas: Discover, Search and My Apps. Categories now live inside Discover, while Settings and Nearby Swap stay one tap away in the top bar.

The new Discover screen highlights newly added and recently updated apps alongside the most downloaded ones. The category system was significantly expanded — VPNs, firewalls, password managers, navigation tools — and Games are now split into 17 genres.

Search now covers app descriptions, categories and translated content, adds better support for Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and remembers recent queries. Filters can be combined — by category, device compatibility or anti-features.

Installation and updates

Under pressure from the EU's Digital Markets Act and antitrust cases, Android now offers all app stores a smoother, more automatic install and update experience. F-Droid 2.0 uses a unified installer and the new pre-approval API: users confirm right after deciding to install, not after the download.

Updates are fetched and installed automatically by default, and existing preferences are respected. Pull-to-refresh is gone — the gesture now only scrolls — while manual update checks moved to the three-dot menu on the My Apps screen.

Privacy and security

Tor support was simplified: the unreliable auto-detection was removed and "Use Tor" migrated to generic Proxy Settings; the team recommends Tor VPN. Panic features remain, but app hiding now masks only the icon and name, so F-Droid still appears in system settings.

One feature has not returned: removing and wiping apps in response to a panic trigger such as Ripple — the team says it serves a small user base and needs highly specialized maintenance. F-Droid Privileged Extension is no longer supported either; background updates now use Android's session installer, and Android 6 support was dropped.

Funding and what's next

Development was funded by NLnet through the Mobifree fund, with research and design supported by the Open Technology Fund's UX & Discovery Lab and Ura Design. An independent security audit was run by the OTF Security Lab and Convocation.

Nearby — sharing apps between devices without a central server — is not in the initial release; a new implementation is in active development.