F-Droid gets its biggest redesign in a decade - but is it actually 2.0?
The alternative Android app store has rebuilt itself from the ground up after 14 test releases, though some longtime users reckon the version number is doing more work than the update itself.
F-Droid, the volunteer-run repository that lets Android users install free and open source apps without going near the Google Play Store, has shipped what it calls its biggest update in ten years. F-Droid 2.0 rebuilds the app’s interface from scratch, and after more than a year of development and 14 public test builds, it’s now rolling out to users over the coming weeks.
What’s actually changed
According to F-Droid’s own announcement, this is a proper rewrite rather than a lick of paint. Core parts of the app have been redone in Kotlin Compose, Google’s modern UI toolkit, which the team says should let it ship improvements faster going forward. The navigation has been trimmed to three main sections - Discover, Search and My Apps - with Settings and Nearby Swap tucked away in a top bar rather than cluttering the main menu.
The Discover tab is the headline addition, surfacing newly added apps, recently updated ones, and now the most downloaded apps in the repository too. F-Droid has also expanded its category system substantially, breaking broad groupings down into more specific ones such as VPNs, firewalls, password managers and navigation tools, on the theory that a catalogue running into the thousands of apps needs better signposting to be genuinely browsable. F-Droid is at pains to point out that none of this involves tracking users or trying to maximise time spent in the app - a fairly direct dig at the Play Store’s more engagement-hungry design.
So is it really “2.0”?
That’s the part getting picked apart. The release has landed near the top of Hacker News, with over 1,100 upvotes and nearly 300 comments, and a fair chunk of that discussion is sceptical rather than celebratory. Several commenters argue this looks more like a substantial 1.x update than a true version-two overhaul, with one describing it bluntly as “1.22x” dressed up with a bigger number. Others have zeroed in on interface quibbles in the promotional screenshots themselves - a stray line-break in an app listing, inconsistent button styling elsewhere in the F-Droid ecosystem - the kind of nitpicking that tends to follow any redesign claiming to be a leap forward.
There’s also a broader, more good-natured argument running through the thread about whether visual polish matters much for a utility app people open rarely, versus F-Droid’s rivals such as the Play Store, which several commenters happily conceded is worse to use despite Google’s resources.
Who this actually affects
This is squarely a story for existing F-Droid users and anyone curious about installing open-source Android software outside Google’s ecosystem - it changes nothing for the vast majority of Android owners who stick to the Play Store. It’s also worth noting the update lands against a backdrop of F-Droid publicly warning that Google’s planned changes to how Android apps get installed and verified pose a threat to alternative app stores generally, a separate and larger fight the redesign doesn’t resolve.
The takeaway
F-Droid 2.0 is a real, substantial rebuild with a new interface, better browsing tools and a codebase the team says will be easier to maintain - none of that is in dispute. Whether it earns the “2.0” label or is simply a well-executed refresh is a matter of taste, and the comments section suggests plenty of longtime users lean towards the latter. Either way, if you already rely on F-Droid, it’s a worthwhile update; if you don’t, nothing here changes your Android experience.