F-Droid isn't ugly anymore: The open-source app store gets its biggest update in a decade

Published Sep 24, 2026, 5:58 PM EDT Joe Fedewa has been writing about technology for over a decade. Android and the rest of the Google ecosystem have been a focus for years, as well as reviewing devices, hosting podcasts, filming videos, and writing tutorials. Joe loves all things technology and is also an avid DIYer and food blogger. He has written thousands of articles, hundreds of tutorials, and dozens of reviews. Before joining How-To Geek, Joe worked at XDA-Developers as Managing Editor and covered news from the Google ecosystem. He got his start in the industry covering Windows Phone on a small blog, and later moved to Phandroid where he covered Android news, reviewed devices, wrote tutorials, created YouTube videos, and hosted a podcast. From smartphones to Bluetooth earbuds to Z-Wave switches, Joe is interested in all kinds of technology. After several years of jailbreaking and heavily modifying an iPod Touch, he moved on to his first smartphone, the HTC DROID Eris. He's been hooked ever since. Sign in to your How-To Geek account The great thing about Android is how many choices it provides. You can swap out the home screen, dialer, keyboard, and even app stores. F-Droid is one of our favorite alternatives to the Play Store, but it's never been very pretty to look at. That's finally changing. F-Droid has been around for over a decade already. However, as well as it works, it's received remarkably few major updates over the years. That's partly why it still looks like an app that was made 10 years ago. Today, the developer team announced F-Droid 2.0: a brand new rebuild from the ground up. F-Droid 2.0 A pretty open-source app store First things first, the new F-Droid was redesigned from scratch with Kotlin Compose, which is the current standard for Android apps. The app should be much more responsive and fluid than it was before. Visually, F-Droid has received a massive redesign. The interface is cleaner, more modern, and supports Material theming. The team also simplified things by cutting down the navigation bar icons from five to three. There's now just "Discover," "Search," and "My apps." The new F-Droid has more categories, which should make it easier to discover apps. Currently, there are only a few very broad categories that catch a lot of apps. Search has also been improved, which is very welcomed. I've never found it very easy to find apps by search in F-Droid. It can now search app descriptions along with app names (and more). Also, you can use filters while searching. Lastly, the process of updating apps is smoother in F-Droid 2.0. This is largely thanks to pressure from the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) and anti-trust movements. Now, Android has to offer all app stores the ability to have better automatic install and update experiences. This means no more two-step process of tapping "Download," waiting, then clicking "Install." It will work more like the Play Store. F-Droid is rolling out the update in stages over the next two weeks. However, you can go ahead and get it right now from the versions page. P.S. It's very funny timing that this editorial went up earlier this week. You made it happen, Bertel. Source: F-Droid