F-Droid 2.0 changes almost everything in its biggest update in 10 years

F-Droid has helped Android users discover and install free and open-source apps for more than a decade. Now, the project has announced F-Droid 2.0, describing it as the app’s biggest update in 10 years. The release follows more than a year of development and 14 test builds, bringing a complete redesign alongside major changes to how users discover, install and manage their apps.

Much of the redesign is aimed at making F-Droid’s growing app catalogue easier to navigate. The main navigation now contains Discover, Search and My Apps, while settings and Nearby Swap have moved to the top bar. Discover brings together categories, newly added apps, recent updates and the most-downloaded titles. Search now checks descriptions, categories and translated content instead of relying only on app names, and it works more reliably in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Results can also be filtered by category, device compatibility and anti-features such as dependence on non-free services. Nearby Swap continues to share apps directly between devices without a central server, although a more reliable version is still being developed.

Installation and update management have also been reworked. F-Droid 2.0 uses a unified installer with support for Android’s pre-approval API. On compatible devices, this allows an installation to be approved shortly after selecting an app rather than waiting for its download to finish. The client can also check for and install updates automatically in the background while respecting the user’s existing preferences. Pull-to-refresh has been removed, with manual update checks now found in the three-dot menu in My Apps, while network and data-usage settings have been reorganised.

F-Droid 2.0 also changes how some of its privacy tools work. Tor support is being simplified, with automatic detection removed and existing “Use Tor” settings moved to the general proxy controls. A Tor VPN is now the recommended way to route the app’s connections through Tor. Instead of pretending to be a working calculator, it changes only F-Droid’s icon and name, leaving the app visible in Android’s settings. The ability to wipe apps in response to a panic trigger has not returned, so users who rely on it are advised to delay updating.