this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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[–] David2003@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

Could you tell me the names of those applications and point me to where I can download each one? Do you have a compiled list?

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Last I tried RHVoice is was very unnatural sounding.

Sherpa-onnx is a much much more natural option. I personally use vits-piper-en_GB-southern_english_female-medium because I thought it sounded the most natural. You can also use Glados from Portal

[–] Brunette6256@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I second sherpa! Love it. I use with with Librera FD so basically made PDFs audiobooks.

Ohhh I'll have to check that out. Thanks for the tip!

[–] Catalyst_A@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 days ago

Congratulations!!!

[–] ThunderLegend@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I wish I had friends to use xmpp apps to text..I'm a whatsapp hostage

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

To be fair, I only have a few of my friends and some of my family on XMPP. I'm also guilty of having WhatsApp on my work phone for colleagues and the rest of my friends.

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today 56 points 4 days ago (11 children)

Try CoMaps instead of Organic Maps. It's a fork because Organic Maps is starting to enshittify

[–] trilobite@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Is there a reason for CoMaps not being on fdroid? I must be missing other app stores. For example, Accretium (a privacy appstore?) is not on fdroid.

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] trilobite@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

Thanks, how strange when I searched for it in fdroid it didn't come up 🤔

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[–] HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 3 days ago

Quite the kinky lineup; WiFiAnal, Wetter, QuickDic... 😏

[–] wolfiedafloof@lemmy.world 21 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Lol. Last picture at the bottom third. "WiFiAnal" xD (Sorry, I'm childish)

[–] gilgameth@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

Hey, that's the only safe way to let others control your buttplug.

[–] pH3ra@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 days ago

I love the mandatory Super Tux Cart anyone of us has installed but played like 4 times

[–] RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz 29 points 4 days ago

Quite impressive choice of apps, usually when I look at screenshots of privacy enthusiasts they look more or less like my own phone, and with you I share 3, maybe 4 apps only

[–] fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They said it couldn't be done...

[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It still can't be done 100% unless you make significant sacrifices to the usefulness of your smartphone...there's plenty of really useful (and sometimes necessary) things with no FOSS or open source alternatives.

[–] Starkon@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Not to mention drivers... many driver blobs are proprietary and if you can find an open source one, there is a chance it works partially or not at all. I have a spare phone and I've been hesitating between flashing either PostmarketOS (all FOSS drivers but without the android ecosystem) or LineageOS, or maybe both if I can achieve that.

[–] kadu@scribe.disroot.org 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Even if you fixed the issue with drivers...

...your modem runs it's own firmware with a lot of extremely shady behavior, and you can't touch that regardless of which OS you install. Even your SIM card can arbitrarily execute Java applets and fetch from the network without your command, but at least it's somewhat contained. Your modem though, it can do a lot without your control and people like Qualcomm have been caught doing nasty stuff with it (plus, of course, giving the US the data whenever they ask for it).

This is why people like Stallman and Snowden often talk about teaching users how to use libre software on their computers, but rather than pushing for the same with smartphones, they tell you to not touch these at all instead. They're fundamentally anti-privacy devices, built this way.

Of course I carry one, it's fairly hard to live without a phone nowadays, but we must be aware of the impossibility of fully containing the data harvesting they do.

[–] Starkon@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I agree with you on all your points. I just wanted to add that there's openWRT, a linux distro for routers and embedded systems (never used it before and the router I use is not mine), maybe that can solve the router part, I may be wrong though.

[–] kadu@scribe.disroot.org 2 points 1 day ago

openWRT is fantastic and does indeed give you full control over your router... but not your modem. Modems are a complete mess of patents and proprietary software that nobody can control but a select number of companies.

[–] pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Stop, you're gonna make me cum

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 18 points 4 days ago (6 children)

Honest question: I see a lot of people here use their mobile phones as a computer platform. I have a general uneasiness about doing so. Not throwing any shade whatsoever, I just feel there is too much out of my control on a mobile phone, for me to trust it more than I do. My general policy is not to use my phone as a mobile computing platform even tho I have a VPN installed and use Firefox as a browser.

My local network for instance. There is one pipe in and out. I can easily see what is coming in and what's going out and I can control that with the granularity of a gnat's ass. I know what my software is doing or not doing. I can allow or disallow anything I want. On a mobile phone, I feel that the control I have on my PC is not equal to the control I have on my phone.

How have you come to terms with what you can't control on your mobile phone?

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I definitely agree with you on this. My pet theory is that phones have been getting uncomfortably big, at least from my perspective, since the average consumer is expecting it to serve as a computing and productivity platform, while all I want is a nice little digital Swiss army knife. I'm only logged into my messaging apps and personal email, and don't expect to do any sort of "productivity" on my phone. When my friends and colleagues assume I'm logged in to this-or-that on my phone, all I can think about is how afraid I would be if I were logged in to so many things on my personal phone. It's so much harder to inspect what's going on in the background of mobile devices.

One of the compromises I've had to accept is the closed, yet exploitable nature of the baseband and firmware. Also how much more spying it could do compared to any PC if an exploit were to get through. Compiling Coreboot and neutering the Intel ME taught me a lot about who's really in control - and how much control we all lose to smartphone manufacturers and telecom companies.

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[–] Shape4985@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I see you have freetube. Grayjay is also a great addition as it has plug ins for lots of sites

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[–] AshCircuit@lemmy.zip 10 points 4 days ago (10 children)

That's how my GrapheneOS phone is zero proprietary apps in the main profile and then my own separate Google profile. Essentially get to carry two cell phones with one device.

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[–] KazuchijouNo@lemy.lol 12 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Where did you get super tux kart?

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 14 points 4 days ago (7 children)
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[–] Starkon@lemmy.ml 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

That is the way! Excited to flash my phone to LineageOS. Thanks for sharing the apps !

[–] ZinQ@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 days ago

Attack surface who dis?

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 7 points 4 days ago

Whoa, I have like half of these, nice!

[–] FriedRice@lemmy.ml 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Thank you. Most of thoese i even dont know. Can you make a list?

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 41 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (9 children)

Of course

  • Accrescent: Store ~~run~~ (edit: advocated) by the GrapheneOS team for third-party apps
  • Aegis: 2FA TOTP code generator
  • AirGuard: Scans for persistent AirTags in the vicinity, notifies if I may be victim to AirTag tracking
  • AntennaPod: Podcast manager, also supports importing local folders of podcasts
  • AudioMonitor: Measure sound level
  • Binary Eye: Support for many types of 1D and 2D barcodes
  • ByeDPI: routes internet traffic through the DNS port to bypass certain types of filtering
  • Canvass: doodle app, useful for mid-conversation diagrams and clarifying things visually in the absence of pen and paper
  • ClassiCube: Minecraft Classic clone
  • Conversations: XMPP client
  • Editor: raw text editor
  • Elementary: periodic table
  • SimpleEmail: minimalist e-mail app that does not automatically fetch linked images. Refereshes in the background every 15 minutes and sends notifications without need for Play Services or equivalent
  • FakeStandby: for edge cases when I want something to keep running in the foreground, but don't want to keep the screen on
  • Feeder: RSS client
  • Fintunes: Jellyfin client optimized for music
  • FlorisBoard: customizable keyboard
  • Fruity Game: Suika but with MS-Paint art style
  • Graph 89: Graphing calculator emulator
  • Invizible: Tor and DNS client
  • Kiwix: Offline Wikipedia (you can download just the parts useful to you, e.g. medical articles without storage-hungry media files)
  • Lemuroid: GBA emulator
  • LocalSend: instant P2P filesharing over WLAN
  • Markor: notes app with markdown
  • Material Files: files app with SMB share support and various handy features
  • Molly: Alternative Signal client
  • Fossify Messages: I use it over the default messages app since it is easy to block numbers by pattern
  • Notally: notes app with nice checklists
  • Open Camera: as easy to use as the regular camera, but with a bunch more features below the surface
  • OpenContacts: saves contacts as individual .vcf files to a directory for easy backup and allows dropping unknown callers without bothering me with a notification
  • Organic Maps to be replaced with CoMaps later
  • OSS Document Scanner: best FOSS scanning app I've found so far. Includes auto-cropping (given enough contrast) and adjustable B&W filter to eliminate off-white background colors.
  • phyphox: view output of sensors like the barometer, magnetometer, accelerometer, etc.
  • PipePipe: NewPipe but better (except for the occasional memory leakage)
  • QDict & QuickDic: offline dictionaries and bilingual wordbooks
  • RadioDroid: IP radio client. Can tune in to international news, music, sports broadcasts
  • RHVoice: TTS app
  • RiMusic: NewPipe, but for ~~Spotify, etc.~~ YT Music
  • SecScanQR: QR scanner and generator with history, useful to save QR addresses for later use since I don't want to fill out forms or read documents on my phone
  • SuperTuxKart: the only [edit: other] game on my phone
  • Symphony: Music app with a slick UI
  • Trail Sense: Compass with various goodies useful for outdoor activities
  • Breezy Weather: weather app and homescreen widget with a slick UI
  • MicroMathematics: Math engine, but I never learned how to use it
[–] FriedRice@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago
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[–] NotKyloRen@lemmy.zip 10 points 4 days ago (5 children)

So about that Wifi app in the third screenshot...

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[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 8 points 4 days ago

Fucking legend! I'm going to spend the weekend exploring these apps and see what changes I can make on my phone. 👍

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