Hi, its TheAnonymouseJoker! I am a veteran Android user besides being a privacy advocate and data archivist.
Generally, its said that if something is not free, you are the product. But there are less than 50 exceptions to this rule of thumb. Some great, irreplaceable closed source apps are:
- Snapseed
- Glasswire
- most third party reddit apps
- 1DM+ downloader
- Accubattery
- AppOps by Rikka Apps
- modded QuickPic on XDA
- Bouncer
- ACR Call Recorder
- CamScanner 5.6.8.20180625 (last version before malware incident)
- Clipboard Pro
- DiskUsage (old Google app, still works, blazing fast)
- many reputed emulators in r/emulation community like Snes9x, DrasticDS, AetherSX2 et al
- modded GCam and GCam Go for budget and old phones
- HiBy Music Player (no music player is close)
- MiXplorer (on XDA, best file explorer for power user, Solid Explorer is less function more form, maybe FX works for some)
- MX Player old versions, nothing does video playlists and UX like playback speed overlay as well to this day, VLC is a compromise
- Nova Launcher (all versions including and before 7.0.20)
- OfficeSuite Pro (only decent document editor 100% compatible with MS Office), WPS is ok and Collabora is garbage
- RAR (official WinRAR for Android, no better compression tool exists, only MiXplorer’s archive plugin based on mcmilk’s 7-Zip ZS 22.01 comes close)
- ScreenMaster (on the fly screenshot cropping and horizontal/vertical stacking with adjustable image compression)
- SD Maid
- Wavelet (non-root system wide equaliser on XDA, preset for almost any headphone or earphone)
Curious why you’d choose closed-sourced apps when there are phenomenal open-sourced options which accomplish the same tasks? The list of trackers for CamScanner alone is wild, I’d expect most of the others to be similarly invasive too.
Edit:
- Snapseed: 0 Trackers
- Glasswire: 0 Trackers
- 1DM+: No Exodus Report
- Accubattery: 6 Trackers
- AppOps: 2 Trackers
- Bouncer: No Exodus Report
- ACR Call Recorder: 2 Trackers
- CamScanner: 18 Trackers
- Clipboard Pro: 2 Trackers (cost $2.99)
- DiskUsage: No Exodus Report
- HiBy Music Player: 5 Trackers
- MiXplorer: No Exodus Report
- MX Player: 18 Trackers
- Nova Launcher: 2 Trackers [Lynx Launcher is a much better choice for this list]
- OfficeSuite: 12 Trackers
- RAR: 0 Trackers
- ScreenMaster: 4 Trackers
- SD Maid: 1 Tracker
- Wavelet: 0 Trackers
Since you are using Exodus report as criteria (good one tbh), you can disable internet for every app on here except 1DM+ (since its a multithreaded downloader with video grabbing like IDM/XDM on desktops).
There are no functional alternatives to any of these apps. If I started listing you the kinds of functionality each of them bring, you would be feeling like why did I live without this. Let me give some examples though.
- Snapseed: Google’s HDR can be replicated here, their Magic Eraser is based on “Healing” feature, and its the best RAW DNG editor and can have custom one-click editing presets. Even Photoshop or Polarr are not a match considering how refined Snapseed is, and why Google abandoned it few years ago (they only released a dark mode update in 2021).
- AppOps + Shizuku: no other way exists for non root devices to be able to modify work profile app permissions
- CamScanner: no need to tell how bad Microsoft’s Office Lens is, since CamScanner (old and new versions) can be used fully offline and is very fast
- HiBy Music Player: the MSEB tuner is amazeballs and has no equivalent in audio player app industry, making it incredible for people with the cheapest and worst $1 earbuds and IEMs
- MX Player: no internet needed so trackers mean nothing, also use old version, less bloated
- Nova Launcher: Nova Gestures have no equivalent or better alternative
- ScreenMaster: the GOAT, the app using which I have generated evidence upon evidence, screenshots and collages of all the exposes I do on internet, and the app with which I can take thrice the screenshots with same storage space, with 90% quality compression.
I can go on…
Only possible alternative, but very hacky, is using Cache Cleaner with SD Maid SE beta from F-Droid.
CamScanner has multiple solid alts available, I like PDF Doc Scan a whole lot. The editing options are a step above CamScanner I’d even bet.
The EQ settings in VLC almost certainly are equal, if not superior, to HiBy.
I truly don’t need much for a photo editor on my phone. If you need to use all the bells and whistles with Snapseed, I’d much much rather use my PC.
Seperate User Profile > Work Profile 100%! A work profile is working in a different room at your house, while a different user profile is equal to having an separate office to go work in when it comes to data segregation.
Lynx Launcher > Free Nova Launcher for me without question. Lynx’s is super clean and the free settings are more than enough for detailed customization with zero trackers.
With ScreenMaster, I don’t see the need at all. More apps increase your attack surface area. My default works very well, I’ve never even thought about an additional app for screenshots.
If tech business hadn’t gone off the deep end acquiring tons of unnecessary data from every user in the name of profit, I’d be more willing to have forgone the years of research needed to be fully untracked digitally. That being said, convenience is no where even close to a good enough reason for me to use most these apps unfortunately.
VLC’s EQ is not even comparable to what MSEB and Equalizer in HiBy do. HiBy is a massively popular company in audio community that makes dedicated Portable Music Players. An audio company simply has an upper hand.
CamScanner’s auto detection of perspective orientation to flatten a document paper is amazing. PDF Doc Scan only came out a couple months ago, and is incredibly inferior because of 3 things. It must show up as an app that can accept images from share menu in gallery, its builtin camera app does not compare to any advanced camera processing app like system’s stock builtin OEM camera apps or GCam/Go, and needing to manually drag corners on most images versus CamScanner auto detecting it with batch images stops being a matter of mere convenience.
Snapseed does what Photoshop/GIMP does, but almost quicker and even better in ways on phone. Why go around on desktop for quickly editing a couple nice images you clicked when on the street market or of city landscape while on a high rise building?
Android Work Profile is literally meant for work/office. The official AOSP documentation has these things detailed. Separate user profile means different room. But the point is work profile is built to have isolation for networking and storage space. Work profile is just a different user profile that can run within your main user profile, whereas a separate user account must be separately logged into, and cannot provide the benefit of using work and main profile apps together with their notifications.
I do not know about Lynx, which may be comparable with Nova free tier, as Nova Prime brings its coveted Gestures that make the quality of life difference. Using it for 7-8 years now.
ScreenMaster’s on the fly image compression and horizontal/vertical stacking and cropping is not even a contest, when it comes to users taking too many screenshots. I use screenshots as bookmarks for webpages and reddit posts I will never visit again. Even quick crop and make image snippets of information to preserve. Being able to take 3-4 screenshots in the same storage space as I would otherwise take 1 in itself is enough for anyone to consider it.
I have not even talked about the other apps’ benefits. Not to be rude, but you are ideologically constructing up mental blockades to justify using inferior apps and are not even considering the quality of life benefits they can bring. Perhaps you may have lesser needs in life, but I can see many of these apps’ benefits being applicable to you already. Attack surface is gone when you can disable internet for all these apps bar one, which you could choose not to use.
I was a former Windows user all my life, shifted to Ubuntu, now I daily drive Debian Stable, and have made FOSS guides and made a large privacy community, which is also why I understand why ideological rigidness is foolish and not beneficial. Its okay to use closed source in a safe manner and benefit from technology, and improve your life, instead of being a counter culture normie of sorts. Opposing corporate lovers as a contrarian is great, but being a careful and rational meta-contrarian is the next step of optimisation.
What is a “veteran Android user” lol
One who has been not just “consooming” Android news like a fanboy, but actually using it, knowing almost every quirk along the years, been into tweaking extensively, not just during but also post custom ROM days (people like no root hassle free life nowadays). The above list cannot be formulated without atleast a decade worth of deep knowledge of Android app ecosystem and without being an active power user.
Note: most foldable users are not power users but just early adopters of fragile toys.
I definitely know your username and know you’ve been around for a long time in the custom ROM communties under one of my other aliases.
You are definitely high…
You posted plenty on Reddit, what kind of response is that??
Your emoji username and comments looked funny and snarky, especially when you said I was under other communities under your aliases.
I mean I’ve seen your username while I’ve been under different aliases
Misunderstanding is now cleared.
I really like Glasswire’s data usage widget
