Two things happened this week, six days apart, and they point in opposite directions.
On September 24, 2026, F-Droid shipped version 2.0 of its Android app. The project calls it the largest update in 10 years, and the numbers back that up: more than a year of work, 14 test releases, a complete interface rewrite, and an independent security audit. It hit the top of Hacker News with hundreds of points and hundreds of comments within hours.
On September 30, 2026, Google's developer verification goes live. In Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand, any app installed on a certified Android device must come from a developer who registered their identity with Google. In 2027, that requirement goes global.
You do not have to take a side to find this interesting. But if you have ever wondered what the alternative to the Play Store actually looks like in 2026, this is the best week in years to look. Here is the comparison, source by source, plus a decision checklist at the end.
I have not used F-Droid 2.0 myself. Everything below comes from the official F-Droid release post, Google's developer documentation, and coverage from Ars Technica and The Register, with links at each claim.
What F-Droid 2.0 Actually Fixed
For a decade, F-Droid's biggest problem was not politics. It was that the app felt like a decade-old app. Version 2.0 attacks that directly, and the changes fall into four groups.
The interface was rewritten from scratch. The team rebuilt the client with Kotlin Compose, the standard toolkit for modern Android UI. Navigation is now three tabs: Discover, Search, and My Apps. Settings and Nearby Swap moved to the top bar instead of competing for space in the main navigation. After 14 test releases, the rollout is happening in stages over the coming weeks.
Search finally works the way you think. The old client searched app names. The new one searches descriptions, categories, and translated content, so you can find an app by what it does instead of guessing what it is called. The project also rewrote search handling for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and search now remembers recent queries. Categories expanded dramatically too: the Games section alone now distinguishes 17 different genres instead of lumping every game into one list.
Installing apps got dramatically less painful. This is the change nobody expected. For years, installing from F-Droid meant downloading an APK, tapping it, and confirming the scary sideloading warning. F-Droid 2.0 uses Android's new pre-approval API, which exists largely because of pressure from the EU's Digital Markets Act. You now confirm the install before the download starts, one confirmation like a normal store. Ars Technica tested it and counted the difference: one extra tap compared to the Play Store. That is it. F-Droid also consolidated everything into a unified installer, so the experience is the same whether the app came built into your phone's OS or you installed the client yourself.
Updates happen automatically now. The old F-Droid made you pull-to-refresh to check for updates, which meant most people never updated anything. Version 2.0 fetches and installs updates in the background by default, while keeping manual controls for people who want them. The release post puts it well: the best refresh button is the one you never have to press.
One more detail worth knowing: the Open Technology Fund's Security Lab, working with Convocation, ran an independent security review of the new app, and the team says it addressed all findings relevant to the release. The full audit report is pending publication.
What the Play Store Does That F-Droid Will Not
Google Play is a genuinely good store. The selection is enormous, installs are one tap, payments work everywhere, and Play Protect scans apps continuously. If the comparison ended at convenience, Play would win most categories outright.
The difference is what happens around the apps.
Account and identity. Play requires a Google account, and the store ties your app activity to that identity. F-Droid requires no account at all. The project states plainly that the store does not track you or log what you download, and that its goal is the opposite of trying to keep you in the app.
What apps are allowed to contain. Play Store apps can include advertising SDKs and tracking frameworks, and a large share of free apps on Play are free because your data pays for them. F-Droid has a hard rule: apps in the main repository must be free and open source, which means no proprietary tracking libraries can hide inside them. Every app in the main repo is built from source code on F-Droid's own servers, so what you install corresponds to code that is publicly reviewable.
Who has to register with whom. This is where this week's news lands. To distribute through the verification system at all, a developer creates an Android Developer Console account, pays a $25 fee, provides their legal name and address, and may need to upload government ID. Organizations add a D-U-N-S number. Even the free tier for students and hobbyists, which skips the fee and the government ID, still links a Google payments profile with your legal name and address, and caps distribution at 20 authorized devices. F-Droid's model needs none of that: no registration, no fee, no identity linked to the apps you publish or install.
To be fair to Google: its stated goal is killing malware and scam apps, and identity checks do raise the cost of throwaway malware accounts. The trade-off is structural, not evil versus pure. Google gets a registry of who distributes what. F-Droid gets a catalog where nobody has to identify themselves, and accepts that some people will use that for things you would not like. Which trade you prefer depends on how much you trust a single company with the gatekeeping role.
The Timing Problem Google Created
Here is why the F-Droid release landed with such force this week.
Google's verification requirement starts September 30, 2026 in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand, on certified Android devices running Android 7 or higher, delivered through Google Play services. Participating stores include Google Play plus the Galaxy Store, the OPPO and Honor markets, Xiaomi's GetApps, and others. In 2027 it expands globally.
There are pressure valves. Power users can complete a one-time "advanced flow" to install apps from unverified developers, though reporting in August found it includes a mandatory 24-hour waiting period. ADB installs stay unchanged. And Google created a separate, free "limited distribution" account for students and hobbyists, with no government ID required, capped at 20 explicitly authorized devices.
But F-Droid's position, stated in its open letter opposing the program, is that this still converts Android from an open platform into one where installing any app phones home to Google for approval. As the open letter puts it, a developer registering means accepting Google's terms, providing identity, and registering every app. For hobbyists who publish under a handle and want to keep it that way, no government ID and anonymous are two different sentences.
The Register's headline on the F-Droid release said the store is thumbing its nose at Google's crackdown, and the framing is accurate: F-Droid timed its biggest release ever to land six days before the first enforcement deadline. A store that spent years being hard to use just fixed its usability problem, right before the rules for alternative stores get strictest. Whatever happens with the policy, F-Droid 2.0 is a statement that the alternative is not going quietly.
The Honest Weaknesses
A comparison is only useful if it includes what the underdog is bad at.
The catalog is small and mostly unfamiliar. F-Droid carries thousands of open source apps, not millions, and you will not find Instagram, your bank's app, or most mainstream games there. Many people use it as a second store for a handful of FOSS apps, not a Play replacement.
Third-party F-Droid clients lag on security. A recurring point in the Hacker News discussion: some alternative clients still used the older index-v1 format, which is signed with SHA1, while the official infrastructure has moved to index-v2. If you care about the security properties, use the official client.
Independent analysts still flag the signing model. PrivSec's analysis, cited in coverage of the release, documents that F-Droid signs every app in its main repository with its own keys rather than the developer's keys, and reproducible-build coverage is partial. That design has real anti-tampering benefits, but it means you are trusting the F-Droid signing infrastructure the same way Play users trust Google's. The model predates 2.0 and the UI rewrite did not change it.
Updates can lag Play. Some apps publish new versions on Play weeks before they reach F-Droid's build pipeline, because F-Droid builds everything from tagged source, which takes time. In 2.0 the app now flags issues like a changed signing key, which helps, but the pipeline is inherently slower than a developer uploading a binary.
The Decision Checklist
Here is how I would frame the choice, depending on who is asking.
- You just want your phone to work: Stay on the Play Store. Nothing in F-Droid 2.0 changes the fact that mainstream apps live on Play.
- You want fewer trackers on your phone: Install F-Droid alongside Play and migrate your everyday utilities first. The FOSS replacements for keyboard, gallery, weather, and notes apps are genuinely good now, and 2.0's search makes them findable.
- You live in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, or Thailand: Update your F-Droid client to 2.0 before September 30, and if you sideload anything directly, learn the advanced flow now rather than during a broken install.
- You are a hobbyist developer publishing small tools: Look hard at the free limited distribution account, but read its limits first: 20 authorized devices, no previously-used package names, and a payments profile with your legal name attached.
- You are a privacy maximalist: F-Droid only, plus ADB for anything else, and pair it with the Tor options the new client supports through its proxy settings.
The one-line takeaway: the Play Store is a mall with security guards at every door, and F-Droid 2.0 is a library that just got renovated. The renovation removed every excuse to dismiss it, and the timing made sure everyone noticed.
I write about developer tools, AI, and the platforms we build on every week. Subscribe if that sounds useful, it is free.
Have you used F-Droid, either the old client or 2.0? I am genuinely curious whether the new install flow feels as close to the Play Store experience as the reviews claim, especially on devices where the pre-approval API is supported.
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