F-Droid has been a trusted source for high-quality open-source Android apps for many years. While ChromeOS devices come with Google Play (provided it is enabled in Settings), also having F-Droid available offers a gateway to a vast ecosystem of privacy-respecting software.
F-Droid is not available on Google Play. Instead, you usually download it directly from the official project homepage at f-droid.org.
Once the download is complete, your first instinct would likely be to open the APK file using the Files app:
Unfortunately this would give you just a message saying Turn on Chrome OS Developer mode to install apps from sources other than the Play Store.
That sounds scary, doesn't it? What's more, it's simply not true. You do not need to enable the full-fledged Developer Mode, which in itself may open up more severe security issues. Instead, you can simply enable ADB debugging. You’ll find this toggle in Settings under the Develop Android apps section.
Once ADB debugging is toggled and an APK has been downloaded, a simple adb install triggers the installation. Let's use the internal Linux container (Crostini) to do so.
First, open your Chrome OS Terminal and install a few required tools
sudo apt update && sudo apt install android-tools-adb curl -y
Next, connect the Linux container to the Android subsystem
adb connect 100.115.92.2:5555
After running the adb connect command, keep your eyes on the Chromebook screen. You may need to manually authorize the debugging link and confirm the installation.
Finally, use curl to grab the latest version of F-Droid and install it
curl -L https://f-droid.org/F-Droid.apk -o fdroid.apk && adb install fdroid.apk
Once we have opened F-Droid, we can browse the catalogue. However, trying to install an app, shows an error saying we need to enable Developer mode.
Wait a minute. There's something in Settings, right?
Yes, Install unknown apps.
Unfortunately, enabling this does not change anything. What's more, trying to grant the permission on the command line gives us a little bit of an explanation.
adb shell pm grant org.fdroid.fdroid android.permission.REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES
Conclusion
So, what can we make out of this? Well, this article clarifies that you do not need to bring your ChromeOS device into Developer mode to install Android apps (I guess most of us knew that 😅); even though Google tries hard to persuade you otherwise.
Next. Switching on developer mode is usually a bad idea. So, why does Google stick to it? Well, while I can certainly only speculate, tying the users to Google Play is in the interest of Google, whereas allowing alternative app stores definitely is not. We see the hesitation on plain Android - it took law suits and a lot of developer backlash to force Google into making the installation of Play Store alternatives less painful. And it will take Android 17.
Regarding ChromeOS, having apps download and install other apps seems, at least for now, impossible to do for ordinary users.
One final thought. Since F-Droid has been the hook for this article, I feel the need to praise them to as much extent as I possibly can. They continue to be a landmark institution for Android open source software since many years. It's certainly not their fault that they can't easily be used on ChromeOS.
Top comments (1)
I’ve used F-Droid for years—especially for Termux. The Play Store version is deprecated, so F-Droid is really the way to go if you want a functional terminal environment.