4 Great Alternatives to Google Play Store

Key takeaways: Alternative app stores for Android offer unique privacy-conscious options for downloading apps and games. Lesser known browsers like Cromite and privacy-focused apps like NewPipe are available outside the Play Store. F-Droid, Aurora Store, and Droid-ify are great options for finding FOSS apps with transparent permissions.

The Google Play Store may seem like it has it all, but that's not the case. Go beyond Google's walls to find some great exclusive apps. Here are some alternative app stores you can explore for your Android phone or tablet.

Why go beyond the Play Store?

Android alternative app stores feature some great apps that Google removed or didn't allow on the platform. Here we talk about alternative clients for popular apps. For example, NewPipe replaces the standard YouTube with a completely different UI. It's privacy-conscious and offers many features not found in the original.

Take for example Instander, an alternative client for Instagram that looks and works exactly like the original but with some very useful extras, or Aliucord, a Discord client that blocks intrusive tracking and has a plugin system that allows you to customize the app the way you want it, and the list goes on and on.

There are also lesser known browsers like Cromite, which are forks of the standard Firefox and Google Chrome, but with a focus on privacy and stripped down to all the extras, making them faster.

The NetGuard firewall blocks internet access to certain apps. Similar keyboards, such as Florisboard, are private, offline keyboards that don't collect any personal information from your device.

Many of these stores offer only open source and privacy-conscious apps, so if you don't want to ditch the Google Play Store, the open source stores can complement it nicely.

The risks of leaving Google's walled garden

Of course, any adventure comes with some risk. If you download from the official store, Google uses Play Protect to vet apps on its platform. The system isn't perfect, but it works well enough.

However, outside of the official stores, you may need to bootstrap and inspect the app yourself (which, by the way, isn't the case for all stores on this list). The two big risks are privacy and security. Fake Android apps are a real threat (even in the Play Store), and you can infect your device with malware if you're not careful. But if you know what to do and choose the right sources, you'll be fine.

Although it's more of an annoyance than a real danger, you may run into an issue with automatic updates. Google Play Store automatically installs updates on your phone when they're available. But installing from unofficial sources can sometimes delay updates. But don't worry, that issue has been fixed, too.

1 F-Droid

F-Droid is the most popular source of free and open source Android apps. It's a quaint little platform outside of the flashy big tech stores. It respects privacy and offers a huge selection of FOSS (free and open source) apps. I use it regularly and it's full of healthy passion projects. They're not always overly polished, but you can tell they're a labor of love, not profit.

There are apps for every category, typically compiled from source and screened for potential privacy and security risks. Apps that request sensitive permissions or try to track the user are tagged with “anti-feature”. Permissions are transparent from the start.

All apps in this store are free, and most of them are not available in the Google Play Store. The store works on a repository system: think of package management in Linux. You can add or remove repositories to expand or limit the selection of available apps. Besides the official F-droid repository, you can find and include any number of third-party repositories.

F-droid updates apps automatically, but if you want to force update an app you've installed, you can do so with a single tap. To install F-droid, you'll need to sideload it using the APK file available on its GitHub page.

2. Aurora Store

Aurora is the only true alternative to Google Play Store. It has all the apps you'll find in Google Play Store. You might be surprised, but Aurora Store is a free, open-source client for Google Play. Just like NewPipe for YouTube and Instander for Instagram.

It gets you the entire catalog of apps and games from Google Play and lets you access them anonymously without a Google account. You can also log into your Google account on Aurora with MicroG. Once logged in, you can download apps you previously purchased on Google Play. Once logged in, you can search and install any app with a single tap. It also displays an “anti-feature” that highlights trackers within the app.

Since it's a Google Play client, you can set it to auto-update installed apps just like the official apps. If you want to leave the Google ecosystem and disconnect your device from Google, Aurora is a safe bet. Download it from F-Droid.

3 Droidization

Droid-ify is another FOSS app store that is very similar to F-Droid, but it differs in two ways: first, it has beautiful material design, whereas F-Droid feels quite outdated and clunky, and I find Droid-ify easier to use.

Secondly, you have a wider selection of apps because there are a lot more repositories available by default. You don't have to look for third-party repositories – of course, that option is always there.

I found a great app on Droid-ify: a fun way to explore the world of FOSS on Android.

Again, updates will happen automatically, or you can set the store to notify you when an update is available. Both features require you to allow background access to Droid-ify, but running apps in the background can affect your battery, so be careful. Get it from F-Droid.

4 Obtanium

Obtainium is a bit different from a standard app store: it doesn't host apps, it just updates packages installed on your device. Regardless of the source of the app you downloaded (whether you sideloaded it from an APK file or got it from another store), you can set up Obtainium to get regular updates directly from the official source.

Obtainium also lets you customize how and when you receive updates. You can combine Obtainium with APK Store to create a modular app store. APKMirror is a trusted source of APK files and has almost every app you can think of. However, there are no official apps, only unofficial clients for F-Droid. Obtainium officially supports APKMirror, so you can set it to auto-update all apps you install from there.

There's a world of apps beyond the Google Play Store, Amazon AppStore, and Samsung Galaxy Store — and now you know how to explore it safely.

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