Compass

Compass by Philipp Bobek is a single-purpose navigation instrument rather than a maps app. The normal view shows a rotating compass rose, the exact bearing in degrees and a cardinal direction. Haptic feedback is on by default and can vibrate for each two-degree step; it follows the system light or dark theme, and reports the magnetic sensor’s accuracy so you can see when a reading deserves less trust.

Magnetic north, true north and sighting

The default magnetic-north reading comes from Android’s rotation-vector sensor. Choosing true north adds the local magnetic declination, the angle between magnetic and geographic north. While that option is on, each return to the foreground requests a location, accepts the first available fix and removes its listener; Reload location starts another one-fix request. It does not request fixes in the background. Denying location leaves true-north correction unavailable without stopping the ordinary magnetic compass.

Version 2.2.0 adds a sighting display that appears when the phone is held upright. In that position the bearing follows the direction faced by the back of the phone, making it easier to line up a distant landmark. The same release adds 16-point direction labels, a true-north button on the main screen, an optional magnetic-field-strength readout, a face-down positioning hint and an automatic warning when sensor accuracy drops. Sighting mode and the accuracy warning can both be disabled.

Compass readings are inherently hardware-dependent. This app requires a magnetic compass sensor, and its code also listens for the rotation-vector and magnetic-field sensors. A thick magnetic case or nearby metal can produce a confident-looking but incorrect direction. The sensor-status dialog compares the measured field with the value Android’s geomagnetic model expects when location is available; that is a diagnostic clue, not a guarantee that a bearing is exact.

Privacy and file details

The APK declares coarse and fine location plus one package-scoped receiver permission added by AndroidX Core for internal broadcasts. It declares no internet permission, so the app itself cannot upload a location or fetch data. Our static scan found no tracker SDKs. The source contains no advertising integration, account system or cloud sync; settings stay in Android’s local DataStore and may be included in normal system backup.

• This is F-Droid’s build of version 2.2.0, compiled from the public source and signed with F-Droid’s key. The GitHub release is developer-signed and cannot update this F-Droid-signed copy in place.
• The APK is 2.9 MB, runs on Android 7.0 or later, and includes native libraries for 32- and 64-bit ARM and x86 devices.
• The source file headers license the app under GPL-3.0-or-later. The three screenshots are the English phone screenshots distributed with the project and F-Droid metadata: light theme, dark theme and sighting mode.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).

Versions currently kept in the F-Droid repository. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.