F-Droid Basic

F-Droid is a catalogue of free and open-source Android apps, built from source by the F-Droid project, and this is its official app for browsing, installing and updating them. Version 2.0, released in September 2026, is in F-Droid’s words “a complete redesign of the official F-Droid app and the largest app update in 10 years”.

F-Droid and F-Droid Basic

The official app comes in two editions, built from the same code:

• F-Droid (org.fdroid.fdroid), the full edition, with sharing apps between nearby phones over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or USB, a panic responder and IPFS settings.
• F-Droid Basic (org.fdroid.basic), this file, without those features and with fewer permissions.

F-Droid is releasing 2.0 in stages. The current signed index recommends Basic 2.0.2, while full-edition versions 2.0.0 through 2.0.2 remain in its Beta release channel and the full edition’s stable recipe still points to 1.23.2. The main f-droid.org download does provide the full 2.0.2 APK, but the signed index still labels it beta. We host only versions that the index does not mark beta, which is why this page remains for Basic.

What 2.0 changed

From the release notes and F-Droid’s announcement:

• A new interface in three parts, Discover, Search and My Apps, with highlights of new, recently updated and most downloaded apps.
• Search that also looks through descriptions and translations, and filters, including by anti-features: apps marked for tracking aren’t shown by default.
• Updates in the background: “F-Droid 2.0 now fetches and installs app updates by default.” Both the repository check and the app updates run on Wi-Fi only unless you change it.
• Approving an install before the download starts, on Android 14 and later, and several downloads at once.
• Warnings about problems with installed apps, such as a changed signing key, and an optional Material You colour theme.
• Android 6 is no longer supported, and Tor support moved into general proxy settings.

Updates without prompts

F-Droid can update apps without asking each time, but only when Android allows it. In 2.0.2’s code that means Android 12 or later, F-Droid being the app that installed (or on Android 14 and later “owns” updates of) the app, and the app targeting a recent enough Android version; the threshold rises from API 29 on Android 12 to API 34 on Android 16. Older apps still get a normal Install prompt. One exception is new in 2.0.2: on Xiaomi and Redmi phones running Android 12 or older, or Android 13 on Chinese ROMs, with MIUI’s security centre or installer present, F-Droid always uses Android’s older install screen, because “Xiaomi MIUI is known to break the PackageInstaller API in several ways”, so every install and update there asks. F-Droid 2.0 no longer uses the F-Droid Privileged Extension, even where it is installed.

What goes online

• F-Droid’s repository at f-droid.org and its mirrors, 24 of them preset, five as Tor onion addresses; by default a mirror is picked at random. The F-Droid Archive, with older app versions, is included but switched off. No other repositories are added by default; you can add your own.
• App downloads from the same repository and mirrors, and screenshots, which aren’t loaded on mobile data unless you tap to load them.
• Crash reports only if you choose to send one: after a crash, a dialog offers to write an e-mail to F-Droid’s reports address, which you then send from your mail app. That reporting library, ACRA, is what our tracker scan lists; it sends nothing on its own.

F-Droid’s announcement: “F-Droid does this without tracking you, or trying to “engage” you to spend increasingly more time in the app.”

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s own build of F-Droid Basic 2.0.2, dated 2 October 2026 in its changelog and added to the repository on 12 October, signed with the key F-Droid uses for Basic. That key is different from the one of the full edition, so the two install side by side and don’t update each other.
• 2.0.2 fixes installs on older Xiaomi and Redmi phones, where some failed with Permission Denied in 2.0.1, by switching them to Android’s older installer, and sorts new apps by the date they were added. 2.0.1 had fixed a crash in the app icon settings on Huawei and Honor phones.
• Other known issues: the update check can run over mobile data even when set to Wi-Fi only (#3407), and some apps whose installed name differs from the catalogue’s ask for approval twice.
• The screenshots are F-Droid’s own, from the 2.0 release.
• The 8.8 MB file runs on Android 7.0 and later and declares 15 permissions, mostly for installing, updating and removing apps, plus the camera for scanning repository QR codes.
• F-Droid is licensed under the GPL-3.0 or later. F-Droid publishes the source archive of this exact build at https://f-droid.org/repo/org.fdroid.basic_2000052_src.tar.gz.

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.