QUIK

QUIK is a texting app for SMS and MMS. Its README: “QUIK is an open source replacement to the stock messaging app on Android. It is a continuation of QKSMS.” QKSMS, by Moez Bhatti, was one of the best-known open-source SMS apps until its development stopped in early 2023. QUIK was started that summer as a fork and is maintained by Marcos Jones (octoshrimpy), with releases in 2026 up to 4.3.7 in September.

What changed from QKSMS

• No internet, no tracking. A 2024 change “removes internet permission, replaces all qksms with quik, disables tracking”; the analytics code QKSMS carried was later deleted. The APK here declares no internet permission.
• The paid tier is free. QKSMS sold extra features as QKSMS+. In QUIK’s code that upgrade is always on, so everything it covered, such as scheduled messages and backups, is available to everyone.
• Additions since the fork include voice messages, speech-to-text, emoji reactions, delayed sending for MMS, filtering messages by their content, blocking screenshots of the app, and asking before opening links.

What it does

From the README’s feature list: scheduled messages, message backup, speech-to-text and text-to-speech, blocking and archiving, voice messages, attachments of any type, sorting and pinning conversations, delayed sending, quick reply from notifications, swipe actions and emoji reactions.

It has to be your default SMS app to send and receive. A few defaults, from the code: pictures sent by MMS are shrunk to 300 kilobytes, links in messages ask before they open, and delayed sending and screenshot blocking are off until you turn them on.

Blocking

By default QUIK keeps its own block list, rather than adding numbers to Android’s system list of blocked numbers. It can hand blocking to one of three outside apps instead: Call Control, Should I Answer or Call Blocker. It can also filter messages by words or regular expressions. Blocked messages are kept out of sight rather than deleted, unless you turn on dropping them.

What goes online

Nothing, as far as the app itself goes: with no internet permission, QUIK can’t reach any server, and we found no update check, analytics or crash reporting. Picture messages travel through Android’s MMS service to your carrier, as with any SMS app. Speech-to-text hands your voice to the phone’s speech recognition app, so whether that goes online depends on that app.

The permissions it asks for

Of its 38 permissions, 16 are for unread-count badges on various phone makers’ launchers, added by the ShortcutBadger library. The rest, as the code uses them: SMS and MMS, which a default SMS app needs; contacts, for names; photos, videos and audio, for attachments; phone state, to choose the SIM on dual-SIM phones; calling, to ring a contact from a conversation; the microphone, Bluetooth and audio settings, for voice messages, including through a Bluetooth headset; exact alarms and starting at boot, for scheduled messages; and a foreground service for backups.

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s copy of QUIK 4.3.7, released in September 2026. F-Droid builds QUIK from source, checks that the result matches, and distributes the developer-signed APK, so this file is byte for byte the “fdroid” APK on QUIK’s GitHub release and F-Droid can update it. It is signed with QUIK’s current key (certificate CN=octoshrimpy, SHA-256 starting 52:8B:89:A6), created in November 2025.
• If an old QUIK is still on your phone, replace it. Older builds, under the package name dev.octoshrimpy.quik, were signed with an earlier key. In June 2025 that key’s keystore file and its passwords were committed to QUIK’s public repository; they were removed in March 2026 but remain in its history. Anyone with them could sign an “update” that Android would accept over those old installs. The key that signs this file was created after that and isn’t affected.
• QUIK isn’t on Google Play; its FAQ lists a Play release as planned.
• The 51.8 MB file runs on Android 6.0 and later, on ARM and x86, 32- and 64-bit. Most of the size is the Realm database library, stored uncompressed for four processor types, and a color emoji font. Our scan found no trackers.
• QUIK is licensed under the GPL-3.0. QUIK publishes no screenshots of the current app, in its repository or app listings, so this page has none.

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.