FileCobra
24 guides tagged #open-source.
Rooting costs you Play Integrity, banking apps and your warranty. Shizuku, ADB and a handful of open-source apps get you most of the way there without any of that.
9 min read · 27 apps covered · android
Five of these eight are open source, and the best local player is 4.8 MB. The split that matters is whether your music is a folder of files you own or a subscription you rent — the apps for those two lives have almost nothing in common.
8 min read · 8 apps covered · android
A developer toolchain is not a favourites list. It is one editor, one database client, one terminal, one API client — and the argument for each is what it replaces, not what it adds.
10 min read · 8 apps covered · windows
Every free design tool is pitched as an alternative to something expensive. The useful question is narrower: which file format are you producing, and which of these five was built for it?
8 min read · 5 apps covered · windows
Almost every Android video player claims to play everything. The difference is what happens when a file has Dolby Vision, an ASS subtitle track or DTS audio — that is where seven of these eight actually separate.
10 min read · 8 apps covered · android
Every note app can hold text. The question that matters five years from now is whether you can still open the file without the app — and that answer splits these five cleanly.
9 min read · 5 apps covered · both
Running a VPN network costs real money every month. There are only three honest answers to who pays for a free one, and which answer an app gives you is the only thing worth ranking on.
9 min read · 7 apps covered · android
A good utility fills a hole Windows left open. A bad one invents a problem so it can sell you the fix. The difference is easy to see once you know which category a tool belongs to.
10 min read · 7 apps covered · windows
Almost every browser now advertises privacy. The only question that separates them is what a fresh install blocks before you change a single setting, and whether the company behind it makes money from ads.
8 min read · 6 apps covered · windows
There is no single best Android emulator, because emulators are not interchangeable. The right one is decided by which console you want to play and how much CPU your phone has, and both of those questions have short answers.
8 min read · 7 apps covered · android
This comparison has an unusual answer, because one side stopped being developed in 2024. That does not make the choice obvious — it changes what the question is.
6 min read · 2 apps covered · android
One is the original. The other is a fork that redesigned the library screen and kept everything else. Neither is the project that is still being developed, which changes what the question is.
6 min read · 2 apps covered · android
Every list in this category recommends Tachiyomi first, and Tachiyomi's developers ended the project in January 2024. Here is what is actually maintained, what an empty reader does and does not come with, and where the licensed comics are.
9 min read · 7 apps covered · android
Catalogue size stopped being the difference years ago. What separates these nine is where your money goes, what you still have when you cancel, and which of them will quietly break next month.
10 min read · 9 apps covered · android
A podcast is only an RSS feed, so a podcast app is only a feed reader — which makes the real question who holds your subscription list. That plus playback speed is most of the decision, and the rest is live radio.
8 min read · 6 apps covered · android
Twelve of these nineteen are open source, which is the whole point. A tool that reads your files, filters your traffic or holds your passwords is exactly the kind of software where being able to read the source matters.
16 min read · 19 apps covered · android
Most Windows utility lists are a pile of downloads with no organising idea. These fifteen sort into six real jobs, seven of them are open source, and the smallest one here is 2.9 MB.
15 min read · 15 apps covered · windows
Two of these are free forever because they are open source. Four are free at install and monetised afterwards. Knowing which is which before you download matters more than the star rating.
8 min read · 8 apps covered · android
No single free program does all of this well. What works is a small toolchain — one editor, one player, one converter — split by the job rather than by the brand.
7 min read · 8 apps covered · windows
Most privacy lists are a VPN advert with nine apps arranged around it. This one is ordered by leverage: what stops the most data for the least disruption, and what the VPN genuinely does and does not do.
8 min read · 10 apps covered · android
Fossify is what happened after Simple Mobile Tools was sold. Twelve small, ad-free, open-source apps that between them cover most of what you open in a day.
8 min read · 12 apps covered · android
Both are free, open source and audited. One is a file you own; the other is a service that syncs. Almost everything else people argue about follows from that.
6 min read · 2 apps covered · windows
A complete open-source video toolchain for Windows — editing, trimming, transcoding, recording and playback — with no licence keys, watermarks or telemetry.
4 min read · 7 apps covered · windows
Both are free video editors for Windows, but they are free in very different ways. One is GPL open source at 155 MB; the other is a 648 MB account-linked app from ByteDance.
3 min read · 2 apps covered · windows