Q1/2025 Progress: Over 20 apps added and many improvements

Posted April 9, 2025 by 1peter10 ‐ 7 min read

It's April already! Time to look back and see what could be accomplished in the first quarter of 2025. (And if you are into XML Namespaces, get excited ;-) )

Apps and games added in Q1/2025

January

Five apps and one game:

High Tide - Sail away
Refine - Tweak various aspects of GNOME
Timer - Simple countdown timer
Haguichi - Manage your Hamachi networks
Chronograph - Sync lyrics of your loved songs
TriPeaks - A Tri Peaks solitaire game . Thank you, Maxnet, for adding the game!

February

Sticky Notes - Pin notes to your desktop
FuriOS Gallery - View your Photos and Videos

March

19 apps and one game:

Tally - Count anything
Spotube - Freedom of music
Tagger - Tag your music
Sly - Edit your images easily
Clapgrep - Search through all your files
Quick Web Apps - Web applications at your fingertips
Countdown - Track events until they happen or since they happened
CoBang - QR code scanner for Linux desktop
LPTK - Stateless password manager
Geobug - Check your location and save it to a GPX track
Frigoligo - Your articles with you
Hunt - Find every word
Bustle - Visualize D-Bus activity
D-Spy - Analyze D-Bus connections
Cashbox - Memorise cost and calculate price of articles
Ignition - Manage startup apps and scripts
SaveDesktop - Save your desktop configuration
Libellus - View DnD information in style
Camp Counselor - Bandcamp.com Wishlist Manager
File Roller - Open, modify and create compressed archive files

In total, we managed to add 26 apps and two games in the first quarter.

Maintenance

Listings have also been updated at the end of the quarter, most only automagically, but many also by hand. Aside from the apps we know to be manual maintenance, it turns out, that maintenance has not become easier lately: Checking links, or updating our listings with the contents of upstream AppStream metadata, has not gotten easier as code hosting platforms are forced to add defense mechanisms to fight back abusive AI scrapers.

If you want to help with maintenance, please note that lpa_helper, while still not meaningfully integrated into the site (see more on that below) has been refactored: If you want to edit an existing listing, you can now rely on it and import the current markdown source file into it. We hope this change makes contributing more accessible.

Aside from apps and games, the docs section saw some love, including a new page on building flatpaks.

This past quarter also again saw a little work with upstream - here is my favorite example.

Thanks

Again, thanks go out to Max and for taking over the maintainership of the games list/the games listed! Thanks again for your great work!

FOSDEM

Peter also attended FOSDEM - it was blast. If you are reading this post because you grabbed a sticker at the Linux on Mobile stand, welcome!

What's in the works?

Content

All The Mobile Apps

Obviously, it's a goal to monitor Flathub's Mobile Collection, and list most of its apps after evaluation. As it turns out, not all of the apps in the collection live up to the promises made in their Metadata. As it's a goal to improve this, writing kind issues upstream or, contributing patches, adds to our broader to do list. It's also questionable, whether we need to actually add every app - take OptimusUI as an example: If there are zero phones with nVidia optimus graphics, do we need to list that app? Other apps in the Collection are x86_64-only, which (if there's no alternative, can introduce a hold-up), but there's hope - if you are interested in Flutter-based apps, just check out this PR (and the approach behind it). If you want to follow our progess (or chime in), this is the issue to watch.

API

Work towards an API has been undergone. While the JSON API is not out yet, as a first step, an extended ATOM feed is out now - featuring a XML namespace of it's own. This adds a simple way to reuse our data.

What's holding the JSON API? Honestly, not much (I already have a custom, working Rust converter on my computer). But an API need documentation, and ... I don't want to iterate unnecessarily on API and documentation (because lazy). There are a few general considerations (and decisions to make first): e.g., the future of our categories taxonomy, reconsiderations regarding the rating system, or the question of removing the scale-to-fit values as Mobile Settings has made these basically unnecessary. We just need planning - which changes need to be done in which order to not have more work than necessary.

If you are interested in using the API, please get in touch to discuss whether the current plans would work for you!

I want to help, where to get started?

We do have a public issue tracker, that lists things that we aim to improve.

All relevant parts of LinuxPhoneApps live in one repository - the repo's README is hopefully helpful. Feel free to ask away in our Matrix room if you have questions!

Fixing existing app or game listings is just one click away (provided you have a framagit.org account) - every listing has an edit link at the bottom of the page.

So if you see that something is wrong, please take the time and help fix it - by fixing it, or by reporting it to the issue tracker or via e-mail.

Adding apps

If you want to help by adding an app:

LPA helper is ugly, but it works. If you have questions or suggestions, do not hesitate to ask/get in touch!

Feedback, thoughts?

Thank you for reading this post! If you enjoyed reading it, please share it and spread the word LinuxPhoneApps.org - it can also be useful for your friends or yourself if you only use the Linux Desktop, as we constantly check for and add new, awesome adaptive Linux apps that often also work great on your laptop or desktop!