Fossify Brings Free and Open-Source Utilities to Your Android Phone

howtogeek.com:

Simple Mobile Tools was a collection of basic, free, open-source apps for Android devices, including a file manager, calendar, and photo gallery. The apps were popular alternatives to paid apps and services, but the developer sold out the app suite to ZipApps recently, which then proceeded to ruin the apps with subscriptions and ads. The Fossify project has picked up where Simple Mobile Tools left off, so you can keep using the excellent app suite on your phone or tablet.

A developer who have worked on Simple Mobile Tools managed to fork the projects before the acquisition was completed, thus starting the Fossify project. Now, the apps have been launched on both F-Droid and the Google Play Store. You can think of Fossify apps as spiritual successors to Simple Mobile Tools. There's a File Manager, a contacts app, a phone app, a calendar app, a gallery app, an SMS app, a music player for your locally downloaded music, and a voice recorder.

The new Fossify suite offers all of the same features as the original Simple Mobile Tools lineup, except without the paywall and without ads. Also, they're open-source. As SMT apps are taking another direction under new ownership, this aims to just fill the place these apps previously filled—free, no-fluff apps that do their job very well.

These apps are pretty decent as drop-in replacements for some of your phone's stock apps. If you don't like how a particular app works or looks, or if it has too much bloatware (or worse, ads), these Fossify apps will take over and do what these other apps did. Furthermore, they don't ask you for weird, overarching permissions or anything like that. If we have any criticism of them, it would probably be that they have an extremely basic interface (some apps also look pretty dated), but you could also say that's a feature and not a disadvantage.

You can download the Fossify apps from the Google Play Store, and all of them are free downloads. They are also available on the F-Droid store, and the