The Original Alternative

F-Droid is an open-source app repository for Android, first released in 2010, that distributes free and open-source software exclusively as downloadable APK files — Android Package files — without charging developers a commission or requiring them to transact through Google Play. It is, by a wide margin, the longest-running alternative Android distribution channel operating at scale today.

Android has permitted sideloading — installation from sources other than the Play Store — since its first public release. Google's published developer documentation ↗ frames the operating system as open by design: the "Unknown Sources" toggle (renamed "Install Unknown Apps" in Android 8.0 Oreo) grants per-application permission to install APKs from outside the platform's official store, subject to a system-level warning to the user. No court order or regulatory intervention produced this permission; it is a design choice that Google made and has maintained.

A rack of Android test devices on a laboratory bench, screens lit, photographed from slightly above to show the row of displays
A bench of Android test devices. A store is a distribution channel before it is a shopfront.Photo: Ludovic Delot / Pexels

F-Droid operates entirely within that framework. Users who enable the relevant permission can add F-Droid's repository to their device and install any package it hosts. The store's own inclusion criteria ↗ bar proprietary software, advertising libraries and tracking dependencies, which gives it a distinct character from both the Play Store and the alternative marketplaces the EU's Digital Markets Act was designed to produce.

The DMA's sideloading provisions, which took effect on 7 March 2024 ↗, impose obligations on gatekeepers — including Google — not to technically impede the installation of third-party app stores or individual APKs. For Android, that obligation mostly codified what already existed; the practical effect was stronger on Apple, which had blocked sideloading entirely on iOS. For F-Droid specifically, the DMA changed nothing structural: it had operated in the open space Android already provided. What the regulation added was a legal floor beneath that space, making its removal by Google significantly harder to accomplish unilaterally.

Huawei smartphone displaying app icons on its home screen, resting on a laptop keyboard
Also in The Stores: AppGallery After the Entity ListPhoto: Johnny Mckane / Pexels

The distinction matters. F-Droid's existence never depended on a regulator's permission; it depended on Google's tolerance, which the DMA has now partly converted into a legal obligation.

What each term means in this piece

  • APK — Android Package file, the installation format for Android apps, analogous to an executable on a desktop OS
  • sideloading — installing an app from outside the platform's official store, using a file delivered directly to the device
  • Unknown Sources / Install Unknown Apps — the Android permission that must be granted before an APK from outside the Play Store can be installed
  • gatekeeper — a company designated under Article 3 of the DMA as controlling a core platform service, triggering specific obligations