How to Publish Your App on F-Droid: A Beginner’s Guide

This article covers how to publish your app to f-droid, I also pleasure to share my own experience when publishing my first app on f-droid.

What is F-Droid?

When you come across this blog post you most probably know what f-droid is But I just want to introduce you f-droid simply.

F-droid is a FOSS (free and open-source) app store for Android, similar to the Google Play Store, but the f-droid software repo hoisted on GitLab contains only free and open-source apps and the components of that app itself must comply with OSS terms.

🔗 Read more about F-Droid’s Inclusion Policy: F-Droid Inclusion Policy 🔗 Read about Repository Styling Guidelines: F-Droid Repository Style Guide

Why Publish on F-Droid?

Publishing on F-Droid has several advantages:

• No account registration required
• Privacy-friendly (no data sharing with third parties)
• Completely free (no fees to publish your app)

How to Publish Your App on F-Droid

There are two primary ways to submit your app to F-Droid:

1. GitLab Submission Queue (Beginner-Friendly)

This method involves creating an issue on GitLab to request app packaging. It’s the simplest way to submit an app but also the slowest, because reviewers manually build the APK from the source.

MBCompass app on F-droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.mubarak.mbcompass/

I submitted MBCompass, my compass application, using this approach . It took about a month for my app to be included in F-Droid, even though it contained no non-free assets.

2. Metadata Merge Request (Advanced Method)

This method involves manually writing the F-Droid metadata and submitting a merge request to the fdroiddata GitLab repository.

✅ Advantages:

• Faster approval process
• Reduces manual work for F-Droid reviewers

This guide will focus on the GitLab Submission Queue, as it is the best option for beginners.

🔗See: F-droid Inclusion How to

Steps to Publish Your App on F-Droid

Step 1: Prepare Your App

Before submitting your app, ensure it’s ready for production:

• Add an app icon
• Conduct thorough testing
• Follow versioning and minification best practices

🔗Refer to the Android Developer Docs: Publish Your App

Step 2: Ensure Reproducible Builds

What are Reproducible Builds (RB)? A reproducible build ensures that the APK built from your source code is identical every time, preventing tampering or unintended modifications.

🔗 Learn more about Reproducible Builds:

• Wikipedia: Reproducible Builds
• F-Droid Reproducible Builds
• Reproducible Builds Official Site

Steps to Enable Reproducible Builds:

1. Generate a signed APK:

• Open Android Studio -> Build -> Generate Signed APK
• Use a release signing key instead of a debug key
• Upload the signed APK to your remote Git repository

🔗 More about App Signing and RB Build:

• Android App Signing Guide
• Reproducible Build Guide on IzzyOnDroid

Step 3: Use Fastlane for Metadata & Screenshots

Fastlane is an open-source automation tool that helps with app metadata management, screenshots, and deployment, and it is maintained by google now.

✅ F-droid uses fastlane for:

• Add app descriptions and title
• Upload screenshots
• Provide app details for the F-Droid listing

🔗 How to Set Up Fastlane:

• Follow this guide: Fastlane Snippet
• Check an example setup: MBCompass Metadata

Step 4: Add APK Signing Blocks

F-Droid requires proper signing metadata to ensure secure and verified builds.

Add this dependenciesInfo block onbuild.gradle.kts(Module:app)

android {
    ...
    dependenciesInfo {
        includeInApk = false
        includeInBundle = false
    }
    ...
}

🔗 More about APK Signing:

• Signing Block Explanation
• F-Droid Issue on Signing

Final Step: Submit Your App to the GitLab Submission Queue

Once your app is ready:

F-droid RFP issue template

1. Go to F-Droid’s GitLab Request for Packaging (RFP) Issues: Submit Your App
2. Create a new issue with selecting Minimal template.
3. Add a necessary info like Category, Summary, and license
4. Wait for the review process (this can take several weeks to a month depending on the app).

Conclusion

In this blog, I just shared my experience when uploading my one of the app in F-droid and I included the all the possible useful link that helped me, and hopefully it helped you also if you please 👏this blog and share it with your niche dev, If you face some problems or challenging feel free to reach out me, I always like to help someone throughout my journey.

Signing off, Mubarak Native, GitHub, X