Overview
- The F‑Droid project released version 2.0 after more than a year of work and 14 test builds on September 24, 2026, delivering a full client rewrite in Kotlin with a Jetpack Compose interface.
- Search and discovery were rebuilt so the app now indexes descriptions, categories and translations, expands category menus and splits Games into 17 genres to make finding FOSS apps easier.
- The update uses Android's new pre‑approval installer API to provide a unified install flow and enables automatic background updates by default to streamline installs and updates.
- An independent security review by the Open Technology Fund Security Lab and Convocation was completed and its findings were addressed for the release, with the full audit report still pending publication.
- The release arrives just before Google's developer verification enforcement begins on September 30, 2026 in several countries, and it leaves known trade‑offs such as a much smaller catalog, slower build‑from‑source updates, and F‑Droid repository signing to weigh against its privacy model.