Most of us used to aware of open-source software available for pc, but we forget about another major platform — smartphones. And in this article, we are discussing some of the best open-source Android apps with source code for developers to enrich their Android development skills.
The open-source community is always an opportunity for upcoming developers to learn software development. Because source code for open-source software is always available to the public, and developers can utilize it to understand the working and coding from its scratch. In short, open-source projects are learning curves for newbie developers.
When it comes to the smartphone market, Android has the major shares, and millions of apps are out there for Android devices. And most of these apps are either coded in Java, Kotlin or Flutter/Dart. And to learn Android development, one must have a basic understanding of one of these programming languages. Even though if you successfully learned the basic coding principles, sometimes newbie coders struggle to develop their first couple of Android apps. This is because of the lack of references — I mean, they didn’t get enough example apps to look into its codes to get some ideas to proceed during the initial days. There comes the importance of open-source Android apps.
Open-source apps help emerging developers learn the coding structure of fully working Android apps. They can even alter these codes and modify the same Android open-source apps. If you are an experienced Android developer, you can contribute new features and functionalities to these open-source Android apps and help the project to grow.
Enough gibber gabber; here are some of the best open-source Android apps with source code link to boost your Android development skills.
Open-source Personalization Apps for Android:
1. Lawnchair Launcher
Lawnchair Launcher is a simple open-source Android launcher app bringing Pixel features. If you are developing a new Android launcher, then refer to the codes of Lawnchair because it may help you to integrate different Android customization options to your app.
- Google Play: Lawnchair Launcher
- Source code: GitHub
2. Olauncher Clutter Free
Olauncher is a minimalist launcher that respects user privacy, reduces screen time, and helps users focus on essential things. It is ad-free and has been recognized as one of the best and safest minimal unique Android launchers. Key features include the ability to resize text, rename apps, hide unused apps, and enjoy daily new wallpapers. It also supports swipe gestures, work profiles/dual apps, and light and dark themes. The launcher is open-source, does not collect data, and is fast and lightweight.
3. Lunar Launcher
Lunar Launcher is a feature-rich Android launcher with a minimal look. It has a low memory footprint and a clean interface, but it also offers a large number of features. Some of its key features include Material Design 3, day/night theme mode, double tap to lock/sleep, swipe down to expand the notification panel, quick app search and launch, and an animated battery percentage indicator. The app is fully open-source and contains no ads or trackers. The developer is continuously adding more exciting features and encourages donations to support the development.
- Google Play: Lunar Launcher
- Source code: GitHub
4. Doodle: Live Wallpapers
Doodle is another best personalization Android open-source app that provides vibrant live wallpapers that automatically switch to a dark mode and use energy-efficient animations. These wallpapers are derived from the Doodle live wallpaper selection on the Google Pixel 4 and the unreleased Material You wallpaper selection on the Pixel 6, with further additions from Chrome OS. The app has been entirely reworked, removing any permanent animations to conserve battery and storage capacity. Furthermore, it includes numerous customization possibilities, an energy-efficient parallax effect, direct boot support, and no advertisements or analytical tracking.
5. AutoDark
AutoDark is a small utility app that allows users to schedule the system dark mode on their devices. It requires at least Android 10 to function.
6. Dark Mode Live Wallpaper
Dark Mode Live Wallpaper is a live wallpaper that respects dark theme mode. With this app, users can set one image for light theme mode and another image for the dark theme. The wallpaper will automatically change when the system’s dark theme is enabled or disabled. Users can also adjust the color, contrast, and brightness of their existing wallpaper image to make it darker. The app supports Animated GIF and WebP animations and allows users to select different images for the home screen and lock screen.
- Google Play: Dark Mode Live Wallpaper
- Source code: GitHub
Open-source Communication Apps for Android:
7. Telegram
Telegram is one of the most used encrypted instant messaging service available for Android and iOS. Learn from the Telegram code — how an instant messaging app with super security works.
8. K-9 Mail
K-9 Mail is an open-source email client for Android with support for multiple accounts, search, IMAP push email, multi-folder sync, flagging, filing, signatures, BCC-self, PGP/MIME & more. This project helps you to understand the working of an email client and how to implement IMAP, POP3, and Exchange 2003/2007.
9. Watomatic
Watomatic is an auto-reply application for both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Watomatic sends an automated reply to every incoming message. With this essential WhastApp tool, you can set your own auto-reply message and set a reply frequency.
10. Barinsta
Barinsta is a simple yet advanced Instagram client that allows you to browse and interact with Instagram while giving you more control over your data. It offers features such as downloading posts, stories, and avatars, copying texts, and comparing followers. The app also allows you to read Direct Messages and stories privately, without notifying your friends. Barinsta is free and open-source, and it’s designed to protect your privacy by only requesting the necessary data to show you the content and what you’ve opted for in the settings.
Open-source Productivity Apps for Android:
11. Minimal ToDo
Minimal ToDo is a lightweight Android app for the to-do list. This app will help beginners to develop a simple yet powerful to-do list app.
- Google Play: Minimal ToDo
- Source code: GitHub
12. OmniNotes
Fully-featured lightweight open-source Android note-taking application. With OmniNotes app source code will help to develop your own note talking application with features like basic add, modify, archive, trash and delete notes actions, insertion of an image, audio and generic file attachments in notes, including a To-do list feature on your note app, etc.
Open-source Music & Audio Apps for Android:
13. AntennaPod
AntennaPod is a podcast manager and player that gives you instant access to millions of free and paid podcasts. This open-source Android app will teach you different integration techniques, managing playback settings, etc.
- Google Play: AntennaPod
- Source code: GitHub
14. Mutify
Mutify is a Spotify ad silencing app for Android. This open-source Android app auto-detects whenever Spotify plays an ad, and once it does, it will immediately turn your phone’s volume down to zero. If you don’t have Spotify premium subscription, then Mutify is a pretty great solution.
15. Symphony
Symphony, a lightweight and elegant music player designed to enhance your offline music experience. It is compatible with Android 9 and later versions. The app supports filename/path-based sorting, a feature that found lacking in other music players. This sorting feature allows users to organize their music more effectively. Also,the app was developed using Kotlin and Compose, indicating a modern and efficient design.
16. TimberX Music Player
TimberX Music Player is one of the new open-source Android apps written in Kotlin. TimberX comes with a simple UI with great features. The app source code will help you learn data binding and dependency injection with KOIN. The app has cross-platform support — it works on phones, Android Wear, Android Auto, Chromecast and other cast devices and Google Assistant.
- Google Play: TimberX Music Player
- Source code: GitHub
17. Easy Sound Recorder
Easy Sound Recorder is a simple open-source sound recorder app with material design. The project will help you to learn Android voice recording integration and manipulation in apps.
- Google Play: Easy Sound Recorder
- Source code: GitHub
Open-source Photography Apps for Android:
18. LeafPic Gallery
LeafPic is a fluid, material-designed alternative gallery app for Android. It comes with all stock gallery features and the source code is really a helpful guide for a beginner Android developer.
- Google Play: LeafPic Gallery
- Source code: GitHub
19. Open Camera
Open Camera is a fully featured and open-source camera app for Android devices. The project will help you know about how to add the auto-stabilization option on a camera app, how to take photo remotely by making a noise, multi-touch gesture and single-touch control on the camera app, etc.
- Google Play: Open Camera
- Source code: SourceForge
Open-source Video Players & Editors Apps for Android:
20. NewPipe
NewPipe is somewhat of a lightweight version of YouTube that unlocks a heap of otherwise restricted features. The app comes with a simple UI but is packed with some powerful features — background player, picture-in-picture mode, download support for offline playback and on top, it’s a completely free open-source Android app with no-ads. The main plus point of this app is its “extended privacy” — NewPipe protects user privacy since no proprietary Google APIs is there in the code and only send information which are required to get video and channel details.
Open-source Tools for Android:
21. NetGuard
NetGuard offers simple and advanced methods to block internet access to individual applications and addresses without requiring root access. The app can help reduce data usage, save battery life, and increase privacy. It features a user-friendly interface, supports IPv4/IPv6 TCP/UDP, and offers optional notifications when an application accesses the internet.
22. Snapdrop
Snapdrop is an incredible application that makes wireless file sharing between Android to any platform on the same network a much more seamless process. Just install the app on Android and on other devices use any browser of choice, and go to: https://snapdrop.net/. Tap on the device name and select files to transfer. That’s it. The Snapdrop code is a perfect choice to learn wireless file transfer in Android.
23. Amaze File Manager
Amaze File Manager is a lite file manager app for Android with material design guidelines. There are a lot of things you can learn from this app, like how to manage files on SD cards, cloud services support, AES Encryption and Decryption of files for security, etc.
- Google Play: Amaze File Manager
- Source code: GitHub
24. APKUpdater
APKUpdater is a tool designed to simplify the process of finding updates for your installed apps. It provides similar functionality to an app store, but instead of depending on a single source, it aggregates the results from APKMirror, Aptoide, F-Droid and Google Play.
- Google Play: Not Available
- Source code: GitHub
25. Super Clean Master
Similar to Clean Master app, Super Clean Master is used to clean up some junk data from your Android device. Super Clean Master project will help you to understand the collection and detection of junk files and how to handle it in an elegant way. the project is a little bit complicated, it will take some time for beginners to fully grasp the source code.
- Google Play: Not Available
- Source code: GitHub
26. FreeOTP Authenticator
FreeOTP is an open-source 2FA authenticator developed by Red Hat. The app source code teaches you the working of an authenticator app, how to generate one-time passwords on your mobile devices which can be used in conjunction with your normal password to make your login nearly impossible to hack.
- Google Play: FreeOTP Authenticator
- Source code: FedoraProject
27. Keepass2Android Password Safe
Keepass2Android is an open-source password manager app for Android. The projects make you understand the security features of a password manager and how to safeguard and autosave passwords using built-in cloud storage options.
- Google Play: Keepass2Android Password Safe
- Source code: GitHub
28. ML Manager
A modern, easy and customizable open-source app manager for Android with root features. The project helps you to learn how to extract installed & system apps and save locally as APK, uninstallation process of apps, etc
- Google Play: ML Manager
- Source code: GitHub
29. Amarok
Amarok, a free and open-source Android app designed to hide your private files and apps with just one click. It is a lightweight file and app “hider” that obscures filenames and file signatures, making files unreadable to humans, and “disables” apps, effectively hiding them from the launcher. It supports high-speed large file hiding and root-free application hiding. However, it’s important to note that Amarok is not an encryption tool, it merely obfuscates files and disables apps, which can be easily reverted. Therefore, it is not recommended for protecting important files.
Open-source Games for Android:
30. Super Retro Mega Wars
Super Retro Mega Wars is designed for fans of retro games and multiplayer games, offering a unique experience where players can compete in different games in real time. As players score points in their game, every other game will be handicapped in its own unique way. The app features six different single and multiplayer versions of games based on classic retro titles, with more games planned for future updates. Super Retro Mega Wars is ad-free and does not include in-game purchases.
- Google Play: Super Retro Mega Wars
- Source code: GitHub
Bonus app to get more open-source Android apps:
F-Droid
F-Droid is a third-party Android app store which EXCLUSIVELY distributes open-source Android apps. F-Droid has a wide collection of open source apps for Android and with their official app, it is easy to browse, install, and keep track of updates on your device. Also simply browse each app page to get their source code.
Google Play: Not Available
Official Website: F-Droid
So boost your Android development skills with these awesome open-source Android apps from different categories. Remember, in coding, you have to practice a lot, so read these codes to get some new ideas for your next Android project.
Thanks for this.
Great info!
Thanks for the collection. i found what i was looking for.
thanks bro
can you give some more source code
Thanks good information
Thanking you!
thank a lot , but i get code for games
Great post! I’m a developer and I love learning about new open-source Android apps. This post is a great resource for me.