Samsung and Xiaomi apps on their factory defaults are mostly fine, update them once and suddenly you have ads flashing after every 2 interactions with your phone
The Phillips hue bridge app. They forced online login in the new version for “security”. I don’t see how connecting to Philipps servers is more secure than local only.
Feels like a lot of programs that I use. It is like, if they’re still working as is and nothing is happening to them, why bother?
But specifically, my pick is Windows. I have the most lapsed way of handling Windows OSes over the years.
I was on Windows 98 and it lasted until roughly mid-2000s did I finally get on Windows XP. Didn’t touch Vista. Didn’t touch 7. Got into Windows 8 mid-2010s after buying a friend’s PC. Didn’t get on Windows 10 until a few years ago. Not going to touch Windows 11.
Windows. Haven’t booted to it in years and am afraid of it fucking up my Linux partition.
Discord and spotify cus I modified it illegally:3
Android TV launcher on my shield tv so it doesn’t get terminal advertising disease. DNS blocking hides the ones in the old version of the launcher.
On fairly older version of 3C all-in-one tꝏlbox (2.6.6b) bcus has only reliable way for me to keep screen on all the time (hate screen timeouts sorry) . That function appears to be missing from newer versions , all other “keep screen awake” type apps I tried don’t work very well for me , so just rolled back lmao
None, because I get almost all my apps from F-Droid and the repository maintainers themselves will quit making updated versions available if the app enshittifies.
Also, I cannot imagine accepting that shit from Samsung or Xiaomi in the first place. Believe it or not, instant boycott.
Everything on F-Droid is open source. Someone will just fork an app if the current maintainer starts pushing negative stuff into the app.
The dev of simplemobiletools selling out is an example.
Vscode always breaks something so I do it as rarely as possible. Still can’t remember a single new update or feature adding anything for me other than github copilot.
Blokada. I downgraded to V5 and I won’t change it anytime in the foreseeable future. Whenever I can no longer use v5 I might have to find a different method of filtering ads.
Edit: also, OP, I recommend trying Blokada 5 if ads is what’s annoying you in other apps. Blokada blocks ads on your phone, for all apps, not just a specific app.
Is it a “decent set it and forget it” kind of blocker? Because I might try that on my girlfriend’s phone, I tried TrackerControl with her once, but it kept “breaking” some apps and she didn’t have the patience to just switch the thing off/on.
I don’t understand how people would rather see ads and be tracked than flip a few switches.
That being said, I do think TC would be vastly better if it had per app defaults that guarantee that everything works out of the box.
It is a decent set and forget universal ad blocker, however, you need to make sure you are downloading a v5 and not the v6 or it will not work. Also, you need to deactivate it and reactivate it whenever you restart your phone, this is a minor issue but it needs that kick every time your system reboots.
Full disclaimer though, if you are playing games or running something that relies on ads to work (ie “watch the next ad to get 50 points!” ) blokada may break these types of apps so it may not be suitable for you.
I’ll give it a shot, most of the ads my gf gets are the unexpected ones from simply opening the app or starting a new brain game
TreeSize Free (Portable), versions older than 4.7.3 can run on Windows Server and still work just fine. They added a restriction on 4.7.3 that disallows server OS.
iTunes was better before they got rid of Party Shuffle. It’s such a good feature and I continue to be frustrated than no other music player offers something similar.
How is it different from other random/shuffle options?
The three big differences are these:
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It doesn’t shuffle a playlist, it adds to a queue by pulling from a playlist at random. This means that if the playlist changes, eg. because it’s a smart playlist, you get the new songs added to the queue later.
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You can change the playlist it pulls from without interrupting playback or resetting the queue.
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It keeps track of which songs were just played as well as what is about to be played.
It has other great features that are present in some or most other apps. But the third thing I’ve only seen in one other app, the first two in none.
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I started using BeyondPod for podcasts in 2009. At one point, they came out with an UI update that everyone hated but I was able to save an older version, I just had to avoid updating it in the store. I did that until they went out of business and it disappeared from the store a year or two ago. I’m guessing the version I still use came out in 2012
Maybe AntennaPod is for you: https://antennapod.org/
I’ve tried it multiple times. I’m not sure why I didn’t like it but every few years I try a bunch of them and I still like BeyondPod. It still works perfectly.
Calibre Companion, on android. For years it was the best way to sync books between my calibre install on my computer and my phone, even after the developer abandoned it. Then a while back, the dev released a single update that broke the app’s integration with reader apps, then disappeared again. I rolled that back extremely quickly, by grabbing an older version from my old phone.
This reminds me, I updated Android the other day and now my phone is running like shit. Damn planned obsolescence
I’ve still got Twitter installed on my iPhone, despite rarely ever using it in the past and having not even launched it in well over a year.
But out of principle alone, as a form of silent protest I refuse to update it to X.
