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Apps for postmarketOS on the PinePhone

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Hello everyone, I’ve always wanted to write one of these low-effort blog posts. Actually, I’ve already written one. You know the kind, these blog posts basically consist of making a list. You would be surprised by how many bloggers out there make careers out of just sharing lists of stuff. Now is my time to milk this by sharing my second list ever. This is time I share with you ten apps for postmarketOS on the Pinephone.

Is there any apps for postmarketOS on the PinePhone?

As you may know, postmarketOS is a Linux mobile distribution forked from alpine. This poses some compatibility problems as this uses a different C library so most Linux apps are not compatible. These are no mobile apps per se but all the apps are all working well on mobile screens.

To make things harder, there is no app store as of now. However, you can install all these apps using their alpine packages via the command line. Each installation command will follow its app description. You can run these either through your mobile terminal or via an SSH session. If you want some extra challenge you can even clone the code and build it on the phone since these all are open-source. However, we will not do that today. Let’s get started!

Productivity

Geary

Geary is a mail client for which you can set up Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo accounts directly. You can also set up accounts from different providers with your IMAP and SMTP settings making it a fairly complete mail client.

Also, if you set up online accounts through the postmarketOS settings, you will see them appear in Geary after installation.

sudo apk add geary

Megapixels

Megapixels is seemingly the best camera app available on PinePhone. While the performance feels sluggish on Manjaro OS, it is great on postmarketOS. Especially with the Phosh interface. There is definitely room for improvement and I am looking forward to seeing what this app can deliver with the PinePhone Pro which is superior hardware to the default edition.

Right now taking 34236 photos of my fiancee in a few seconds won’t work great as the app does not generate the file instantly but maybe better hardware and future builds will improve that. Only time will tell. I believe on the latest edition of postmarketOS this comes pre-installed but I will leave the installation command here just in case.

sudo apk add megapixels
Shot with PinePhone
Post-workout photo shot with Megapixels on the PinePhone and posted to Minds

Gnome Feeds

Feeds is a simple, straightforward RSS/atom feed app. No search option, just paste a feed URL then you can access the articles. There is an option to hide certain feeds should they become so invasive that they hide other sources.

sudo apk add gnome-feeds

Messaging

Telegram Desktop

As you may know, most apps and companies focus their mobile development efforts on iOS and Android. However, sometimes there are happy accidents. In our situation, these happen when companies actually put in some work for the Linux community and don’t just pretend to do so. And yes, I’m looking at you Microsoft. Meanwhile, Telegram built a cross-platform desktop app that happens to work almost perfectly on mobile.

However, you might need to tweak the app’s scale to display properly on your device. You can find more info on doing so there. I personally had to scale the display to 90% which feels optimal on PinePhone.

sudo apk add telegram-desktop

Fractal

Fractal is a Matrix client for Linux which works great on the PinePhone, I wasn’t a big user of Matrix before. Even when it became the host of Minds chats I didn’t make the switch. However, researching and learning to use postmarketOS and my PinePhone, Matrix became quite a valuable tool.

sudo apk add fractal

Entertainment

Spot

Spot is an open-source Spotify client which allows you to listen to all your Spotify content as long as you’re a premium user. However, podcasts are not supported yet so if you’ve got a premium account to listen to the Powerful JRE you’re out of luck. At least until someone submits a pull request to bring these in.

sudo apk add spot

Gnome 2048

Remember that 2048 craze from about a decade ago? I think this must have been one of the rare crazes I didn’t miss out on when I was a proud Windows Phone user. I had quite a good time reliving memories of taking the bus when going to the engineering school playing this game. Good times.

sudo apk add gnome-2048
2048 game from the apps for postmarketos on the pinephone article
2048 app on postmarketOS Phosh

Gnome Podcasts

Gnome Podcasts is a simple podcast client, just like the feeds app you simply need to add your podcast URLs and it works. Personally, to make the podcast addition simpler, I would send podcast links to myself from my laptop’s Telegram. It works a treat especially if you’ve got a Bluetooth speaker to listen to the latest People + Drink = Words episode in your living room.

sudo apk add gnome-podcasts

Gnome Shortwave

Gnome Shortwave is an internet radio with a search function that says what it does and does what it says. I generally use it to listen to French radio RMC but you could have used it a few nights ago when I made my first ever radio appearance on the Censorship sucks roundtable on the Pyramid One network.

sudo apk add gnome-shortwave

Wrapping-up!

Alright, we’ve got our ten apps for postmarketOS on the PinePhone, I hope you enjoyed the read and will check out the self-promo stuff scattered across this entry. Feel free to like and subscribe to this blog and to my various channels. I will see you next time. Bye-bye!

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