Insular
A sandbox environment to clone selected apps and isolate them from accessing your personal data outside the sandbox (including call logs, contacts, photos and etc) even if related permissions are granted. Device-bound data (SMS, IMEI and etc) is still accessible. (by secure-system)
Obtainium
Get Android app updates straight from the source. (by ImranR98)
| Insular | Obtainium | |
|---|---|---|
| 14 | 108 | |
| - | 10,047 | |
| - | 7.2% | |
| - | 9.6 | |
| - | 8 days ago | |
| Dart | ||
| - | GNU General Public License v3.0 only |
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
Insular
Posts with mentions or reviews of Insular.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-04-07.
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Reverse Engineering Ticketmaster's Rotating Barcodes
If anyone is in the situation that they need to put an untrustworthy app on their android device, the "work profile" feature can segment it off further.
Insular is an app that lets you create and manage one of these profiles on the device itself: https://gitlab.com/secure-system/Insular
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Please help me understand a few things about Shelter app
Acqkschually, Insular is not a fork of Shelter. See the official page https://gitlab.com/secure-system/Insular :P
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Yesterday my friend told me the bottom half of your iphone screams I USE LINUX BTW lol
And that's why they're isolated.
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⟳ 2 apps added, 51 updated at f-droid.org
Insular (version 6.0.5-e104be1b): Isolate your Big Brother apps
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Shelter VS Insular - a user suggested alternative
2 projects | 25 Jul 2022
“Insular” is a sandbox environment to clone selected apps and isolate them from accessing your personal data outside the sandbox
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FOSS replacement list for default apps
Insular is FLOSS. https://gitlab.com/secure-system/Insular
- DUMP YOUR PERIOD TRACKING APPS NOW!!!
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Work profile within secondary profile or is that not necessary?
You should ask at: - https://gitlab.com/secure-system/Insular/-/issues for Insular - https://lists.sr.ht/~petercxy/shelter or https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter/issues for Shelter
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Trusted Closed-Source Apps
Sennheiser SmartControl on the other hand lives in a separate space provided by Insular (GitLab), as it is the only app that can update the firmware of my headphones.
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⟳ 4 apps added, 59 updated at f-droid.org
Insular (version 5.5-404b5a48): Isolate your Big Brother apps
Obtainium
Posts with mentions or reviews of Obtainium.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-03-09.
- OpenAPK – open-source Apps for Android, updated weekly
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F-Droid Awarded Open Technology Fund's FOSS Sustainability Grant
I've got about 80% of my apps on F-Droid through this Obtanium https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium, which just handles Git releases. The F-Droid client feels clunky, and I've had some update errors before. With some improvements, it should return to being a good discovery tool and app manager so this is good news.
- Obtainium: Get Android App Updates Directly from the Source
- Google Fit APIs get shut down in 2025, might break fitness devices
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Shattered Pixel Dungeon is an open-source traditional roguelike dungeon crawler
Just FYI, there's an Android app called Obtainium that lets you add Github (and a few other) repos to it. Obtanium will then check those repos for updates and install the new APK for you. Its pretty slick for people that prefer to get their APKs direct from the dev.
https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium
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F-Droid, Keyboard Libraries, and Choosing a Browser
While F-Droid will manage updates to anything installed through it's shop, you aren't stuck manually checking and updating things if you go decide to download APK releases directly. Obtanium is essentially a tracker/updater for managing your APKs from a broad range of sources. At the moment I'm only using it for a Bluesky client I grabbed off GitHub but I can see replacing the F-Droid shop with it once I've really settled on my app choices. Something on the list to investigate later.
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Treasure within GitHub
LinkSheet FFShare Obtainium
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Can't update the manager
A trick from another forum: there's an app named Obtainium which can monitor and update almost everything not installed from the regular store(s).
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⟳ 3 apps added, 10 updated at apt.izzysoft.de
Obtainium (version 1230): Get Android App Updates Directly From the Source.
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Top 10 Android Apps in 2013 (not available on the Google Play Store)
https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium Getting updates for the non Google Play Apps
What are some alternatives?
When comparing Insular and Obtainium you can also consider the following projects:
Shelter - A Free and Open-Source (FOSS) app that leverages the "Work Profile" feature of Android to provide an isolated space that you can install or clone apps into.
Neo-Store - An F-Droid client with modern UI and an arsenal of extra features.
unlauncher - Android minimalistic launcher
client - F-Droid client with Material UI.
zapp - German public broadcasting live streams as an Android app
AAA - :iphone: Curated list of THE BEST FOSS Android apps to maximize your freedom & privacy!