Hello all,

I'm looking for a voice-recorder in the form of an APK. Also, it needs to
be a voice-recorder, and just that. IOW, no Internet requirements or
similar.

I would have liked to get them from a GrapheneOS appstore, but it doesn't
seem to exist there (meaning: Google playstores apps are rather unwelcome).

Suggestions please.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

P.s.
GitHub links do not really seem to work for me. Or rather, I get a webpage
but it doesn't contain/show any APK download links. :-|





--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Hey %name%,

The APK is a direct download on F-Droid via a web browser.
It's actively maintained.
And, it has zero internet permissions by design.

No internet permission asked is good.

But I'm not so sure about "org.fossify.android.permission.WRITE_GLOBAL_SETTINGS". Any idea what that would be needed for ?

And odd: the webpage mentions "read the contents of your shared storage",
but that doesn't show as a permission in the apps manifest ....

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Hey %name%,

Looking it up, it appears from what I've read that WRITE_GLOBAL_SETTINGS isn't actually used by the app itself as I saw that it's apparently a leftover permission that Fossify inherited from the old Simple Mobile
Tools codebase (which was apparently sold to the devil a while ago).

Don't quote me, but apparently Fossify has been removing unneeded
permissions as they go, and this one is marked as deprecated. The app
doesn't have the privileges to use it unless it's installed as a system
app, so on a normal device it's effectively inert anyway.

Is there a list somewhere with permissions and when they are relevant ? It would be good being able to filter out such meaningless permissions.

As for the 'read shared storage' line, apparently F-Droid shows
capabilities based on what the app can do, not necessarily what's listed
as a runtime permission.

Pretty-much the same as above. A list of default permissions would be good
to have.

Since Android 10+, apps don't request the old
READ/WRITE storage permissions anymore, given they use scoped storage instead, it doesn't appear the same way in the manifest.

So, it appears in some other way ? Any chance you can tell as wat ?

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Hey %name%,

Looking it up, it appears from what I've read that WRITE_GLOBAL_SETTINGS isn't actually used by the app itself as I saw that it's apparently a leftover permission that Fossify inherited from the old Simple Mobile
Tools codebase (which was apparently sold to the devil a while ago).

Don't quote me, but apparently Fossify has been removing unneeded
permissions as they go, and this one is marked as deprecated. The app
doesn't have the privileges to use it unless it's installed as a system
app, so on a normal device it's effectively inert anyway.

Is there a list somewhere with permissions and when they are relevant ? It would be good being able to filter out such meaningless permissions.

As for the 'read shared storage' line, apparently F-Droid shows
capabilities based on what the app can do, not necessarily what's listed
as a runtime permission.

Pretty-much the same as above. A list of default permissions would be good
to have.

Since Android 10+, apps don't request the old
READ/WRITE storage permissions anymore, given they use scoped storage instead, it doesn't appear the same way in the manifest.

So, it appears in some other way ? Any chance you can tell as wat ?

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Andy,

I thought all apps were given android.permission.INTERNET for free,
without needing to ask?

Not as far as I know. Its specified in the manifest like this : android.permission.INTERNET

It would also be a rather bad idea to just give random apps internet access. It would be way too easy to do malicious stuff on your dime.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Andy,

I thought all apps were given android.permission.INTERNET for free,
without needing to ask?

Not as far as I know. Its specified in the manifest like this :
android.permission.INTERNET

Ahh, I've misunderstood this one for years ... it's an install-time permission so it needs to be in the manifest, but it doesn't need to be requested at runtime.

You say something there : I have absolutily no idea how run-time asked permissions work or how the app is permitted to ask them in the first place.

Asking permissions only when they are needed sounds good enough, but its
like in-app purchases kids can spend a lot of money on - someone (kids or someone else temporary using the phone) could just press "yes" on such requests, just to quickly get what they are after. Not good. Not good. Not good at all.

@all :
If anyone knows how the run-time permissions are supposed to work I would
like to hear about it.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> wrote:

As Andy had noted, Internet is a normal permission that
a. Doesn't trigger a runtime prompt
b. Doesn't appear in the system permission list
c. Cannot be denied by the user
d. Doesn't grant access to private data
All it does is allow an app to open sockets, so, apparently, Fossify left
it in because the original simple mobile tools used it for update checks.

Using adb, anyone can check for "android.permission.INTERNET" in an app.
adb shell dumpsys package com.fossify.voicerecorder | grep permission

Since Fossify voice recorder is open source, I'm going to assume that when they say they don't use the Internet, they don't use it, but who knows.

On GrapheneOS it's possible to block apps from the network permission, even
if they ask for it. They are told they successfully are allowed to access
the network but that no network is currently available. So even if an app refuses to work if it can't claim the network permission, you can still use
it without it talking to the network.

This doesn't help with apps which make you log in before using them, but it does with a lot of apps whose primary business is not using some internet service.

Theo

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

R.Wieser <address@is.invalid> wrote:

GitHub links do not really seem to work for me. Or rather, I get a webpage but it doesn't contain/show any APK download links. :-|

Look at the Releases section of the Github, which is typically shown in the right sidebar. Click on 'Releases' and it'll take you to a list. Not all projects have Releases, and not all of them use the Releases section to distribute .apks. In that case you may have to check the README section of
the project for install links/instructions.

If you're regularly installing .apks from Github, try Obtainium: https://obtainium.imranr.dev/
which will keep them up to date.

Theo

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Theo,

GitHub links do not really seem to work for me. Or rather, I get
a webpage but it doesn't contain/show any APK download links. :-|

Look at the Releases section of the Github,

I see nothing like that. I often see a list of source-files that I can
click, but not anything that I can download. I've even checked the
webpages sourcecode, and could not find an ".APK" anywhere.

Take this one :

https://github.com/you-apps/RecordYou

I see a "Navigation Menu" and a bit down "Folders and files" (just a header, for the rest empty), "Latest commit" (empty) and than "History". No "APK download" link anywhere. :-|

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Andy,

here's the .apk

<https://github.com/you-apps/RecordYou/releases/download/v8.0/app-release.apk>

Thank you. :-)

As said, the "Releases" are in the right column, the latest is v8.0,

Well, I do not see a column on the right, nor can I find the link to APK inspecting the raw web-page. :-\

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Andy,

click the yellow highlighted release tab, as per

<http://andyburns.uk/misc/github-release-tag.png>

If you don't see it ...

I don't.

Not even when I allow all the sub-domains. There is no column, on the right
or otherwise.

When I follow the, in your screenshot yellow-hilited, link I get a webpage which, in its raw content, also doesn't have an "APK" string anywhere. The word "download" appears once, but not related to a link.

I see "New features", "Other Changes" and "New Contributors", but no obvious way to download anything.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

R.Wieser <address@is.invalid> wrote:

Andy,

click the yellow highlighted release tab, as per

<http://andyburns.uk/misc/github-release-tag.png>

If you don't see it ...

I don't.

Not even when I allow all the sub-domains. There is no column, on the right or otherwise.

When I follow the, in your screenshot yellow-hilited, link I get a webpage which, in its raw content, also doesn't have an "APK" string anywhere. The word "download" appears once, but not related to a link.

I see "New features", "Other Changes" and "New Contributors", but no obvious way to download anything.

Github is almost entirely generated by Javascript these days. You won't
find links in the source, because they are being generated dynamically by
the JS in your browser.

Something seems wrong with your JS rendering. Browser or addons?
If you have disabled JS (or via NoScript type addons) that will be a
problem.

Theo

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Andy,

If you don't see it ...

I don't.

What browser?

How does it matter which browser is used if the download link cannot even be found in the raw HTML ?

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Theo,

Github is almost entirely generated by Javascript these days.

I do see a webpage with content. In the case of https://github.com/you-apps/RecordYou I can, under "History", see and click entries like "ghbadge.png", "gradlew.bat", "LICENCE" and a few others and
get their contents - wrapped in a new webpage, but the content is viewable.

You won't find links in the source, because they are being
generated dynamically by the JS in your browser.

That might be the problem. I've got JS disabled for over a decade. Just
like I don't download-and-run random executables.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

R.Wieser <address@is.invalid> wrote:

Theo,

Github is almost entirely generated by Javascript these days.

I do see a webpage with content. In the case of https://github.com/you-apps/RecordYou I can, under "History", see and click entries like "ghbadge.png", "gradlew.bat", "LICENCE" and a few others and get their contents - wrapped in a new webpage, but the content is viewable.

You won't find links in the source, because they are being
generated dynamically by the JS in your browser.

That might be the problem. I've got JS disabled for over a decade. Just like I don't download-and-run random executables.

In which case, install Obtainium (this link doesn't need JS): https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium/releases/download/v1.4.3/app-release.apk

Open it, and press 'Add app'. In the 'App source URL' box enter github.com/you-apps/RecordYou and press Add. It'll show you what version is available and you can say if you want to install it. If you don't know the
URL you can give it a term to search various sites (Github, Gitlab, Codeberg, F-droid, Vivo app store).

It will also show if there updates to the apps you have installed through
it, and can update them automatically if you want that.

I did a search for RecordYou and the above you-apps/RecordYou came out as
the top hit, but it also warned me that the repo has been archived. The maintainer says:

"This repository is no longer maintained! The app is considered feature-complete though and will continue to work in the future, even though
no further updates will be released."

Theo

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Theo,

In which case, install Obtainium (this link doesn't need JS): https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium/releases/download/v1.4.3/app-release.apk

Any chance they have got a website where I could view what they have and download APKs from ? I do like to be able to have backups of what I
install.

It will also show if there updates to the apps you have installed
through it, and can update them automatically if you want that.

I tend to disable updates, automatic or not. I both don't like stuff
changing under my fingers as well as I don't like the notion that apps can
be bought from the origional developer and than used, on the next "update",
as trojan horses.

I did a search for RecordYou and the above you-apps/RecordYou came out
as the top hit, but it also warned me that the repo has been archived.
The maintainer says:

"This repository is no longer maintained! The app is considered feature-complete though and will continue to work in the future, even
though no further updates will be released."

I read that to, and actually wanted to congratulate the developer for his choice not to over-develop his app (read: not succumbing to "feature
creep").

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

R.Wieser <address@is.invalid> wrote:

Theo,

In which case, install Obtainium (this link doesn't need JS): https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium/releases/download/v1.4.3/app-release.apk

Any chance they have got a website where I could view what they have and download APKs from ? I do like to be able to have backups of what I install.

That website is Github. You'll need Javascript for that.

Theo

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Theo,

Any chance they have got a website where I could view what they have
and download APKs from ? I do like to be able to have backups of
what I install.

That website is Github.

I don't think so. At least, I've never seen a Github page listing, for example, (all) Android apps.

You'll need Javascript for that.

In that case Github is pretty-much useless to me.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

R.Wieser, 2026-05-23 16:08:

Hello all,

I'm looking for a voice-recorder in the form of an APK. Also, it needs to be a voice-recorder, and just that. IOW, no Internet requirements or similar.

I would have liked to get them from a GrapheneOS appstore, but it doesn't seem to exist there (meaning: Google playstores apps are rather unwelcome).

Suggestions please.

<https://f-droid.org/packages/org.codeberg.genericpers0n.soundrecorderplus/>

<https://f-droid.org/packages/com.dimowner.audiorecorder/>

Or any of the other recorders there:

<https://search.f-droid.org/?q=recorder>

F-Droid can be installed as an app in GrapheneOS - and I would recommend
doing this and not download single APK files, because then you also get
updates for the apps.


--
Arno Welzel
https://arnowelzel.de

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)