this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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Free and Open Source Software
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whoBIRD
An app that recognizes birds singing near you, all on device, and has an option to show a photo of the bird too. It's exclusive to F-Droid (not on Google Play), and the only bird recognizing app I know of that does it all immediately on your device (without sending it to a server). https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.woheller69.whobird/
Organic Maps
Highly detailed OpenStreetMap maps local on your device. Wonderful for walking directions, as it has on-device routing and maps out walking pathways (which is something that even Google Maps does not do well) https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.organicmaps/
AntennaPod
The best podcast client also happens to be Free Software and on F-Droid. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/
HeliBoard
This is the best FOSS keyboard that's under active maintenance. It even supports swiping, but that requires a non-free binary library from Google. (Maintained fork of OpenBoard.) https://f-droid.org/en/packages/helium314.keyboard/
Breezy Weather
Good weather app that has so many details (including pollen too) and fetches from multiple sources. It looks great as well. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.breezyweather/
I've been using it, but it's so unfriendly compared to Merlin, which allows you to play back recordings, see more info about the bird detected, etc.
Was introduced to Merlin a few weeks ago on a scout nature course, and I love it so much!
I'm using it a sort of real-life pokémon game, trying to grow my list of found birds (Life List). So far I'm up to 36! 😍
I assume that might be a reference to FlorisBoard? Because development on that one as actually picked up again, but that's only visible so far if you're using the Beta version. They're opreparing for a new full release.
Oh, nice! Then there are two great FOSS keyboard under maintenance again! Thanks for mentioning that.
Does the bird one actually work? Nature can get pretty loud, I could see that being an issue.
I used it in the middle of (light) bavarian forest, and it worked quite well. It had some misdetections, but overall it worked to identify all birds I could hear. Don't know how well it works in the middle of a city, or in other parts of the world.
But if you remind me in about four weeks, I can give a review of how it worked out in southeast asia.
I have been told that Whobird is just a reskin of Merlin and doesn't work as well. Any truth to that? I just got into birding and Merlin works beautifully it would be hard to give up.
Merlin wasn't available here when I checked at some point in time (last year?)
whoBIRD does use BirtNET, from Cornell, so it's basically the same backend (although it may be an older version).
I recently tried out Merlin (which is now available here) and it's amazing. It's definitely more featureful than whoBIRD, although both have the core "recognize bird directly using your phone" features.
For anyone OK with non-FOSS apps, Merlin is great. For anyone who wants a FOSS app for bird detection, whoBIRD is still pretty good.
Either way, identifying apps using ones phone is nice. 👍 Big things to Cornell for making the ML for both of these apps.