Best open source lightning wallets with direct APK installers

[nullama]

Many Bitcoin wallets seem to be only available through the Play Store in Android, but there are quite a few excellent ones that are non-custodial, open source, and available outside of the Play Store, directly with an APK installer.

If you're using a phone with no Play Store (like GrapheneOS for example), or you simply don't want to use the Play Store, you might be interested in using some of these wallets for lightning so that you can pay and receive Bitcoin on the go, plus use all the latest features of lightning.

Here's the list:

    Blixt Wallet. This is a really nice and modern lightning wallet. It has a lot of state of the art features like Keysend, Lightning Address, LNURL and WebLN. They use LND and Neutrino directly on the phone. They have the apk download available from github releases.

    SBW. Simple Bitcoin Wallet. This is a great non-custodial lightning wallet. It's very simple to use, you can send and receive bitcoin on-chain and through lighting by just scanning a QR code or pasting an invoice. It's based on Immortan, a custom implementation of lightning for light nodes. They also offer optional services like lightning channels through partners if you don't have your own node. It's available from f-droid, and github releases.

    Breez. A great open source, non-custodial, lnd and neutrino based lightning  wallet with a lot of features like automatically opening channels for you. You can get the apk from the github releases.

    Phoenix. A lightning wallet based on Eclair. This wallet provides a great user experience, and channels are managed for you. You can get the apk from the github releases.

    BlueWallet. This is a great wallet with a lot of functionality. It's been around for a few years already, and it keeps getting better. You can either use your own lightning node or one of the nodes they provide for you. It's available from f-droid and github releases.

    Zeus. This is a great wallet for lightning node operators. You can send and receive Bitcoin through lightning or on-chain. It provides a direct connection to your node where you can manage all the details of its operation. It works for lnd, Eclair, and c-lightning nodes. You can get it from f-droid and github releases.

    Muun. Muun is also a great and simple lightning wallet, and it's open source, but they don't publish their apk directly anywhere other than the Play Store. Here's a discussion about it. You can get the apk, but it's more complicated. Also, note that they do require Google Play Services running on the phone to use it.

[mk4]

Easier method: Just install f-droid[1] and lookup these LN apps through it. If it isn't on f-droid(unlikely), then try Aurora[2].

[1] https://f-droid.org/
[2] https://auroraoss.com/

[witcher_sense]

Many Bitcoin wallets seem to be only available through the Play Store in Android, but there are quite a few excellent ones that are non-custodial, open source, and available outside of the Play Store, directly with an APK installer.

Downloading from Play Store is generally a bad idea because this place is full of malicious copies. If these wallets are open-source, their code should be publicly available, they should have a corresponding page on GitHub where you can download apk binaries directly or build applications from published source code. While building from source is for advanced, technically competent users, it helps verify that the application does what it claims: reproducible wallets will have no additional code besides published. If you are not a tech-savvy guy, you can outsource this security check by visiting well-reputed websites like Walletscrutiny, which checks and verifies the claims of wallet developers.

  Muun is also a great and simple lightning wallet, and it's open source, but they don't publish their apk directly anywhere other than the Play Store.

Then it is not open-source but closed-source.

[Charles-Tim]

---snipped---

You did not include Electrum as part of your lightning network wallet, but Electrum actually supports lightning network in a way you will be able to open a channel. Electrum wallet can be downloaded directly from their official website which is https://electrum.org and it is better to verify its signature after download.

Downloading from Play Store is generally a bad idea because this place is full of malicious copies.

Exactly, there are fake apps existing on Playstore, it is good not to use Playstore directly for app download. But you can check the number of people that have downloaded an app on Playstore, if numerous people up to 500 thousand or more have downloaded such app, that easily indicates it is an original app, not fake. But what you meant is totally true, especially about wallet, it is better to just check the wallet on GitHub and making sure it is open source as the code can be seen directly on GitHub, also download page can be available directly on GitHub, but best for most people to do more research like asking if a wallet is open source or not on forum like Bitcointalk for for people that are expert about it to check it because some wallet are just deceiving, not fully open source.

[bitmover]

---snipped---

You did not include Electrum as part of your lightning network wallet, but Electrum actually supports lightning network in a way you will be able to open a channel. Electrum wallet can be downloaded directly from their official website which is https://electrum.org and it is better to verify its signature after download.

Exactly,  and you can download the apk directly from the links in their website (64 and 32 bits versions).
https://download.electrum.org/4.2.2/Electrum-4.2.2.0-arm64-v8a-release.apk
https://download.electrum.org/4.2.2/Electrum-4.2.2.0-armeabi-v7a-release.apk

[AakZaki]

Easier method: Just install f-droid[1] and lookup these LN apps through it. If it isn't on f-droid(unlikely), then try Aurora[2].

[1] https://f-droid.org/
[2] https://auroraoss.com/

I also use f-droid.org to search for some apk extension apps and there are even many other apps available.
I also found BlueWallet Bitcoin wallet Lightning which is good in my opinion and I have been using it for a long time. BlueWallet is also an Open Source wallet with MIT-Licence developed with ReactNative. there are many features available.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.bluewallet.bluewallet/

[Welsh]

Easier method: Just install f-droid[1] and lookup these LN apps through it. If it isn't on f-droid(unlikely), then try Aurora[2].

[1] https://f-droid.org/
[2] https://auroraoss.com/

For anyone not aware of these two applications, basically you can remove Google Play, and soley rely on these two apps to get pretty much anything you ever wanted. Aurora downloads from the same mirrors as Google Play, while F Droid only hosts FOSS software. Although, you can add repos, and you should still be careful of what you download, including Bitcoin wallets. Since, Open source doesn't automatically mean safe, especially when it's a relatively new application, that hasn't been audited by many users.

Ideally, for Bitcoin wallets, you'd be installing from their github or website, and verifying the install, not something you can do with aurora. At least, with F Droid you can check the repo, but I'd still prefer manually verifying for peace of mind.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Lightning Network Resource List

I quote the list but you can visit that link to get links of those wallets.

Non-custodial wallets

Blixt Wallet (Github) - available in Google Play and for iOS
Bitcoin Lightning Wallet (Github) - available in Google Play and F-Droid
Breez (Github) - available in Google Play and for iOS
Electrum (Github) - available for Linux, OSX, Windows and Android
Muun (Github) - available on Google Play and the Apple AppStore
Phoenix (Github) - available on Google Play and the Apple AppStore
Zebedee (Github) - available on Google Play and the Apple AppStore
Eclair - available for Android

[KiaKia]

Lightning Network Resource List

I quote the list but you can visit that link to get links of those wallets.

Non-custodial wallets

Blixt Wallet (Github) - available in Google Play and for iOS
Bitcoin Lightning Wallet (Github) - available in Google Play and F-Droid
Breez (Github) - available in Google Play and for iOS
Electrum (Github) - available for Linux, OSX, Windows, and Android
Muun (Github) - available on Google Play and the Apple AppStore
Phoenix (Github) - available on Google Play and the Apple AppStore
Zebedee (Github) - available on Google Play and the Apple AppStore
Eclair - available for Android

Thanks for the update, I was wondering why these Wallets are not available on Playstore before because Playstore is one of the faster ways to reach millions of users, if any crypto Android wallets aren't available on PlayStore it's bad for the crypto wallet project and t shows that the team lacks a lot.

That's also the right place to leave reviews about a crypto wallet, but anyway, reviews on Playstore aren't even genuine, I hear that some people bought those reviews by using fake accounts to bump up the number of reviews to increase trust, I don't know if this is true or not.

[mendace]

Many Bitcoin wallets seem to be only available through the Play Store in Android, but there are quite a few excellent ones that are non-custodial, open source, and available outside of the Play Store, directly with an APK installer.

If you're using a phone with no Play Store (like GrapheneOS for example), or you simply don't want to use the Play Store, you might be interested in using some of these wallets for lightning so that you can pay and receive Bitcoin on the go, plus use all the latest features of lightning.

Here's the list:

Hi, nice post, I like degoogle and being able to do without google services, so I point out this SBW fork carried out by ZBDEE even if no release has been released for a few months now.

https://github.com/nbd-wtf/obw