Compass is a small Android compass that asks for nothing

A small app with a stated purpose

Compass describes itself as a simple and clean compass for Android, and the project aims to provide a clean and reliable compass for Android. The feature list is short, and every entry is about the instrument rather than about a platform. It can point to magnetic north as well as true north. It switches to a sighting compass when held upright, which is for aiming at distant landmarks, since holding a phone flat is the natural position for reading a heading and holding it up to sight along it is the natural position for pointing at something. It shows exact degrees and the cardinal direction, and it displays sensor status, which is a detail that matters more than it sounds, because a compass on a device with a poor magnetometer will otherwise read confidently and wrongly. There is haptic feedback, a light and dark theme, and then three negatives that are stated with the same emphasis as the positives: no advertisements, no trackers and no unnecessary permissions. The app is published on F-Droid, on Google Play and on GitHub, with the application identifier com.bobek.compass.

Magnetic versus true north is a real difference on the device

The choice between magnetic north and true north is the feature that has the most practical consequence, and it is worth understanding before you install. Magnetic north is the direction a magnetised needle points, which is convenient because it needs no extra information, but it is offset from true north by the local magnetic declination and it is disturbed by anything magnetic near the phone, including a car, a speaker or the device itself. True north is the geographic reference, and on a phone it has to be derived from the magnetometer reading together with a location fix, because that is what lets the system correct for declination. That derivation needs the location permission, which sits awkwardly next to a feature list that promises no unnecessary permissions, so the practical question is what your device and your location can supply. On a device without a usable magnetometer, or in an environment with a lot of magnetic interference, the reading will be wrong and the app has no way to tell you that beyond the sensor status display. That display is therefore worth checking before you trust a bearing.

Sighting mode is the reason it is worth building separately

The sighting compass mode is the one piece of real design in the project, and it is worth describing because it shows what the author was trying to solve. When the phone is held upright, the app switches to a mode aimed at distant landmarks rather than at reading a number off the screen. A reading of 43 degrees is only useful if you can align the phone with the thing you are looking at, and holding the phone flat does not let you do that. The screenshots the README links show the three states, the light theme, the dark theme and the sighting mode, which is a complete picture of the interface. The rest of the list, degrees, cardinal direction, sensor status, haptics and the theme, are the small things that make a tool pleasant to use rather than a screen that shows a number. It is worth noting what is absent. There is no altitude, no coordinate readout, no logging, no sharing, no recording. For a compass in the F-Droid catalogue, that narrowness is a feature rather than a gap.

A solo project that does not take patches

The contributing section is unusually direct and you should read it before planning any change. This is a hobby project maintained solo in the author's free time, and they do not accept pull requests or merge requests, because they would rather spend the limited time they have working on the app itself than reviewing and integrating outside code changes. The invitation is to open an issue instead, and the author says they read all of them and appreciate the feedback, but that they cannot promise any given issue will be worked on. Translations are handled by the author with AI assistance and maintained directly in the repository, which is worth knowing if your contribution is a translation, because that is the one kind of change the project is even less likely to accept from outside. The repository layout reflects a standard Android project, with app/, build.gradle.kts, settings.gradle.kts, a gradle/ directory and the wrapper scripts, plus a fastlane/ directory for the store metadata, a Gemfile for the fastlane tooling, a CLAUDE.md and an .editorconfig.

Distribution, versions and the licence

The app is available through three channels, F-Droid, Google Play and GitHub releases, and the README links each with its own badge. The fastlane/ directory in the repository holds the store metadata, including the icon and the phone screenshots under fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/images/, which is where the screenshot images referenced in the README actually live. The release history shows a project shipping steadily, with version 2.2.0 on 2026-10-02, 2.1.1 on 2026-08-04 and 2.1.0 on 2026-08-02, and the last push on 2026-10-16. The primary language is Kotlin. The licence is the GNU GPL v3, with the full text in the LICENSE file at the root. The F-Droid listing is worth checking separately if that is where you would install from, because the channel a build comes from determines which release cycle you actually follow.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt Compass when you want an offline Android compass that does not ask for permissions it does not need and does not carry ads or trackers, and when the default behaviour suits you. Do not expect to contribute code upstream, because the project states it does not accept pull requests or merge requests, so a fork is the realistic route for changes. Verify first that your device has the sensors the app relies on, that the true north option is available on your hardware, since it depends on a fixed reference, and that the Play Store or F-Droid build you install matches the release you intend to track.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. Kr0oked/Compass on GitHub
3. License: GPL-3.0
4. README
5. Releases