The App Lounge has always been kind of slow to load on my CMF Phone 1, and I’ve had issues where I’ll tap an app, but it opens the app’s page on the Google Play Store (so I can’t install it). But, recently, after I installed the latest 3.1.1 update, the App Lounge’s updates tab keeps loading until the app stops responding. Possible RAM leak problem? It never actually shows my apps that need updates. I’ve tried clearing storage and data and signing back in both with an account, and as anonymous, but neither fixes it. I have apps that are telling me the versions are outdated, but I cannot update them (unless this is happening automatically, but I can’t tell because the updates page never loads). I’m now on 3.1.4, and still experiencing the same issue.
if using a dedicated account didn’t help in AppLounge, I’d try to use Aurora instead and if issues continue, spoof a different device profile
Can confirm that Aurora store was able to update my apps as a temporary fix, no change to my spoofing settings. Thank you for the suggestion! I had 103 updates waiting 
living > updating I guess. I wish apk mirrors would have more weight in Android world (despite getting more restricted soon anyway). /e/OS used to do this, but users were sceptical and it had availability issues. Using the Playstore directly doesn’t have those downsides - but it is such a single point of failure
Agreed, I wish F-Droid hosted an optional non-Foss apk library or something. I know that’s a lot of work for something a lot of people don’t want out of F-Droid, though.
at least for Signal and Firefox (and others) one can use Obtainium. Fetches directly from release pages, prepared configs are here.
Technically inclined can setup a “non-Foss apk library” for Friends and Family like this:
Cool! Thanks for the info, never heard of Obtanium.