> To my surprise, Google/Android copied over all apps installed through Google Play, and just ignored all F-droid installed apps!
As an Android dev, I suspect it's not actually copying the apps over, but rather looking at what apps you have and redownloading them (and maybe copying over app data/the cache), as there may be some device specific customization in the APK's: https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle
> An Android App Bundle is a publishing format that includes all your app’s compiled code and resources, and defers APK generation and signing to Google Play.
> Google Play uses your app bundle to generate and serve optimized APKs for each device configuration, so only the code and resources that are needed for a specific device are downloaded to run your app. You no longer have to build, sign, and manage multiple APKs to optimize support for different devices, and users get smaller, more-optimized downloads.
iOS does something similar when you move phones: it only sends over a list of apps to download from the App Store. Even your TestFlight apps don't make it over.
As an Android dev, I suspect it's not actually copying the apps over, but rather looking at what apps you have and redownloading them (and maybe copying over app data/the cache), as there may be some device specific customization in the APK's: https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle
> An Android App Bundle is a publishing format that includes all your app’s compiled code and resources, and defers APK generation and signing to Google Play.
> Google Play uses your app bundle to generate and serve optimized APKs for each device configuration, so only the code and resources that are needed for a specific device are downloaded to run your app. You no longer have to build, sign, and manage multiple APKs to optimize support for different devices, and users get smaller, more-optimized downloads.