Essential Android Apps for 2018
Which Android app should you install on your new smartphone or tablet? Trying to find the very best of the best is not an easy process because there are millions of apps to choose from in the Google Play store. Even if you’re just browsing Google’s “most free” or “highest paying” lists on a daily basis, you’re missing out on tons of digital gems. Let us help you with our newly updated Lifehacker Pack for Android.
Lifehacker Pack is an annual snapshot of our favorite and essential apps for each of our favorite platforms. For our constantly updated catalog of all the best apps, be sure to bookmark our Apps Catalog where we profile awesome Windows, Mac, Android and iOS apps and browser extensions.
Productivity
Email: Outlook or Gmail (free)
Chances are, if you are using an Android device, you are probably using the Google Gmail app (free). And why not? This is a great email app that probably comes preinstalled on your device, and you don’t need to have a Gmail account to use it. You can set up Gmail with a number of different services, or enter your email account POP3 or IMAP information manually.
Microsoft Outlook (free) is a great Gmail alternative if you need a few more bells and whistles. This includes a “focused inbox,” which, like the recently closed inbox from Google , tries to find your most important emails among all the crap you receive and place them at the top of your inbox. It also comes with a built-in calendar in case you are not using any other calendar apps on your Android device.
We also want to highlight K-9 Mail (free), a delightful open source mail app for Android that comes with built-in PGP encryption support. While its design is not pleasing to the eye, it makes it easy to encrypt and send secret emails – if that’s what you do often.
Calendar: Google Calendar (free) or Business Calendar 2 (free)
Hi, this is Google again. Unsurprisingly, one of the best calendar apps you can get for your Android device is one that’s probably already preinstalled on your Android device: good old Google Calendar (free). It has a clean, sleek design and works well when paired with Gmail to automatically fetch events you receive in your inbox (as long as the feature isn’t annoying). You can create separate calendars to keep track of all sorts of activities, share your calendars with friends and colleagues, and customize the display on your device (and what color they use) at any time.
We also love Business Calendar 2 , a free app that gives you tons of different ways to customize the look of your calendar. It’s easy to show and hide specific calendars at any time, and the built-in task tool lets you keep track of your to-do items without having to go to a separate app. However, you can also sync your items with Google Tasks if you want to use Business Calendar 2 and Google Suggestions at the same time. Business Calendar 2 comes with 22 different themes that you can use to customize the look of your application, as well as seven different widgets and 14 widget themes.
Notes / To-Do: Google Keep (free), Microsoft OneNote (free), Simplenote (free), Todoist (free), Zoho Notebook (free)
Much like iOS, it seems like there are a million apps you can use on Android to take notes of all kinds, be it monologues on how to structure the next chapter of your novel so that there are short elements to remember before your next trip to score. Likewise, some note-taking apps are complex; some are pretty lists. Your personal preference will likely dictate which app you choose beyond its features, and here are a few of our favorites you can check out to get started.
Google Keep (free) may or may not be preinstalled on your Android device. It’s worth giving it a try anyway, as it’s a quality note-taking app that you can use to keep track of pretty much everything. Drag and drop the screenshot, annotate and add it to a specific label so you can find it later. Take a voice note. Create a classic to-do list that you can mark when you finish a specific task. The schedule is reminiscent, so you don’t forget about all the notes you take. Google Keep covers the basics well and syncs with the same app on the web (or iOS) if you want to keep everything you think about in one accessible app.
If you only want the basics – text notes and lists – be sure to check out the free Google Tasks app. We’re also fans of Microsoft OneNote (free), which might feel a little cluttered on your desktop, but feel like Evernote (back when Evernote was great) on your mobile device. Just like Google Keep, you can also jot down everything from simple to-do lists to voice memos to yourself, as well as annotated drawings and photos. And like Google, Microsoft has a simpler task tracker: Microsoft To-Do (free).
Other great apps include Simplenote (free), a basic cross-platform app that’s perfect if you want to try organizing your thoughts in Markdown (or just want an app that only works with text and only text). The cross-platform Todoist app is free. for basic use, but costs $ 29 / year for additional premium features. These include automatic task reminders and a great activity overview for a better understanding of everything you need to do. If you want a digital notebook that is as beautiful as it is useful, try Zoho’s Notebook App (free), which organizes all kinds of information (text, visual and audio) and presents your notes on a beautiful card display. …
Automation: Tasker ($ 3), Automate (free), or IFTTT (free)
You might want to turn on Wi-Fi on your device when you get home, but turn it off when you leave home (until you get to work). Or perhaps you need a different background depending on where you are, or you want to automatically disable unnecessary features if you run into battery problems. You can customize your device to follow crazy rules and more using an app like Tasker ($ 3). Automation (free) is an even better option if you like a more visual workflow for your rules, and Locale ($ 10) is also another great option for automatically generating location-based scripts, but it’s a little expensive.
As for IFTTT (free), it is designed so that you can chain your various devices (smart or otherwise) and services together. For example, you can customize your smart lights to flash in the colors of your favorite sports team when they score. Turn the fan in the room on and off depending on whether you are connected to Wi-Fi. Save all your Spotify favorites in an online table. IFTTT is a free app that is fun to play with, whether you use it through the Android app or on the website.
Storage: Google One , Microsoft OneDrive , Amazon Drive, or Dropbox (various)
You are probably already using a cloud service to store data or photos. If not, check out our list of all the major cloud services and pick one to give it a try – they’re incredibly useful. Our favorites include Google One , Microsoft OneDrive, and Amazon Drive in no particular order due to ease of use and price-to-storage ratio.
As with our iOS guide, Dropbox is on our list because many people are familiar with it, and its app is handy for scanning documents and annotating others’ work. You won’t get as much free storage (2GB) as other services, however, and its paid plans aren’t nearly as generous. However, it is incredibly convenient and many people use it anyway.
Read Articles Later: Pocket (Free) or Instapaper (Free)
If you want a quick way to bookmark articles for later reading, then Pocket and Instapaper are great freemium choices. Pocket has a comprehensive tagging system and a powerful recommendation engine that shows you what other users of the service find interesting, and even shows you how long it might take to read what you’ve saved (in case you’re not sure if you have time sneak into the article to the next subway or train stop). The annual subscription fee is $ 45, but it’s quite expensive, but paying for it gives you a permanent archive of everything you’ve saved on the service, as well as a “featured tags” feature that can help you organize your many, many articles better. …
Instapaper (free) has a spartan interface that makes everything you’ve saved look more like you’re reading an e-book than a graphics-heavy website. Its search tool can find words and phrases (if you pay $ 30 for a yearly subscription), as well as just highlight interesting snippets of text to save for later. It also has recommendations and reading time estimates, but more importantly, it allows you to customize colors and fonts to create a perfect and easy reading experience for you.
Two-factor authentication: Authy (free)
I have nothing against Google Authenticator , but I prefer Authy (free) because of its beautiful looks and useful features. You can lock the app with your fingerprint to make it harder for others to view all of your rotating keys for two-factor authentication. Authy can also back up these tokens to the cloud, making it easy to restore (or move) them to another Android device.
Internet and communications
Web browser: Chrome or Firefox (free)
If you are using Android, chances are good that you are already using Chrome (free) as it is most likely built into your operating system by default. There is nothing wrong with that. It is a great browser preferred by most mobile users .
However, Firefox (free) is still a viable alternative if you want to try something different. Whichever you choose will likely be a browser that you also use on your desktop and laptop, just to make everything you do easier to sync.
(Firefox QUANTUM and Mozilla’s ” pilot tests ” experiments make the amount of revisiting the desktop browser if it’s been awhile since you made a chance at it.)
If your device is low on space, consider Firefox Focus (free), a thinner alternative that replaces sync with size. If you hate web ads and tracking mechanisms that try to serve you “relevant” content on every page you visit, consider a more privacy-focused browser like DuckDuckGo (free).
Messaging: WhatsApp Messenger (free), Facebook Messenger (free), Android Messages (free), Textra SMS (free), Pulse SMS ($ 11)
We like WhatsApp Messenger (free) because it includes end-to-end encryption to increase the security of messages you send to other WhatsApp users (from texts to GIFs, voice recordings, etc.) Facebook Messenger (free) is a classic the app you want to use to contact any user of the service, which is like ( almost ) anyone with a computer or mobile device. Play games, send money, show your friends GIFs – if you’ve been using Facebook for a little while, you probably understand Messenger’s capabilities well.
If you want a no-nonsense app that covers the basics of messaging in a clear and beautiful way, try Android Messages (free). You can use it to send texts, photos, audio messages, and videos – everything that a standard text messaging app can do. In fact, it comes pre-installed on most Android devices. If you’re only interested in text, Google Assistant-style Allo is a good alternative; or if you just want simple video calls, try Google Duo. (To add more people to a group video chat, you need to go to Hangouts.)
Textra SMS is a free app that costs $ 3.50 to opt out of ads. I read a number of sources that basically said the same thing: as soon as they get a new Android device, they immediately install Textra SMS on their devices to replace the default messaging app. Textra SMS is incredibly customizable (whether you want to customize its colors, the look of your messages, or the app as a whole). You can use it to delay sending SMS and MMS messages (super-neat), pin chats to the top of the messaging window (instead of showing them in recent order), and create different types of notifications when you receive new messages.
Many people also like Pulse SMS . Pay $ 11 for a one-time purchase and you can send and receive texts from different devices (except, of course, iOS). You can have password-protected conversations, back up your messages to your online account (stored encrypted), and set up delayed sending in case you want to check your messages for typos one last time before they disappear.
Social media: Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn (free)
Oh yeah. The Big Three. There are tons of other social media platforms out there (including Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Pinterest, Tumblr, Mastodon, etc.), but I bet these are the most important events that most people have heard of or are actively using. While you probably want to use the free official Facebook and LinkedIn apps to browse the web of each service, Twitter (free) comes with a little star because there are tons of other cool apps you can use to post, post, and read. your endless sea of tweets.
We love Owly (free) and Fenix 2 ($ 3), but we say so with a caveat – it feels like Twitter is doing everything it can to steer people away from third-party apps to the official client of the service. Plus, there is an annoying token limit, which is partly why you can’t use a great Twitter app like Flamingo right now – it got too popular and no one else could sign up. Sigh.
While you’ll probably just end up using the official Twitter app so you don’t have to deal with this nonsense, it’s worth trying Owly or Fenix 2 (while you can) to see the various improvements they offer, including digests. super – customizable user interfaces and easier ways to pull content from other sites (YouTube, Flickr, etc.).
Location-based applications
Weather: Dark Sky (free), Today Weather (free), Flara Weather (free)
Which weather app is the best? The one that gives you the most accurate forecast for your location, which you can check on ForecastAdvisor here .
Generally speaking, we’ve always been fans of Dark Sky (the free version), which, if accurate, can perfectly alert you when the sky is about to unload, wherever you are. You can also wake up with various other data points, including a summary of what you might see for the rest of the day and sunscreen alerts when the UV Index is too high. Again, if ForecastAdvisor shows a service like The Weather Channel or AccuWeather to be more accurate where you live, then check those apps as well.
Lots of people (and Google) recommend the Today Weather app (free), which also gives you forecasts, beautiful photographs that track whatever weather conditions you’re about to experience that day, and alarms you can set when floods are coming in the sky. … This is in addition to all other “normal” data, including UV index, air quality, pollen counts, lunar cycles, and so on.
If you like looking at graphs instead of little fluffy cloud images, you’ll still have to deal with the latter in the Klara Weather Android app (free), but it’s a different approach to forecasting that might cheer you up a bit. the next rainy day will come.
Display: Google Maps or Waze (free)
You probably already have Google Maps (free) preinstalled on your Android device, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time describing what they can do. I love its location sharing features , which are useful if you need to let a friend know where you are (or you’re on your way, apologize for being late).
While I don’t mind much that Google can track where I’ve been (and what searches I’ve done in the app), if I choose, some people find the company’s data collection problematic . That said, it’s an incredibly accurate and easy-to-use app for finding where you are going or where you want to go, and should be at the top of your download list if you don’t already have one.
As far as Waze (free) is concerned, the beauty of this app lies in its crowdsourcing. You will be aware of accidents, police cars, road accidents and other types of madness on the road before it happens, if other drivers in your area want to share their horrific experiences of commuting. It’s easy to let your friends know your ETA (and an updated ETA when unexpected traffic gets stuck in you), and while Waze can be very … creative at times … when creating a route, it’s generally good for finding all the fun little return paths. which you can use to avoid giant traffic problems.
Music, photos and videos
Music Streaming: Spotify , Google Play Music , Amazon Music ($ 10 per month)
For Android users, there are three main music services you’ll want to try on your device. What you end up sticking with will depend a lot on your musical preferences (whether your favorite bands and albums appear on said service), as well as the service’s user interface. Cost is unlikely to be an issue as the three big services usually cost the same: $ 10 for Spotify Premium and Google Play Music, and $ 8 for Amazon Music Unlimited if you’re already paying for Amazon Prime ($ 10 if you don’t). ).
I’ve always been a huge Spotify fan for its choice, ease of use, and a great mix of user-customizable and machine learning-based playlists. I also enjoy watching what my friends are listening to (i.e. in the desktop app). However, Google Play Music lets you upload up to 50,000 songs to Google servers for free, which can then be streamed to any device you support. This is great if you have a lot of live or little-known tracks that you want to stream that you will never find on a live streaming service. And, if so, you probably don’t want to deal with the hassle of switching between two separate streaming apps (Spotify and Google Play Music, for example). Right?
Our advice? Try each app and see if you like it (and its streaming library) before subscribing to your monthly subscription. Or “create your own service” by uploading each of your albums to Google Play Music.
Podcasts: Google Podcasts (free), Podcast Addict (free), Podbean (free), Pocket Casts ($ 4)
It looks like there are almost as many podcast playing apps as there are podcasts. If you just want the very basics: a simple interface, easy subscription and search features, and Google Assistant compatibility (to pick up where you left off on other Google-friendly devices), try Google Podcasts (free). It’s not super-catchy, but it gets the job done – just not on Android Auto. Or at least not yet .
It seems like most of the internet – at least the people who spend their days (and commute to work) bingeing podcasts – tend to rally behind three different Android podcast apps: Podcast Addict , Podbean, and Pocket Casts . The first two are free apps, while Pocket Casts costs $ 4. I was under the impression that all three have basically the same functionality, although you may find the Podcast Addict playlist features helpful if you have a ton of podcasts to go through. Add them all to one big list – or have your playlist auto-populate with new episodes – and listen.
(However, Pocket Casts also has a web player that you can sync with listening to your app if you want to pick up where you left off on any device.)
Camera: Google Camera (free but potentially fussy), Open Camera (free), Footej Camera (free)
The best camera app for Android is simply Google Camera. The problem is that Google Camera (officially) ships on Google-branded Android smartphones. You won’t find it on your new Samsung Galaxy S9, and you won’t be able to download it from the Google Play store. Instead, see if your device is on this list from XDA Developers, and if so, download the app to your phone.
If you don’t want to mess with this, Google Camera is not supported on your device, or if you need alternatives, you have several options. We (and others) love two: Open Camera (free) is incredibly customizable and puts all the “professional” options you’ll want to tinker with (white balance, ISO, exposure, etc.) Within easy reach, and Footej Camera (free-ish) is great if you want a beautiful, clean user interface that also gives you quick access to detailed controls.
Regardless of which camera app you use, make sure you back up to the (free) Google Photos service, which gives you unlimited storage for any photos below 16MP.
Video: VLC (free) or MX Player (free), Video Player All Format (free)
If you want to play videos on your Android device, VLC (free) is a typical video app that can handle pretty much anything you throw at it. Heck, you can even use it instead of YouTube to watch the service’s video if you really want to be cunning (and avoid ads). VLC supports subtitling and closed captioning, and it’s incredibly easy to use the app to extract the various videos you store on your network systems (or connected storage devices).
MX Player is another strong alternative that many find faster and smoother than VLC. However, some were disconnected from the player when Times Internet Limited acquired the entire application for hundreds of millions of dollars. Still, given the millions of reviews and editors’ choices Google, the app is definitely worth a try, although you won’t be able to play DTS or AC3 audio. And if you hate in-app ads but love the player, you’ll have to pay $ 6 for the Pro version, which gets rid of it.
Another strong alternative to both apps is Video Player All Format (free), which has also earned a lot of praise from Google itself. It plays a huge list of video formats (hardware accelerated), even in the background (in case you want to hear but not watch your videos).
Health and Fitness
Workouts: Jefit (Free), Nike Training Club (Free), C25K (Free), StrongLifts 5×5 (Free) Strong: Exercise Log (Free), Home Workouts (Free)
It can be difficult to try and find the best training regimen for you. Apps like Jefit (free) and Nike Training Club (free) are great helpers because they show you what you can (or should) do for a fraction of the cost of a personal trainer. While Jefit blocks its demo videos per subscription, you can use Nike Training Club completely free of charge.
If you’re looking to start running, C25K (freemium) can help you train to run your very first 5K. Follow his daily guidelines as best you can, including rest days, and don’t be afraid to repeat the day (or week) as needed. Move at the pace you want, but try to adhere to the directions in the app as best you can.
To gain weight , consider taking the StrongLifts 5×5 app, which gives you a very simple set of exercises to follow on a set schedule. You will go from weakness to weapon in no time if you stick to his leadership. And since all gym-related apps must have Strong in their name, you can also use the Strong: Exercise Gym Log app (free) to do the same, or customize it to suit your specific workout regimen. … …
Or, heck, don’t even go to the gym. Move your kitchen table, grab the Home Workouts app (free) and let it immerse yourself in the joy of your roommates, loved ones and pets. Combine your new workouts with an app like Loop (free) to resist the temptation to skip a day for your legs.