Let's take a tour of your favourite non-game paid apps in 2023 that are worth every penny!
No APKs please. Play Store links and app screenshots are encouraged. FOSS projects worth a contribution or two (whether a donation or paid version) are also more than welcome!
Let's skip the games (that's a story for another day) and spotlight some ever-reliable paid apps recommended by @[email protected]:
Tasker: The master of automation, turning your device into an efficiency wizard.
SD Maid: Your neat freak companion, maintaining cleanliness and speed.
BigBag: Organizing your shopping escapades like a champ.
Wolfram Alpha: The answer guru for all things complex.
Here's to building a treasure trove of invaluable apps and supporting those who keep the Android landscape innovative and vibrant!
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Will check these out. I'm using Outlook app since K-9 Mail has some annoying quirks still, but I'm looking very much into the rebranding of the app into Thunderbird.
Twilight is great for dimming your screen or shifting the color balance to red near bedtime. This is mostly baked into Android OS now but the app still gives a bit more control.
Sleep as Android is an alarm and sleep tracking app with a ton of crazy and innovative features. Even if you don't use most of them, having a smart alarm match your sleep cycle and wake you up gently with a fade-in is worth it.
Accubattery does what it says and helps you track battery health and get the most longevity out of your device.
Musicolet is a feature-packed audio player, and for me basically perfect. It even plays uncommon formats like Musepack.
The Simple Mobile Tools set is quite good (esp. Gallery and File Manager) with minimal permissions and definitely worth a few bucks to the dev as a thank you.
Oh an actually decent-looking OBD2 app! I'm too cheap to fork over the money for the Bluetooth ECUTek dongle (I have the license and cable). I'll have to give this one a try.
Groundwire: VoIP SIP softphone with push notifications.
SunSurveyor: Really great sun tracking for photography.
PhotoPills: Decent sun tracking but lots of other photography reference tools.
My Lightning Tracker & Alerts: Don't really need this but somehow enjoy tracking lightning during storms. The alerts can be useful for an early heads up.
Keepass2android is a great password manager. Technically it’s free but the dev asks for donations once in a while, which I’m happy to do to support the project.
X-plore file manager - paid version allows you to run an FTP server on your phone, so you can easily transfer data over wifi with any device on the same network - also works phone to phone via hotspot
Ice Box - Freeze apps for good (no auto launch, no updates, gone from the app drawer) but allows to start them via shortcut. Ideal for battery hogs and apps forced onto you by work, school etc. (works without root, but it's complicated, easier with)
Storage Isolation allows to restrict apps from accessing certain folders (root only)
I can't tell, haven't used either. What I like about ice box is that I can put a link on my home screen that looks just like the real app icon and opens it on click, with auto hibernation right after use. And that it's completely removing apps from automatic updates, since there are some I absolutely want to preserve in their existing state. But if you're happy with your existing setup, why change a running system :-)
I can't live without, seriously. Living in China means there's a lot of proprietary shit I must install, and that won't be tolerated without a means to control it.
It's worth mentioning. If you have a Samsung smartphone. The luma fusion app is available at 50% discount in the galaxy store compared to the Play Store.
Wallabag is an excellent open source alternative to Pocket with RSS support. It's free (as in free beer), but you can pay a small amount of money if you don't wanna self-host.
It used to be totally free. Glancing at the reviews, many people were very upset when they switched to a $4.99 monthly subscription model.
They did crowdsource the data (they have a companion app where they will pay you per property map). And as a result, they don't have information about every single complex. But I have found the data that is available has been invaluable to me in time savings.
The app also defaults to HERE maps (with Google maps as an option), and some people don't seem to like those.
Do you have any screenshots of your setup? Samsung builds in panel support but I always just disable it. I'm curious to see what real world use looks like.
Same I'm curious what it might offer over Samsung's panels since I have those customized and use almost daily for apps like calculator, notes and shortcut to bitwarden plus quick access to the screenshot utility.
The most useful profile I use Tasker for is controlling ringer volume at specific times. I always run it on vibrate at home and away from work (I have a watch for important notifications). So if I'm at work and in the office I set the ringer to lowest level 1 so I hear it but it doesn't go off super loud in a meeting or whatever. If I'm at work and out of the office (in the plant or outside on site) the ringer is at full volume. Automatically goes back to vibrate when I leave the property. Next step to this is when I'm on call. I need to hear my phone ring when I'm on call so when my Google calendar event called weekend duty is occuring I have a profile that keeps my phone on vibrate but when a call is incoming it says sets it to the loudest setting before it starts ringing. This prevents me wife and I from hearing notification dings and beeps from daily use.
This is my favorite use for Tasker but I have others that are almost as good. Maybe this sparked a little inspiration for you.
I get it, that sounds useful. But in my case I leave my phone silences 24/7 and only put on my watch when I want to get notifications. This has been by far my favortite way to manage notifications. Thanks for the reply. I keep trying to think of something to use it for.
I used Tasker a lot more back when android wasn't as mature as it is now. Nowadays I use it sparringly, but it's an invaluable tool to have access to. When you run into something you cannot do directly through Android, odds are Tasker can fix it for you.
This is one of my simple tasks. We have a shared laundry room. You can only register one person per apparment and therefore only one phone number. When the machines are done washing, only I receive a text message. With Tasker, I forward this message automatically to my SO, so that we're both notified.
On the more superfluous side: I have an old Stadia controller - Rip Stadia :'(. Now when I connect the controller to my phone, it automatically launches XBOX game pass, which is nice, but by no means essential.
Once I made a complicated Tasker task that ran on a secondary phone. By saying certain prompts through Google Home using autovoice, I could switch the country on my VPN on my router. All voice prompts, connections to the router and commands were setup and handled within Tasker.
So in short. If you identify repetitive tasks that you're always doing manually, then odds are you can spend some time in Tasker to create automations for them. Then again, sometimes you get to spend way longer time tinkering than you'd ever do doing the manual task :-D
Weather Today has a lifetime premium deal for only $27 CAD. It's a no brainer if you want the best Material You weather app. It pays itself off in a little less than 3 years.