Kindly RememberHidden Gems: Unveiling Apps That Could Have Enhanced Your Experience Sooner?
ludw-
Spectroid: what’s that sound? Do I hear that faint but annoying sound or just imagine it? With spectroid you can see the sound spectrum over time.
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Nova launcher: Lets you cutomize the home screen of your phone and make it just right. I like my apps a bit closer together in five columns instead of four. Nova launcher let’s me do this.
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Business calendar: it’s just so much better than the default calendar, especially if you have lots of meetings and need an information dense view.
I second nova launcher and business calendar. They’ve been staples on my phones for the past 5+ years
Love Nova Launcher! It offers so many customisation options, particularly in terms of home screen and app drawer layout, icons and fonts.
I remember a few years back when my phone was stolen (I accidentally left it in the back of an Uber) and I was forced to buy a new one. The relief I felt when I started up the new phone, signed into Google and straightaway saw my familiar home screen, courtesy of Nova Launcher.
I guess I was surprised so much was still there given I didn't do a formal backup / transfer between old and new phones, but that's the beauty of the cloud! :)
Edit: Also @distantlight, agree with Cube ACR - I have been immensely grateful having an easy way to record calls. It has a button to allow you to start and stop recording in the middle of a call so for me, it was piece of mind, especially during legal scrapes! But as another commenter has said, I feel like it stopped working at some point so no longer have it installed..
I use Business Calendar daily. It’s very customizable, easy to use, and has been awesome for years.
Joplin. Organise your notes into notebooks and you can also write them in markdown.
You can also save your notes encrypted and syhcronise them with the cloud to have them in all of your devices. Joplin is available in all Operating Systems. Also supposts Nextcloud so it can be self-hosted!
RequiredFieldI set up a Nextcloud server recently and have been looking for a decent note app. I'll try it out today. Thanks!
I’d add Tasker to that list, even if some of the functionality requires root. It’s actually insane how powerful Tasker is.
SoullionessTasker is good too but a bit redundant with MacroDroid. Both are amazing though! Everyone needs to have one or similar!
ayyndrewIsn’t dynamic rotation built in to Android these days?
I don’t know about other brands but Samsung does have a small icon in the bottom corner prompting this when I rotate my phone yeah. Ignore it if not needed. Very useful.
Yes but I think many people don't know it exists and how to use it. For those who don't know : rotate your phone and a little rotating phone will appear next to your "go back" button. Just click it.
What phone do you use? I recall my call recording app stopped working a couple years ago due to some Google permission thing.
A few of mine :
- AndOTP : A good app for OTP that actually backup your keys and move them easily and securely to a new phone
- Blokada : A system wide adblocker for Android. 4000000 ads blocked so far on my phone
- YouTube Vanced: Not really a “hidden” gem but a cool app nonetheless. I wish people knew you could get an ad free YouTube experience on mobile. It also includes sponsor block so you really get straight to content. Also let’s you get a YT popup player and shutdown the screen with the video still playing.
- F-Droid an Android open source app market. Often includes apps that are not allowed on Google market.
Roman0AndOTP is no longer maintained. I’d suggest switching to something still supported, like Aegis for example.
+1 for F-Droid. I always prefer open-source alternatives from there over ad-infested bloatware which the Play Store has a lot of.
For me
MiXplorer is genuinely the best file manager I ever used, has basically everything but keeps being easy to use. and it has theme support!
How does it compare to Amaze File Manager? I’ve just started testing out different file manager apps today
nakalFairEmail: I hated reading email on my phone, till I found it. I was so happy that I already paid for it 3 times (optional!) just to give something back to the dev.
Waze: it belongs to Google now, but I like it much better because it's like a social network for navigation and maps. You can also edit the maps by yourself. Another advantage is that it shows speed limits and warns you about police while driving.
I also really like fairemail for it's privacy focused approach but often the formatting in emails looks weird.. e. g. Paypal is especially bad :(
Any “Simple Mobile Tools” application. They are simple (obviously) and do their job well.
RadarScope. I work a very weather-dependent job.
j_robyI too work a weather dependent job. What specifically do you like about this app?
Dropsync for syncing files to my phone.
Tasks.org for an open source to-do list.
Any FOSS alternative to Macrodroid?
negativenullKDE Connect! https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
- NewPipe has made my YouTube watching experience way better; it’s a standalone app with features like ad blocking, subscriptions, and downloading.
- F-Droid (particularly the Droid-ify client) is an open-source app store that generally provides quality apps.
- Obtanium has helped me stay up to date with some of my more obscure apps, which are released only on Github. Obtanium can auto-update apps from a GitHub link or similar, which makes the process way easier.
- Auxio is a pretty good music player, it’s quite lightweight but it also looks good.
All of these are available on F-Droid, I find that many F-Droid apps provide a better or cleaner experience than Google Play apps.
Last time I used NewPipe, it downloaded fine, and I could play back the downloads from the app, but there was no way to move the downloads to a non-system folder, so they were effectively locked into the app. Has that changed?
LollerCorleoneBitwarden - Allows me to have unique, strong passwords for each of my profiles without worrying about forgetting it.
Aegis - Great open source 2FA app.
Standard Notes - Great note-taking app. I have it installed in all my devices which allows me to seamlessly switch between devices.
TrackerControl - Block all the trackers in the various apps installed in my phone.
Plees Tracker - As someone who has been trying to correct their sleep cycle, this app has been invaluable for me. It is an open source app that allows you track the duration of your sleep daily and then makes charts from it.
Musicolet is a great app. I’ve been using it for a long time.
Aegis: 2fa. Free, open source.
Auto Auto-rotate: per app rotation settings. Free, open source.
Missed notifications reminder: adds a repeating sound or vibration if a watched app has an active notification. Ie, you got an email when you were away from your phone so every few minutes your phone makes a beep or whatever so you don't need to check the screen constantly. Free, open source.
MJ PDF: simple, fast PDF reader. Free, open source.
Snap drop: web based instant file transfer between devices. Free, open source.
X-Plore: the only file manager that ever clicked for me. Dual pane that's really intuitive. Absolutely packed with features (connects with local network, cloud providers, ftp, ssh, dlna, has file sync)