What are your Android hidden gem apps

I’m back! This is a continuation of my series on platform-specific hidden gem apps that you have discovered that are the best in their class for your usecase.

We’ve done iOS+MacOS so far so lets get universal and share our Android hidden gems.

For mine, I would say NewPipe for YouTube… Lets do it!

Edit: Please try to avoid apps that cannot be purchased (subscription apps) since it is important that the creator cannot cut you off once you’ve taken time/effort/money to integrate it into your workflow and dependance. No Apollos, which have that fatal flaw + relying on an external API that they additionally cannot gurantee

tinwhiskers,
@tinwhiskers@lemmy.world avatar

OruxMaps is an awesome alternative to Google maps. It does require some configuration to get Google imagery working since they were required to remove it, but there’s also a huge variety of other online sources it can use (wmts etc), plus off-line maps, overlays. You can use your own maps from qgis or other gis software, and there’s multiple navigation options. Tracks, routes, way points, and so much more.

cheese_greater,

MagicEarth’s amazing too

heyazorin,
@heyazorin@lemmy.ml avatar

Read You, probably the best RSS reader available on Android. The bad: still in beta and no sync with Feedly (yet).

Sync for Lemmy, also the best client for Lemmy in Android by far. Design and user experience are delightful. Bad: ads with an expensive subscription. Good: with adguard DNS ads disappear.

cheese_greater,

What do you think about Voyager?

heyazorin,
@heyazorin@lemmy.ml avatar

Great app but maybe too similar to the rest of Lemmy apps.

cheese_greater,

I mean, they’re kinda all based on or inspired by Apollo, the 3rd party Reddit app. That was arguably the biggest most violent stcking point for many new Lemmy users

Voyager is the closest carbon-copy and therefore many’s fave (certainly mine ;)

lukecooperatus, (edited )

KDE Connect (FREE, open source) is definitely a gem. I love using my phone as a remote mouse and keyboard for my HTPC, and syncing clipboard, files, links, and notifications with the other devices I’ve paired with. (BTW, despite the name, you don’t need KDE - or Linux even - to use it. It works on Windows and Android too.)

URLCheck (FREE, open source) is fantastic. It’s a little pop-up that appears when you click a link, showing you the full URL and letting you modify it before you open with your browser/associated app (e.g., to remove tracking parameters):

URLCheck acts as an amazingly customizable and powerful intermediary when opening url links, allowing, among other things: to remove trackers, affiliate links, unnecessary elements, check Hosts, facilitating link holding and sharing, protecting against certain phishing techniques and many more…

klangcola,

+2 for KDE Connect, the integration is amazing. I’ve used it on KDE and Gnome (gsconnect), all works very well

gunpachi,
@gunpachi@lemmings.world avatar

URLcheck is a very useful app. I use it all the time.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I switched to Device Connect because there’s an issue with KDE Connect & mconnect (since a few months ago) where it re-pairs every time the phone loses network connection. DC has far fewer features, but its reliable and doesn’t require running a KDE or Gnome service stack.

AstralWeekends,

AnyList. I’ve tried many list apps and this one is easily the best. Not FOSS disclaimer. The free version has very minimal ads, it has a great, intuitive UI, you can create custom list types and item categories, it has built in quantity and unit of measure fields, and you can share/sync a list with others by email address. The amount of features included in the free version is uncommon in the market without getting more harassed by advertisements. I hope it doesn’t change in the future; it’s remained relatively unchanged for the 3 years I’ve been using it!

Commiunism,

Shattered Pixel Dungeon - a pretty good FOSS roguelike, gets updated every month or so. Can be a bit hard to learn and beat the game for the first time but trying to go farther and farther each run is really fun.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I got frustrated by the difficulty curve. It’s easy for a few levels, and then suddenly impossible. There are enough easy levels at the beginning that it quickly becomes tedious to grind through back to something interesting.

That said, I’m not a huge fan of the monotonous nature of rogue-like games, and Shattered Pixel is well-done and good-looking. I just wish the level difficulty scaling were more linear.

hakunawazo,

HiPER Scientific Calculator:
A good calculator with unit conversion (there is a free version with ads and a pro version).

Total Commander:
Good file-manager in connection with plugins for LAN, WebDAV and FTP

WireGuard:
Easy VPN Client

VLC media player:
Nice gestures for brightness/volume/skipping. Many supported file formats.

Perfect Viewer:
CBR/CBZ viewer with customizable gestures

Xodo:
PDF viewer

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

+1 for the WireGuard app.

kellenoffdagrid,
@kellenoffdagrid@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Oto Music (Play Store link) has been my mp3/offline music player of choice for years now. Stable, pretty, performant, and has tag editing features built in. Still gets updates at least once or twice a year, which is all ya really need for an offline player.

Megalodon (Play Store link) is my Mastodon client of choice, tons of little ease-of-use improvements over the official client. Some people might already be familiar with this if they’re on Lemmy, but maybe someone looking for a better Masto client will get something from this.

EddoWagt,

Oto music is really good, but not open source unfortunately. Replaced it with Retro music player and to be honest it’s just as good

kellenoffdagrid,
@kellenoffdagrid@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Ah yeah it would be nice if it were open source. Retro is pretty good, I remember having stability issues with it when I used it a couple years ago, but if those got ironed out that’s awesome.

polarpear11,

Minimalist phone. If you have ADHD and/or want to increase productivity or get anxiety about your phone notifications, look into this app. It’s been sooooo beneficial for me.

monsterpiece42,

In this vein I also recommend the KISS launcher on F-Droid. It’s super clean. Highly recommend if you like focused phone usage.

Onsotumenh,

Voice - Audio book player Minimalistic audio book player that supports folders with “.nomedia”. Great if you want to keep your audio books and music library separated.

cheese_greater,

On the subject of audio(books), check out SpeechCentral. Turns anything into same ;)

Fake4000,

Syncthing.

Allows you to use a laptop and sync your phone to it. No iCloud or Google drive needed. All syncs locally.

cheese_greater,

Wanted to also suggest Resilio Sync if you need something a little less fussy or smaller learning curve. I use it for many thins between devices, I never really “got” Syncthing altho I support their mission and excellent work the community benefits greatly from.

Fake4000,

You have used both. How does Resilio compare to Syncthing?

cheese_greater,

Syncthing is a bit comprehensive and less streamlined, I would say. I would definitely have to sit down for at least 1/2 day to get everything playing nice.

With Resilio, you can be up and running in like 20 minutes on the longer side. You can setup a sync folder and use a QR code to have everybody talking in a few minutes and customize the fewer but necessary options.

No offense to Syncthing, Resilio was probably inspired by it (conjecture)

PrimePathPioneer,

I added a new pc to syncthing this week, I installed it and scanned a qr and was done in like three minutes.

cheese_greater,

YMMV. I prefer Resilio. Thats all

Longpork_afficianado,

Syncthing generally works pretty well, but every now and again it decides that it’s out of sync for no reason requiring a purge and rebuild of my shared dirs.

Still an order of magnitude more useful than synology drive which I upgraded from though.

ours,

It doesn’t really matter but Resilio came out of the BitTorrent Sync project which is relatively older.

cheese_greater,

I believe it is based on BitTorrent protocol-wise, yeah. I guess I was referring more to the notion of a localized synching solution as opposed to the usually non-local or remote nature of torrenting.

enshu,

Feeder an RSS feed reader. It is amazing, reading all the news I care about without leaving Feeder. It saves me a lot of energy declining cookies. It is available on F-Droid.

ggnoredo,

MiX

Very good file explorer and server

gunpachi,
@gunpachi@lemmings.world avatar

I have used MiXplorer since 2016, it’s really good. Although I wish it got the new Material Design UI (but that doesn’t stop it from being a good application).

For the people who want to try it out first or don’t want to get it from the play store, here’s the link to it on Apkmirror.

d3lta19,

Aegis is a FOSS, local only 2 factor TOTP generator. Essentially a Google authenticator without the Google.

cheese_greater,

I feel like KeePass is a preferable portable format that you can do everything any TOTP app can do without being tied into non-standard apps. Like .kdbx is a standard that works in any KeePass app

fireye,

I’d be concerned about storing both authentication factors in the same location, maybe if you kept passwords in one db and passwords in another. Not sure how well mobile apps support multiple dbs though

Nath,
@Nath@aussie.zone avatar

Local to the Device? Google already did that to me. Then my phone died and I had the world’s worst time trying to convince some of my vendors that I really was me. Like, I had to get my ID notarized in person and sent that paperwork off by international post in one example.

I wouldn’t want to go through that drama again. I moved to Authy, they keep my tokens encrypted on a cloud service. I could potentially be convinced to move to something self hosted, but never local-only again.

fuster93,

Aegis can do automatic encrypted backups to a cloud provider or locally.

zzzz,

That’s why you back up your shit.

DemBoSain,
@DemBoSain@midwest.social avatar

Authenticator Pro works with my Samsung Wear OS watch. I get the codes on my watch instead of switching between apps on my phone to get codes.

gunpachi,
@gunpachi@lemmings.world avatar

Aegis is what I have used for 2fa for quite some time now, but I think I should also mention Authenticator Pro . The feature set is similar to Aegis and, it’s got a design that some people may find attractive.

P.S: It also has Wear OS support, so that you can see 2fa codes from your watch (I can’t tell how well this feature works as I don’t own any wearable devices)

FireWire400, (edited )
@FireWire400@lemmy.world avatar

YouTube Revanced Extended - No ads, almost endless customisation options, built in Return Dislikes and Sponsorblock

SmartTube Next - Same thing for Android TV devices

Boost for Lemmy - The best Lemmy client as far as I’m concerned, highly customisable too

AIMP - No nonsense music player with a clear UI

kuneho,
@kuneho@lemmy.world avatar

Tachiyomi is a brilliant manga reader and tracker. Or you can get its fork, Aniyomi which has anime support and sources as well, not just manga.

ezures,

Been using tachiyomi for years and its been great, maybe I should give a try to aniyomi

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