What non-game paid apps do you use that are worthwhile and still relevant in 2023?
For context, I have a decent amount of Google Play credit thanks to Opinion Rewards and a gift card. I’m not looking to start a book or movie collection there, nor sign up for subscription services. But I’m happy to buy the paid/pro version of useful apps.
I’m excluding games just because that’s a whole topic on its own.
Here are some one-time paid apps I’ve been happy with:
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I’ll throw my opinion for Sync for Lemmy.
Second this
I have to admit I haven’t been buying a lot of new apps the last few years. I don’t play games on my phone and most of the apps I use daily are basically the same ones for a few years already.
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FX file explorer An excellent file manager that I have been using since forever. There are other good ones, such as Solid Explorer, but FX is my favorite.
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Tasker I used to play around with this so much, the things you can do with this app are endless. But I have been using it less lately, switched to Google home since it has better/easier integration with other devices in the house.
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Nova Launcher I think most of you will be familiar with this launcher. I have probably been using this one since it came out. It’s perfect!
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JuiceSSH Pro To be honest I don’t even know what features are unlocked by purchasing the pro edition without looking because it has been so long since I bought it. It’s an SSH cliënt and one of my most-used apps.
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Sync for Lemmy There are plenty of Lemmy apps that are good but I was using Sync for Reddit since forever so I jumped on the hype-train when it came out. I paid for Ultra monthly because 2€ per month for something I use daily is a no-brainer.
Besides these there are some Google Wear watch faces I purchased. There had been other apps that I bought years ago like sdmaid or some other tools from when I used to install custom roms but I don’t really use those anymore - too much hassle for marginal improvements. And the question was about apps that are still relevant.
I prefer Niagara launcher. I was using Nova for years, it got a bit stagnant, and they’ve been purchased by a data mining company.
Revoke internet access for Nova, problem solved. Slap nextdns on top of that and you’re golden.
Rather just not use something that needs those extras steps
Looks at the paid apps on my phone… The fuck. Right down to the SDmaid and using roms years ago. Like identical… seriously it’s a small community of popular apps that run in these communities sometimes.
My man!
For anyone that doesn’t want to pay, I use Termux for SSH and it works great.
My gestures keep breaking on Nova, even on the beta v8. This is on OneUI
Same since A11 or 12 can’t remember, I have paid for Nova before, but I am not using it because the fucked up animations.
Tasker is my most useful app, use it every day, can’t live without it at this point
What do you do with Tasker? It sounds like an amazing solution to problems I don’t have.
Depends on what you use your phone for. I have mine:
- switch wallpapers every 12 hrs
- request music on Rockbot (at work)
- download anime automatically with XDCC
- custom Quick Setting tiles for mono and fast charging
- Custom setting for Eye Comfort Shield to run from sunrise to sunset
- keeping track of my car when I park
- disabling ADB in my bank app so i can use FP scanner
- a flashlight slider to control the intensity
- custom double tap power button action
- I sometimes use ADB Wifi in order to run ADB commands locally
If you ever feel like you need something automated, Tasker is the way to go
That’s basically it 😆
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Bitwarden
- Mixplorer Silver - Feature-packed File Manager
- Hermit - Lightweight PWA browser
- Instaddr - creates disposable Email addresses
- Readera - Feature-packed book reader
- Moon+ Reader - Feature-packed book reader
- Balance - for Meditation. They have been offering a one year free trial for some time now. It has been really helpful for me. Their programs are highly customised to achieve your goals. Give it a try.
- KWGT & KWLP - if you’re into home screen customisation, then these are must haves.
- 1DM - Feature-packed Browser and Download Manager (Direct downloads & torrents)
- Niagara Launcher - Lightweight, minimalist, with solid, fluid animations. One-hand friendly. Free version has ZERO ADS. I’ve been using the free version for a couple of years now. I’m hooked to it. I don’t think I can go back to a normal App Drawer drawer style launcher now. They offer one time purchase as well for the pro version. I felt no need for the pro features, though i’d definitely buy the pro to support the dev.
Some of these have decent free alternatives. Mixplorer is free to use officially through XDA. KWGT & KWLP have free ad supported versions available through their official website. Regardless, these have been installed on all my phones for years now.
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1DM+ and Hermit are the apps that have been in my constant rotation of use among the apps I bought. SeriesGuide too for tracking tv and movies.
Found I have replaced lot of apps with Foss alternatives over the years, so been buying apps less and less.
Thanks for the shout out for Hermit!
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Didn’t know that, but I can’t seem to find it on fdroid.
oh sorry mistook it for Librera, librera is the one that’s paid (PRO version) but is free on fdroid
FairEmail : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.email
The best email app.
Business Calendar (by Appgenix Software)
I have multiple Google calendars to keep track of pretty much everything; birthdays, anniversaries, bills, when school is in session (I have kids), scheduled days off, various appointments, etc. I’ve been using this since 2011/2012 with their first version, and moved over to the 2nd version after that came out. It gives me more control over how my calendar looks on my phone, I can easily toggle calendars and tasks on or off…
Honestly, I can’t use another calendar app now. I love my color coded (you can change calendar colors in the app to any color you want) month at a glance calendar.
And I also can’t recommend KWGT enough for widget making. I originally got Zooper to try to emulate Conky (from Linux), but Zooper stopped being developed. I have a lot of fun trying to get my widgets just the way I like them - even if my code is a mess.
Absolutely, Business Calendar is my #1 app.
The only app I’ve paid for is Torque Pro. If you deal with cars a lot it’s worth the 5 bucks. The free version is also pretty handy.
I dunno. I just wish torque looked a little better. I don’t like the interface at all. But it’s a great app for troubleshooting car problems.
Ah yeah that one should have been on my list. Been running it for years. Good call.
I don’t have many paid apps, but one I do like is Peakfinder. It’s not something I use all the time but it does become rather handy when you’ve climbed up a hill to a viewpoint and now want to figure out which other hills you’re looking at.
Niagara Launcher https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bitpit.launcher
It’s georgous and I’ve grown to love the list view for apps. As phones are really tall, it makes more sense to lay out apps vertically instead of horizontally. It’s search function is great too.
My work uses google workspaces, the agenda widget is so useful for quickly seeing a list of calendar events and weather.
+100 for Niagara!
I used Niagara for years, paid for it since I used it so much as my launcher. I switched to Kvaesitso on F-Droid recently, and haven’t felt the need to switch back!
What do you like about it that can’t be done with e.g. Simple File Manager?
I will say the Cloud storage integration looks nice.
Honestly, Simple File Manager is a bit better then I remembered. But here are some, in order of how much they matter to me.
- As you said, browsing network shares.
- Fast filtering in addition to recursive search.
- Selective file extracting from archives.
- Checksums in formats aside from md5.
Amaze checks some of these boxes, but I find it kind of buggy.
Those are good features. Thanks, I’ll check it out!
Mixplorer Silver too.
This is a pretty solid app, and I have no regrets purchasing this one.
Is there a reason apps that access file system are getting pushy about having notifications enabled though? I’ve seen it on a few different apps and solid explorer is especially annoying if you don’t enable notifications. It basically gives you 2 prompts urging you to enable notifications every time you move files. The file transfer works perfectly fine without the notifications from what I can see. This has caused me to use a lesser file management app in the meantime. I just don’t understand why a file manager HAS to have notifications I guess.
I sent the dev an email about it, but it got ignored.
From what I gather, Solid needs notifications for file transfers, should you decide to push large chunks of data through it and proceed to different tasks in the meantime.
It shows you notification when the ftp server is running atleast. Haven’t seen sny other notifications.
For mobile- Poweramp - let’s me view and play music by Folder. Google and Samsungs built in player suuuucks. You can’t build a Playlist with Poweramp, but if you have lots of your “own music” .mp3s, I highly recommend it.
And SimpleGallery. Infinitely better than whatever the fuck “Google photos” puts together. It lets you sort and view by, you guessed it, FOLDER NAME rather than “most recent” always at the top. It also let’s you Hide folders too for all those cute cat photos. Also allows Excluding folders, so that game thumbnail folder doesn’t show up too.
I second both!
For online and offline GPS I love OSMAnd+ since it has AndroidAuto support and tons of other features.
I think it’s one of those apps where the full version is free on F-Droid https://f-droid.org/packages/net.osmand.plus/
For those taking this route: do note that the map data is downloaded from their servers. So don’t forget to make a small donation to offset the server costs if you are able to!
You can get it free if you use F-droid!
It is called OSMAnd~ on F-Droid. It does not have support for AndroidAuto. I ended up buying the licensed version for that and to support the devs.
Titanium backup doesn’t work anymore on latest version of android…
Last time I tried it, the restored applications would just crash, and the ones that did work don’t have the external data backed up
Yeah, Swift backup is the go to now
I switched from Swift Backup to Neo Backup. Don’t regret it. Neo is open source (F-Droid) and backups aren’t locked to your Google account like Swift.
Not FOSS but, I love TickTick, it’s a great cross-platform reminders app. I’ve tested a ton but TickTick is my fav
Ticktick is great but op said they weren’t looking for subscriptions
