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!
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.
For anyone that doesn’t want to pay, I use Termux for SSH and it works great.
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Bitwarden
Any app you regularly use.
iOS users have no qualms paying for apps, so that’s where high quality devs work.
Take Boost for Reddit for example.
Many people used that app every day for many, many years, but would balk at paying anything at all, or even $5.
Think about what you get in return for paying $30 for a nice dinner.
- 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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Thanks for the shout out for Hermit!
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.
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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
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Isn’t that owned by some Chinese data hoarding company these days?
Its an American company. Not that thats any better. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_(company)
Yeah, Niagara launcher is better
FairEmail : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.email
The best email app.
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Ah yeah that one should have been on my list. Been running it for years. Good call.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
