Here it is, ladies and gentlemen. The crème de la crème. These are the Android apps that stand out from the rest and are at the top of a list that keeps growing. These apps are now standard on Android, so if you want to find the best stuff, this is where you start. There are a lot of really cool apps for Android. But there are some that stand out more than the others. These apps are almost everywhere and can help almost everyone. Here are the best Android apps that can be downloaded right now.
Most of these apps should be pretty well known to most people. After all, they are the best, and people tend to be drawn to the best. That’s what makes them the best, after all. For more ideas, you can also look at our list of the best apps that will be released in 2022.
The best Android apps available right now:
- 1Weather
- Google Drive
- Waze and Google Maps
- Google Search / Assistant / Feed
- LastPass
- Microsoft Swiftkey
- Nova Launcher
- Pocket Casts
- Poweramp
- Solid Explorer
- Tasker and IFTTT
- Textra
- TickTick
- YouTube and YouTube Music
- Zedge
best Android apps available
1Weather
Price: Free / $1.99
Most people agree that 1Weather is the best weather app out there. It has a simple, paged layout that shows you the current weather, the forecast for up to 12 weeks, a radar, and other fun facts. Along with that, you’ll get a pretty good set of widgets that are easy to change, as well as standard features like alerts for bad weather and a radar so you can see storms coming. There is also a video with weather updates for your area every two or three minutes. The UI makes sense and is also pretty easy to use. Sometimes the radar gets stuck while it’s loading, but it’s usually not a big deal.
The free version has all of the features, and the ads aren’t too annoying. With the $1.99 in-app purchase, you can get rid of the ads. When you open the app, most people will also probably like the fun facts about the weather. If you want more choices, we have a list of the best weather apps and widgets.
Google Drive
Price: Free / $1.99-$299.99 per month
Google Drive is a cloud storage service that you can use on Android. When you sign up, you get 15GB free forever. You can always buy more if you need to. What makes Google Drive so great is that it comes with a set of Android apps. Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Photos, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Keep are just some of them. It does so much and costs so little that you can’t not recommend it to just about anyone.
These apps have features like real-time collaboration, deep sharing, and the ability to work with Microsoft Office documents. It’s easy to use, gives you 15GB of free space to store your documents, and works pretty well across platforms. You can find more cloud storage apps here and more office apps here if you want something different.
Google Maps and Waze
Price: Free
Google Search / Assistant / Feed
Price: Free
This app is really, really powerful. It also works on Android phones and tablets. You just need to download the app and turn it on. You can ask it anything from that point on. It also works with a wide range of commands. You can use it to control smart home devices, ask it about almost anything, and it can even help you with simple math problems. It comes with a lot of different products, like Google Home speakers.
There is also a second Google Assistant app for people who want an icon on the home screen to open it quickly. Google Assistant is free, but the hardware costs money. You can check out some other good personal assistants like Amazon Alexa here.
LastPass
Price: Free / $12 per year
LastPass is one of those Android apps that you have to have. It’s a password manager that lets you store your login information in a safe way. On top of that, it can help you make passwords for your accounts that are almost impossible to guess. All of it is run by a master password. It works on multiple platforms (only in the premium version), so you can use it on computers, phones, tablets, or anything else.
There are others, but most of the time LastPass seems to be one step ahead. Also, the price of the premium version isn’t too high. For even more security, you can also get LastPass Authenticator. There are some free alternatives to LastPass if the new, more limited free version doesn’t work for you. There are also other great password managers you can use. LastPass also has an app called “authenticator” that adds an extra layer of security.
Microsoft SwiftKey
Price: Free
One of the most powerful and flexible third-party keyboards is the Microsoft SwiftKey Keyboard. It came out on the market a few years ago with a unique predictive engine that no other keyboard had. Since then, the app has grown a lot. It’s a free download with free themes, so you don’t have to pay anything.
Other features include a number row, SwiftKey Flow, which lets you type with gestures, support for multiple languages, syncing of your library across devices, and much more. It’s about the best you can do on a keyboard. Even though Microsoft now owns SwiftKey, they haven’t been able to mess it up yet. Google’s keyboard app, Gboard, is also very good. The only reason it’s not on this list is so that we don’t have three Google apps in a row. There are also some other great keyboards for Android here.
Nova Launcher
Price: Free / $4.99
We didn’t plan to put any launchers on this list at first. Nova Launcher seems to go beyond what most launchers can do. It’s been around for years and has always been updated, so it’s always been a great replacement for a launcher. It has a lot of features, such as the ability to back up and restore your home screen settings, the ability to change the look of the icons for all of your Android apps, a lot of ways to customise the home screen and app drawer, and more. It was bought by a company that does analytics, but so far nothing bad has happened.
If you want, you can even make it look like the Pixel Launcher. If you pay for the premium version, you can add gesture controls, unread count badges for apps, and swipe actions for icons. Lawnchair Launcher or Hyperion Launcher might be better for people who want something easier. We do have a list of the best Android launchers that has even more choices. If you want to learn more about Nova Launcher, we also have a guide for that.
Pocket Casts
Price: Free / $0.99 per month / $9.99 per year
One of the most used podcast apps is Pocket Casts. When it switched to a subscription model a few years ago, some people didn’t like it. But since then, the app has been changed so that almost anyone can use it, even without a subscription. There are a lot of podcasts in the app, and it has good sharing options. You can also set things like auto-download and playback speed. The user interface is clean, easy to read, and simple to use. Pocket Casts doesn’t do much wrong.
The subscription is mostly optional and gives you cross-platform support, more themes, 10GB of cloud storage to store podcasts, and more. We used to be quite against subscriptions, but since most podcast players now do it, but I’m able to use this without the subscription without much issue. Podcast Addict and CastBox are also great choices in this area, and we have a list of even more great podcast apps here.
Poweramp
Price: Free trial / $4.99
Poweramp is one of the most well-known and useful local music players for Android. It has almost every feature, like support for high-resolution audio, Android Auto, an equaliser, gapless smoothing, and support for almost any audio codec you can find. It takes a little while to get used to the user interface, but it’s also one of the best-looking music players in the Google Play Store, and you can add themes to make it look even better.
There are some other great music apps here, but Poweramp is probably the best one. If you want a better equaliser app, Poweramp also has one (Google Play link).
Solid Explorer
Price: Free trial / $2.99
Everyone has to (or wants to) look through files, so you might as well do it with a great and powerful file browser. Solid Explorer is just about the best file explorer app there is. It has Material Design, support for archiving, support for the most popular cloud services, and even some features for power users, like support for FTP, SFTP, WebDav, and SMB/CIFS.
It works well, looks great, and is very stable. There is a 14-day free trial, after which you have to pay $2.99. Other file browsers have more features, but Solid Explorer is one of the few that looks good, is easy to use, and has a lot of features. Here are some other great file browsers to try if this one doesn’t work for you.
Tasker and IFTTT
Price: $2.99 and Free, respectively
IFTTT and Tasker are two of the most powerful apps for Android. They are apps for automating tasks where you can set up different triggers to do things when certain things happen. For example, you can use IFTTT or Tasker to have your Philips Hue lights turn on at night and off in the morning without you having to do anything. In general, Tasker is for more advanced users and is much harder to learn than IFTTT. IFTTT is not only easier to use, but it also lets you do a lot of fun things.
With Google Play Pass, Tasker is free. Most things on IFTT are free, but if you want a few extras, you can pay for a subscription. There are a lot of great tools and utility apps for Android, but Tasker and IFTTT are the best.
Textra
Price: Free / $4.49
Textra is one of the best and most stable Android texting apps. It comes with a number of themes, and you can change most of them. It’s easy to use and does almost everything you need an SMS app to do. It works better with Android Auto than most other texting apps because it has a built-in tutorial. We like how easy it is to understand. It’s better than most OEM SMS apps, and we’d recommend it over most of them.
Messages by Google (Google Play) is another great option, and it even lets you stream your texts to your computer (via web browser). If these don’t work for you, we also have a full list of great SMS apps here.
TickTick
Price: Free / $27.99 per year
Not as many people use TickTick as other to-do list apps. But it could be the best one. It has basic things like recurring tasks, reminders, push notifications, different ways to organise things, and categories. You can also share tasks and whole categories with other people through the app. This makes it great for use by families, small work teams, and other groups of similar size. It’s also great for making grocery lists, honey-do lists, or any other list.
You get all of the features for free, but you can only set two reminders per task, for example (premium makes that infinite). The only thing we really don’t like is that it doesn’t work with Wear OS, which we hope the developers will add at some point. Todoist and Microsoft To-Do are two other great options in this space. Yes, we also have a complete list of the best apps for making to-do lists.
YouTube and YouTube Music
Price: Free / $12.99+
Usually, we don’t tell people to use streaming services. Everyone has their own tastes, and there are a lot of great choices out there. But we really like how YouTube Music and YouTube work together. For one price, you can listen to as much music as you want on YouTube Music, which has more than enough songs to compete with Apple Music and Spotify. But you also get YouTube without ads and the ability to play videos in the background and download them to watch later.
This one-two punch is right up there with the $12.99 per month bundle of Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+ as one of the best deals for streaming video and audio. Most of the time, other music streaming services are better, but YouTube without ads and without the need to sideload is great. Audiophiles might want to check out TIDAL, Deezer, or one of these music streaming apps, even though those services cost more.
Zedge
Price: Free / $0.99 per month / $4.99 per year
Last on our list, but by no means least, is Zedge. This app lets you change your wallpaper, ringtones, notification sounds, and alarm sounds. It gives you a huge number of options to change the most basic parts of your device. Zedge has a lot of things to choose from, and they also promote different things during holidays. This makes it easy to decorate your phone for Christmas, Halloween, and other holidays.
It’s not good enough. It has a few bugs and some of the worst ways to advertise of any mobile app. Zedge Premium is a new service that gives you access to premium content for a fair price. You can also get Zedge credits by watching ads or filling out surveys. There are other great apps for ringtones and wallpapers. But Zedge is the only one that consistently does both well and has a huge library.
Tell us about the best Android apps we missed in the comments section.