I’m sure there are countless apps out there that are incredibly cool, interesting, or useful, but just haven’t hit the mainstream yet. Maybe it’s a productivity tool that’s boosted your efficiency, a unique game that’s kept you entertained for hours, or a niche app that’s catered perfectly to one of your hobbies or interests.

What are some Android hidden gem apps that you’ve used a bunch or think it’s really cool/interesting/useful?

Please share your recommendations, and if possible, a brief description of what the app does and why you find it so valuable.

Looking forward to uncovering some hidden treasures in the Android app world. Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

  • Free Palestine 🇵🇸@sh.itjust.works
    94·
    1 year ago

    Droid-ify is a much nicer client for F-Droid.

    Obtanium for downloading apps from various other sources.

    Aurora Store for anonymously downloading apps from the Play Store without a Google account

    LibreTube or NewPipe for watching YouTube videos without ads or tracking.

    Seal for downloading YouTube videos.

    Retro Music Player - probably the best looking music app for Android.

    Pano Scrobbler - a FOSS app for Last.fm, Libre.fm and Listenbrainz. (I recommend Obtanium to download it from GitHub.)

    Murglar for downloading Music in full quality from Deezer.

    Molly - a better Signal client. (You can use Obtanium to download it from GitHub, you can add their F-Droid repo or download it using Accressent, a new experimental app store that seeks to replace F-Droid.)

    Gallery - a simple gallery app that looks good and respects your Material You theme.

    Element X is a much better Matrix client than the standard Element app. (I recommend downloading it from GitHub using Obtanium.)

    LinkSheet - a small app that restores the old Android URL link chooser. It has many great features like the ability to remove tracking parameters from URLs or using FastForward to annoying bypass URL shorteners.

    UntrackMe - a tool that can redirect YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc. links to privacy-friendly alternative frontends like Invidious or Piped for YouTube, Nitter for Twitter and LibReddit or Teddit for Reddit

    Thunder, the best Lemmy client I ever used.

    Most of the apps I mentioned are free and open source and many of them are available on F-Droid. They don’t collect or sell any of your data.

    The last one is not an app, but an entire OS that can replace the spyware-infested ROM that’s preinstalled by your phones’ manufacturer. I’m talking about GrapheneOS. No ads, no tracking, no proprietary Google services. Just free and open source software with maximum privacy and security. It’s so great!

    • Jvrava9@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      16·
      1 year ago

      Some alternatives and corrections to your list:

      • You can already download YT videos in LibreTube and NewPipe, speaking about NewPipe, I would suggest using NewPipeSponsosblock for blocking in video sponsors from creators. Aves Libre is a better advanced Gallery alternative with EXIF editing.
      • Aimp is a good alternative to Retro.
      • Spotiflyer is an alternative Murglar.
      • Schildi Chat is a better alternative to Element X, its based on Element but is a lot faster and has a lot more options.

      Ps: I’ve been seeing a lot of posts and comments by you in the communities that I follow, just want to tell you thx for contrubuting to them xD.

      • Free Palestine 🇵🇸@sh.itjust.works
        14·
        1 year ago

        Thanks for participating in the discussion. I have to disagree on some of your point though.

        You can already download YT videos in LibreTube and NewPipe, speaking about NewPipe, I would suggest using NewPipeSponsosblock for blocking in video sponsors from creators.

        I have found the download features in both LibreTube and NewPipe to be pretty unreliable. Seal always works. NewPipe x SponsorBlock is great, I use LibreTube which also has SponsorBlock built in, I just included NewPipe in the list because LibreTube breaks sometimes. But yes, NewPipe x SponsorBlock is better than standard NewPipe. BraveNewPipe is even better.

        Aves Libre is a better advanced Gallery alternative with EXIF editing

        Aves is a good option, it’s also available on Accrescent. Personally though, I dislike the design of the app and prefer Gallery in combination with Image Toolbox for image editing.

        Aimp is a good alternative to Retro.

        It’s not open-source and thus not available on F-Droid.

        Spotiflyer is an alternative Murglar.

        In my experience Spotiflyer has been pretty unreliable. It either pulls low quality shit from YouTube or it tries to download from Spotify and fails. So far, Murglar has worked like a dream. Just like deemix on desktop btw. You can use Deezer Premium ARLs from this guide to log in and download genuine 320kbps MP3s or even FLACs. Never had any issues.

        Schildi Chat is a better alternative to Element X, its based on Element but is a lot faster and has a lot more options.

        I tried it out, personally, I didn’t really like it. Element has been pretty slow for me, but I never had these issues with Element X.

      • Free Palestine 🇵🇸@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        1 year ago

        I try to get most of my apps from F-Droid (through Droid-ify) or Accrescent, but if they are not available, I turn to Obtanium to either download an APK from a website or from GitHub. It also has the ability to update your apps from your custom sources.

    • Xavier@lemmy.ca
      2·
      1 year ago

      Oh no‽

      Seems like FastForward has been put on ice/abandoned by the developers/maintainers (read the project GitHub header).

      Any viable/preferred alternative?

      • Free Palestine 🇵🇸@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        1 year ago

        If you need Chromecast support, check out SkyTube. It’s very important that you download SkyTube Extra, not SkyTube FOSS because it doesn’t support casting. You can use Obtanium to automatically grab the latest APK from GitHub. It’s also available in the IzzyOnDroid repository on F-Droid.

    • kratoz29@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      LinkSheet](https://github.com/1fexd/LinkSheet)

      I’m sorry, why do we need this one?

      I have Android 13 and when I tap on a link it asks me what app to open, also you can set this within the settings app per app basis.

      Is this like Better Open With?

      • Free Palestine 🇵🇸@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        1 year ago

        I have Android 13 and when I tap on a link it asks me what app to open, also you can set this within the settings app per app basis.

        On many occasions, Android nowadays uses “Verified links” to figure out what app to open instead of prompting the user LinkSheet also provides other cool features that I already described in my previous comment:

        It has many great features like the ability to remove tracking parameters from URLs or using FastForward to annoying bypass URL shorteners

        Is this like Better Open With?

        Yes

        • kratoz29@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I missed the bypassing URL shorteners, heck, that would have been so helpful to me back in the day when I was sailing the seas for some “obscure” content.