Apps all android users should have

15 best Android apps available right now

Here it is ladies and gentlemen. The crème de la crème. The Android apps that stand alone at the top of the pantheon. These apps have become ubiquitous with Android and if you’re looking for good stuff it’s assumed that you have some of this stuff already. There are a ton of amazing Android apps out there. However, there are a few that stand out above the rest. These apps are useful to just about everyone no matter what their use case may be. Without further delay, here are the best Android apps currently available.

Most people should be relatively familiar with most of these apps. They are the best, and the best things are rarely anonymous. It’s difficult to get into the hall of fame, but we do have the best lists attached to each selection in case you want to see more options.

The best Android apps available right now:

1Weather

Price: Free / $1.99

1Weather is arguably the best weather app out there. It features a simple, paginated design that shows you the current weather, forecast for up to 12 weeks, a radar, and other fun stats. Along with that, you’ll get a fairly decent set of lightly customizable widgets and the standard stuff like severe weather notifications and a radar so you can see the storms approaching. The Ui is logical and reasonably easy to navigate as well.

The free version has all of the features with advertising. The $1.99 charge removes advertising. Otherwise, the two versions work the same way. Most will also likely enjoy the range of weather fun facts as well when you open the app. We have a list of the best weather apps and widgets if you want more options.

Google Drive

Price: Free / $1.99-$299.99 per month

Some of the features of these apps include live collaboration, deep sharing features, and compatibility with Microsoft Office documents. You can find more cloud storage apps here and more office apps here if you want something different.

Google Maps and Waze

Price: Free

If you add to that the Waze experience, which includes tons of its own features, and you won’t need another navigation app. Ever. Google also owns and operates Waze. It’s unique and fun in ways that Google Maps isn’t and we also highly recommend it. Of course, we have more GPS apps options as well here if you need them.

Google Search / Assistant / Feed

Price: Free

There is also a second Google Assistant app for those who want a quick launch icon on the home screen. The hardware stuff costs money, but Google Assistant is free. There are other decent personal assistants like Amazon Alexa, and you can check them out here.

LastPass

Price: Free / $12 per year

LastPass is one of those must-have Android apps. It’s a password manager that lets you save your login credentials in a safe, secure way. On top of that, it can help generate nearly impossible passwords for you to use on your accounts. It’s all controlled with a master password. It has cross-platform support (premium version only) so you can use it on computers, mobile devices, tablets, or whatever.

There are others, but LastPass always feels like it’s one step ahead. Additionally, the premium version is cheap. You can also grab LastPass Authenticator to go along with it for added security. There are other options for great password managers here and some free LastPass alternatives if the new, more restricted free version isn’t doing it for you. LastPass also has an authenticator app for additional security.

Read more:

Microsoft SwiftKey

Price: Free

Microsoft SwiftKey Keyboard is one of the most powerful and customizable third-party keyboards available. It hit the market several years ago with a predictive engine unlike anything any other keyboard had and the app has grown a lot of over the years. It’s a free download and you can purchase themes for it if you want to.

Other features include a dedicated number row, SwiftKey Flow which allows for gesture typing, multiple language support, cross-device syncing of your library, and much more. It’s about as good as it gets in the keyboard space. It’s true that Microsoft now owns SwiftKey, but so far they have managed not to mess it up. Gboard, Google’s keyboard app, is also exceptionally good and we honestly could’ve listed either one. There are some other great Android keyboards here as well.

Nova Launcher

Price: Free / $4.99

You can even make it look like the Pixel Launcher if you want to. If you go premium, you can tack on gesture controls, unread count badges for apps, and icon swipe actions. Those looking for something simpler may want to try Lawnchair Launcher, Hyperion Launcher, and Rootless Launcher. Of course, we have a list of the best Android launchers with even more options as well.

Podcast Addict

Price: Free / $3.99

You can also set download rules, create playlists easily, and it supports both Chromecast and SONOS along with Android Auto and Wear OS. The UI and settings aren’t the most elegant things we’ve seen. However, the app makes up for it by hitting literally every other box we could think of. Pocket Casts and CastBox are other excellent options in this space, and we have a list of even more great podcast apps here.

Poweramp

Price: Free trial / $4.99

The UI has a tiny bit of a learning curve, but it’s one of the better-looking music players as well with optional themes in the Google Play Store. There are other great music apps here, but the top slot arguably Poweramp’s title to lose. Poweramp also has an equalizer app (Google Play link) if you want a better equalizer app.

Solid Explorer

Price: Free trial / $2.99

File browsing is something everyone inevitably has (or wants) to do, so you might as well do it with a capable, fantastic file browser. Solid Explorer is pretty much as good as it gets in the file explorer apps realm. It features Material Design, archiving support, support for the most popular cloud services, and even some more power-user stuff like FTP, SFPT, WebDav, and SMB/CIFS support.

It looks great, it’s incredibly stable, and it just works well. There is a 14-day free trial with a $2.99 price tag at the end of it. There are other file browsers with more features, but few blend together looks, ease of use, and features like Solid Explorer does. If this doesn’t work for you, here are some other outstanding file browsers.

Check out some excellent hardware as well:

Tasker and IFTTT

Price: $2.99 and Free, respectively

Tasker is a glorious application if you have the patience to learn how to use the app. What it does is allow users to create custom made commands and then use them in various places. There are many apps out there that have Tasker support and you can even use Tasker to create very complex commands for NFC tags. It’s difficult to truly explain what this app can do because it can do so many things. Between the apps supported, plugins you can add, and the sheer volume of stuff that you can do, there aren’t many apps out there as useful as this one.

IFTTT is another excellent automation app. In some cases, it may even be better than Tasker thanks to its simplicity and wide range of uses. Tasker is also available free as part of the Google Play Pass. There are some other great Android tools and utility apps, but none of them can step up to Tasker and IFTTT.

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Are your Android apps crashing? You’re not alone. (Update: Fixed)

• Android apps are randomly crashing for some users.
• The issue seems to stem from a bad Android System WebView update.
• Google has issued new Android System WebView and Google Chrome updates to address the issue.

Update: March 23, 2021 (4 AM ET): Google’s Workspace status page indicates says that the problem with Gmail on Android is fixed.

The company says updating Android System WebView and Google Chrome via Google Play Store should now resolve the issue for all users. The Play Store listing for WebView shows Google has pushed out a new version of the apps (ver. 89.0.4389.105). Chrome has also received an update today.

It’s unclear whether this fixes problems with other Android app crashes as well. Nevertheless, you should try getting the new versions of both apps to see if the issue is resolved. Else, read on for possible workarounds.

Original article: March 23, 2021 (12:12 AM ET): Android users have been experiencing random app crashes over the past few hours. Apps like Gmail, Google, Yahoo Mail, and others are constantly shutting down and behaving erratically. However, Google is aware of the problem and working on a fix.

In a statement to multiple publications, a Google spokesperson said, “We are aware of an issue with WebView causing some apps on Android to crash. We are currently working to fully validate the scope and a fix is in progress.”

The bug seems to be impacting all Android apps that use the WebView system component. Google apparently pushed out a bad update to WebView, resulting in Android app crashes.

Some users have found removing the latest WebView update or uninstalling WebView entirely fixes the issue. Samsung’s official US support Twitter account also recommends removing the update.

If removing the update doesn’t work for you, try uninstalling WebView. To do that, head to the Google Play Store > My Apps & Games > Installed. Android System WebView should appear in this list of installed apps. Tap on it and hit uninstall. You should then reboot your Android device for the best results.

Remember to reinstall the latest version of WebView once Google fixes the issue. It’s an important component that lets apps display web pages.

Meanwhile, if you’re trying to access Gmail, you should use the desktop interface for the time being. The company has also
acknowledged the problem with Gmail on Android on the Google Workspace status page.

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Android in-app purchases, part 1: configuration and adding to the project

In-app purchases and especially subscriptions are the most popular methods to monetize an app. On the one hand, a subscription allows a developer to develop content and a product, on the other hand, they help a user to get a more high-quality app in general. In-app purchases are subject to 30% commission, but if a user has been subscribed for more than a year or an app earns less than $1Рњ per year, the commission is 15%.

This is the first article from the series dedicated to in-app purchases in Android apps. In this series, we will cover the topics starting with the creation of in-app purchases and up to server validation and analytics:

In this article, we’ll explain how to:В В

• Create a product in Google Play Console;
• Configure subscriptions: how to specify duration, price, trials;В
• Get a list of products in an app.В

Creating subscription

Before we start, make sure you:

1. Have a developer account for Google Play.
2. Have signed all agreements and are ready to start working.В В

Now, let’s get down to business and create our first product.В В

Switch to your developer account and choose an app.

Then, in the menu on the left, find the Products section, select Subscriptions and press Create a Subscription.В

Then, we’ll see the subscription configurator. Here are some important points.В В В

1. Create the ID that will be used in the app. It’s a good idea to add a subscription period or some other useful information to ID, thus, you can create products in one style, as well as analyzing sales statistics will be easier.
2. The name of the subscription that a user will see in the store.В В
3. Subscription description. A user will see it, too.В В

Scroll down and choose the subscription period. In our case, it’s a week. Set up the price.В В

Usually, you set the price in the basic account currency, and the system converts the price automatically. But you can also edit the price for a specific country manually.В В

Please notice that Google shows the tax for every country. It’s great, App Store Connect doesn’t do so.В В

Scroll down and choose (if needed):В

1. Free trial period.
2. Introductory price, which is an offer for the first payment periods.В В
3. Grace period. If a user has payment issues, you can still provide them with premium access for some number of days.
4. An opportunity to resubscribe from the Play Store, not from the app, after cancellation.В

Comparing the purchase process in Play Console and App Store Connect

Regardless of the fact that subscriptions are monetized more effectively on iOS, Play Console’s admin board is more convenient, it’s organized and localized better, and it works faster.

The process of product creation is made as simple as possible. Here we told how to create products on iOS.

Getting a list of products in an app

Once the products are created, let’s work on the architecture for accepting and processing purchases. In general, the process looks like this:В В В

1. Add a Billing Library.
2. Develop a class for interaction with products from Google Play.
3. Implement all methods to process purchases.В В
4. Add server validation of a purchase.В В
5. Collect analytics.

In this part, let’s take a closer look at the first two points.В В

Adding Billing Library to a project:

At the time of this writing, the latest version is 4.0.0. You can replace it with any other version at any moment.В В

Let’s create a wrapper class that will cover the logic of interaction with Google Play and initialize BillingClient from Billing Library in it. Let’s call this class BillingClientWrapper.

This class will implement PurchasesUpdatedListener interface. We will override a method for it now – onPurchasesUpdated(billingResult: BillingResult, purchaseList: MutableList

?) – it’s needed right after a purchase is made, but we will describe the implementation process in the next article.В

Google recommends to avoid having more than one active connection between BillingClient and Google Play to prevent a callback about a purchase made from being executed several times. Thus, you should have one unique BillingClient in a singleton class. The class in the example isn’t a singleton, but we can use dependency injection (for example, with the help of Dagger or Koin) in the way, allowing only one instance to exist at a single point in time.В

To make any request with Billing Library, BillingClient must have an active connection with Google Play at the moment when the request is being made, but the connection may be lost at some moment. For the sake of convenience, let’s write a wrapper allowing to make any requests only when the connection is active.В В В

To get the products, we need their IDs that we set in the market. But it’s not enough for a request, we also need the product type (subscriptions or one-time purchases) that’s why we can get a general list of products by “combining” the results of two requests.В В В

The request for products is asynchronous, so we need a callback that will either provide us with a list of products or return an error model. When an error occurs, Billing Library returns one of its BillingResponseCodes, as well as debugMessage. Let’s create callback interface and a model for an error:В В

Here’s a code for a private method for getting data about a specific type of products and a public method that will “combine” the results of two requests and provide a user with the final list of products or display an error message.В В

Thus, we got valuable information about the products (SkuDetails) where we can see localized names, prices, product type, as well as billing period and information about introductory price and trial period (if it’s available for this user) for subscriptions. Here’s what the final class looks like:В В В

That’s all for today. In the next articles, we’re going to tell you about purchase implementation, testing, and error handling.В В

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