The best Android apps of 2018
With millions of apps in the Play Store, searching for the best Android apps is daunting. Whether you need a great weather app or a new browser, there are always dozens available. Here at AndroidPIT, we’ve spent hours curating the top Android apps for every purpose, and compiled only the best of them into one list. Here are the best Android apps of 2018.
Jump to section:
- Keep in touch with these great messenger apps
- Up your typing game with new keyboard apps
- Stay one step ahead of nature with great weather apps
- Fantastic photo apps to edit snaps like a pro
- Best Android apps for listening to music
- Watch movies and TV on Android
- Security/antivirus apps to protect your phone
- Apps to personalize your Android
- Find love with these dating apps
- Fitness apps to help get in shape
Speak freely with these messenger apps for Android
Smartphones are used for messaging even more than for calls, so there are a lot of messaging apps to meet this demand. Here are two of our favorites.
WhatsApp, the ubiquitous chat app, has been installed on over one billion smartphones. And it's always improving user experience, adding new features and becoming more secure. What makes it number one? Everyone uses it, simple as that. If you already use WhatsApp, then you should check out our favorite WhatsApp tips and tricks.
WhatsApp Messenger
Telegram
No messaging app comes close to the number of users WhatsApp has, but there are some great alternatives out there. Telegram is one of them. The free app has end-to-end encryption, does group chats and is a pioneer of chatbots. Unlike some other messengers, you can use it on multiple devices. Read our full review of Telegram here.
Transform your typing with new keyboard apps
Typing on mobile can be frustrating or awkward for many of us, and that's a shame because most users don't think about installing a different keyboard from the default. A new keyboard can really change your life when it comes to how comfortable you are using your phone.
Fleksy
This keyboard is one of the best for fast, accurate typing. Once you use it for a couple of hours, you realize how useful some of the smaller details are.
Be sure check out some of the extensions like invisible keyboard too — it works surprisingly well. Download it from the Play Store for free now.
SwiftKey
Whoever is looking for a very special virtual keyboard for Android will find one here. SwiftKey works wonderfully with tablets, and if you simply want a good Android keyboard, it offers intuitive operation, very good spell check and word recognition.
SwiftKey Keyboard
Whatever the weather, there's an app to warn you what's coming
There are plenty of great weather apps available that are more accurate and better looking than the ones that come pre-installed on your Android device.
Weather Underground
Weather Underground is an app specialized in tracking hyper-local weather and temperatures in your area. It uses its own network of around 180,000 private weather stations to achieve this. Predictions have a good record of accuracy and warn you of rain in the surrounding area.
Weather Underground is free of charge, but displays ads. This can be deactivated for one year through a $1.99 in-app purchase.
Weather Underground: Forecasts
Weather Timeline
Available for $1.49 on the Play Store, Weather Timeline could be the best money you ever spend. It brings genuinely useful and interesting features together into a wonderful interface and library of widgets.
You can select from five different weather services, and there are notifications that warn you of impending weather changes. Radar maps let you see visualizations of the cloud and rain to come, and interactive graphs show data on things like temperature, precipitation and pressure.
Shoot and edit like a pro with these photo apps for Android
PhotoDirector
PhotoDirector is the whole package. It has everything you could possibly need to edit your photos. The tools range from simple text bubbles and filters, to more complex things such as HSL and curves, and they're all heavily adjustable, helping you get the best out of your photos.
Snapseed
Snapseed is Google's own photo editing app and basically comes with everything, for free. It offers all sorts of filters and optimization tools. Whether trimming, applying filters or correcting colors, Snapseed offers a powerful picture editor for your needs.
Snapseed saves your pictures in a separate folder, that way you don't need to modify the original image. Apps like Dropbox or Google Photos can also be synchronized with Snapseed.
Find and play your jam with these great apps for music
Downloading free music
Google Play Music is our favorite app for downloading free music right now. It provides a totally legit, ever-changing list of free tracks from major artists to download.
Spotify has an excellent paid subscription service, and SoundCloud has a multitude of tracks readily available to stream, but for actually downloading tracks to your phone, Google Play Music is as good as you can get.
Google Play Music
Best music player
While the default music apps on your Android device probably do a fine job, if you want to crank up the bass or other aspects of your music, you'll need something more.
We recommend Poweramp. It’s a great way to enjoy your favorite music, with a ton of options and support for almost any type of file. You can’t go wrong with Poweramp.
Chill with our favorite apps for movies and TV
Hulu
Hulu is an excellent app for watching movies and TV shows for free on Android. It's a free service that relies on ads, but there are some great shows available. You need to pay a subscription fee to access all of the content, but there is a range of excellent shows available without subscription, including classic comedies such as Family Guy, Seinfeld and South Park.
Hulu: Stream TV, Movies & more
Crackle
Crackle is a hugely popular free app, which is updated monthly with new TV shows and movies. Created by Grouper but later bought by Sony, the app features ads which run at regular intervals throughout the content, the trade-off for which is that you get an excellent selection of media and a well-maintained app.
Crackle, like Netflix or Amazon, has picked up some original content that's getting more popular.
Crackle - Free TV & Movies
Make your phone a fortress with security and antivirus apps
Mobile Security & Antivirus from Avast
Mobile Security & Antivirus is a free app that keeps you safe from malware threats with its excellent virus detection software, which can search through your browser history, microSD card, and internal storage space. What's more, it employs anti-theft features such as location tracking and remote data wipe, which work even if your device is not currently in your possession.
- How to monitor system performance on your device
- Antivirus and mobile security to keep your Android safe
McAfee Mobile Security & Lock
McAfee's Android app brings anti-virus, app lock, Wi-Fi and web protection and protection from loss and theft.
Anytime someone tries to unlock your phone but enters the wrong pin code, it snaps their photo. There's also app lock, which keeps people from accessing any apps you choose by protecting them with a 6-digit pin code. For the premium version, it costs around $25-30 per year, which is a great value.
Personalize your Android
Action Launcher 3
Launchers offer a simple way to customize the look and feel of your Android phone. They often combine new icons, a new app drawer layout, a new homescreen and new wallpaper to make your device fit a certain style or theme.
You have to try them out to appreciate how fun they can be and the one we recommend right now is Action Launcher 3. This is a free and excellent introduction to launchers because it provides clear and intuitive interface changes without adding so many that it becomes off-putting.
Nova Launcher
Nova is a great alternative launcher thatlets you customize the entire look and feel of your operating system, from changes to font size, to the number of apps that can appear on the lock screen, to the way in which your app drawer scrolls.
If you wish you could make a few simple changes to your current interface, then give the free version of Nova a try. Nova even lets you adopt the look of any other phone - Galaxy, Xperia, HTC, LG, even iOS if that's your thing.
Nova Launcher
Let your phone help you find that special someone
Online dating has come a long way from the easy punchline it used to be, and nowadays it's pretty common to meet that special someone on a dating app. However long your connection might last, you need a good app to get started in the dating game. Here our favorites.
Tinder for sheer number of potential matches
For those who wish to jump straight into the larger dating pool, Tinder is a massive app with tons of potential matches available. It's claimed that 26 million matches happen through Tinder every day.
Tinder is mostly free but if you want to get some premium features you will need to pay. But it is entirely possible to use Tinder without these and have a great dating experience for free.
Bumble puts women in control
Bumble offers an interesting take on the dating app format. Women have make the first move.
For women who are frustrated with tons of messages by men who barely look at their profiles, or men who get stuck on trying to craft that perfect opening line, this can be a great way to make dating less stressful (of course, for women seeking women, it's basically online dating as usual, and men seeking men are still best served with Grindr).
Bumble — Date. Meet Friends. Network.
Get (and stay) fit with health and fitness apps
Of course, you might want tone up a little for all that dating you're going to do with the above apps. Or maybe you just need a little help with motivation or organisation when it comes to keeping in shape. Fitness apps are great because you can keep your device close to you while you're on the move. Let's take a look at the best.
RunKeeper for a comprehensive experience
RunKeeper has a good reputation, not just for the number of features in its own app but also the number of third-party services it plugs into (it works with both Google Fit and Apple Health). If you're a keen runner, there aren't many better options than this one.
You can plot your runs on a map via GPS tracking, monitor distance covered and calories burned, set personal goals, integrate your indoor activities and more. Despite the name, this app can handle bike rides and gym workouts as well as running, so it's a comprehensive monitoring app.
Don't underestimate the power of community. There are social aspects to the app as well. You can share achievements with your friends, join and create running groups and use the chat feature to keep each other motivated. The app is free, but also has ads and optional in-app purchases.
Google Fit for simplicity
Google's own health and fitness app is tightly integrated with Android and Android Wear and full of features. Weight, heart rate, steps and activity time can all be logged automatically and you can set simple daily goals as well and get an alert when you've reached them.
In addition to real-time stats, Google Fit will also give you personalized recommendations and coaching to help you reach your goals.
Enhance your life with even more great apps
This has been our pick of the cream of the crop when it comes to the best Android apps of 2018, but if you didn't quite find what you're looking for, or if you;re still hungry for more, check out one the links below:
The latest and greatest
Updated every month with new recommendations, these are the apps and games that have impressed us lately. Get ahead of the curve!
Alternatives to the mainstream
You don't wanna be a sheep, maaaan. Check out these alternatives to the normie tech giants.
- Top alternatives to Facebook for Android
- WhatsApp is bad, use these instead
- Android without Google software? It's possible with these apps.
Let's play!
The clue's in the name: Google's Play Store is full of games, but only some of them are really great. We've heroically played through a huge amount of mobile games so we can recommend only the finest:
- No connection required: best Android games to play offline
- Don't spend a cent: fun free Android games
- Fighter, wizard, thief: greatest Android RPGs
- The games we're most looking forward to in 2018
What are your favorite Android apps? Any that you think are better than our selection here? Let us know in the comments!
Brilliant article. The information I have been searching precisely. Thanks again for sharing these great app lists, its like package for me!
Nice info.
I thought this could be helpful for many who want to learn Android Development
Edge browser is also an excellent choice for browser, especially given how feature-rich the mobile and web pages.
Nice Article Eric Ferrari-Herrmann , Thanks for Sharing Information and I am Expecting more from Your Side
Touchpal is my best keyboard application,still use playerpro for my music player,but there are some better applications outside the play store,that i have found on aptoide and uptodown,it can be a gamble using applications outside the playstore as sometimes you miss out on regular updates
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3 months ago Link to commentThanks for sharing some of your top picks, Andrew!
PhotoDirector is exactly the application I needed. Thanks.
Kustom Live Wallpaper, or KLWP might be the single most amazing app for customizing your phone ever created. There is a learning curve but if you like to theme your phone there is no question this is the way to go.
It's like uccw and Zooper combined, on steroids with next to no battery drain. It has absolutely endless possibilities, it's updated constantly and has an amazing community on G+ as well as tons of videos on YouTube showing how to use it. You can also download professional and amazing looking themes from the Play Store to load onto it if you don't want to make your own.
I use an app called 'Uplift' for tracking the stock market. It's pretty simple but it's really easy!
great work
thankx for sharing
Thanks for sharing.
For music streaming, Audials is fantastic!
Available for many platforms, but free, no ads Android app in playstore is great. Over one hundred thousand stations, & podcasts. Best feature, recording while listening or scheduled recording in the background. Only broadcast stations have the usual ads, but I rarely hear any on the streams I choose.
Updated: Lot of good ones here, some will be contentious. I recently dropped Open Camera and adopted the Snap Camera (Marginz) as default app because it includes customizable GUI with presets, and JPEG controls for wavelet denoise, along and sliders for sharpening, saturation and contrast. I keep comfortable, familiar Camera FV-5 for lossless PNG format and am experimenting with Bacon Camera, which has serious JPEG controls and actually forces my Camera1 API phone to make lossless DNG.
In Canada the only reliable weather source is Environment Canada, and Fish & Whistle's nicely made free Canada Weather is the only app to link to it. Users with public library cards should see what apps the library provides free - I use Hoopla - 9 downloads/month no charge - surprised at the number of movies I like (offers TV, music and comics as well). Several ereading apps (OverDrive, RBDigital, PressReader), Naxos Jazz and Music streaming, etc. all of which are free with a library number, subscription charges without. You guys might want to do a report on free public library apps for your readers.
Best Lock Screen? LOL. Not updated since... February. We've all moved on to Microsoft Launcher.
Thanks for sharing this！
I would like to add one more category here
Best Game Apps for Android
1- Critical Ops
2- Clash Royale
3- Cut the Rope
Yes. All of these are great apps and useful for an Android Devices. But i also like to mention another app called "WiFiKill Pro".
I think it is one of the best app in controling wifi network. Any one can easily monitor his/her network. As well as can kick or block unwanted user or device. you can check here -> wifikill.net
The best app of 2017 is Writelight. Writelight has 200 prompts for freewriting. There are prompts for creative thinking, reflection on career and life issues, special prompts for bad and good mood. It will help you to start journaling and will make you a better person eventually.
Skype is also becoming very popular now. in my openion it is on number 2 after Whatsapp.