Personally paid for Niagara launcher as I find that to be the far superior launcher to any other I’ve tried. My second one is Symfonium, the most feature rich and well developed audio player.
What are yours?
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Unified remote. WiFi or Bluetooth control over any win/Linux/Mac machine with many remotes and incredible functionality.
Motioncam is an must have if your phone is powerful enough
F-Droid image gallery. So many useful features, but I use it mostly for automatic galleries and metadata tagging
My Android paid must haves are: Titanium Backup (for scheduled backups and quick recovery), Threema (Messenger) and airMusic (former AirAudio, stream from mobile to e.g. Sonos).
Last time I used Titanium Bckup it was losing compatibility and I moved on to Neo Backup. Did Titanium get updated again ad some point or something?
Titanium Backup hasn’t been updated in five years, and I think that update was just to meet requirements to stay on the store. Their last changelog entry is adding the menu icon after Android ditched the physical menu button. There are a bunch of settings that are broken or do nothing due to changes to Android over the decades (TB has been around for so long that it supports Android 1.5).
I’ve been using Swift Backup as a replacement these past few years. It’s closed source but was recommended to me, and I haven’t run into any problems yet. Is Neo better in some way, aside from being FOSS?
I’ve heard of Swift Backup but never tried it because I think it was paid or automatic backups were a paid feature or something. But for my simple needs Neo Backup has been perfect.
Yeah, it’s twelve bucks to unlock scheduled backups and cloud syncing in Swift Backup, but then again this post is about paid apps. :)
Which is perfectly fair. I just tend to be stingy about paying for apps when there’s a free one that does what I need.
Nothing wrong with paying for something that’s worth it, though.
Titanium has been abandoned for years. Swift backup is what I switched to, or DataBackup on GitHub if you want a free option.
Latest version I know is 8.4.0.2 from 2020-05-16 downloaded from here http://www.matrixrewriter.com/android/files/TitaniumBackup_latest.apk.
I use Titanium since Android 4 and had indeed some troubles (related to storage access rights) on Android 11. After solving those, Titanium ran fine like on older versions of Android. Did not yet try Titanium on newer versions than Android 11.
Thank you for the hint and link to Neo Backup, I will give it a try. (Ah, just saw it is an incarnation of OAndBackup, nice.)
Hope it works for you, since other comments also mentioned Titanium having issues and being unmaintained.
This weekend my first scheduled backups were due during the night, and unfortunately I found my phone in recovery next morning. It was now in kind of “boot loop”, resetting shortly after logging into the phone.
Could stop this by quickly killing NeoBackup processes after login. Neo tried to again run the scheduled task each time, most likely as they before failed/did not run through.
So in summary it looks like my Lineage 18 device has issues with the scheduled backups of Neo.
Strange thing is that all my manual tests, even the same as configured for the scheduled tasks, worked perfectly fine. Just today’s first fully automatic runs seemed to make trouble (maybe cause mobile phone was in standby?)
Can only guess, but will keep Titanium for now on the older devices, and will keep Neo in mind for newer versions of Android, on which Titanium will not work any more :)
Sorry to hear about that. I’ve been using Neo for a while and never had issues like that. Might be because your Android version is a bit older maybe. Hopefully it works on your future devices then.
Also maybe report the bug to the developer in whichever way they use for this project.
+1 for AirMusic. I use it for my snapcast multi-room streaming setup.
What makes Threema better than Signal?
Its business model and not requiring a phone number
I think Signal still required phone number for registration, but you no longer have to disclose it to others.
Signal still has that PII tho
I am not aware of any advantage, but my family and friends are using either Threema, Signal or Telegram. So I use all three of them.
Why Threema?
Currently limited to groups chats of 256 participants and group calls of 16 participants
For privacy, freedom, and control, iOS is out. As with Telegram, I advise staying away from the Google variant and highly recommend the Threema Libre implementation for Android. Licenses are not compatible across variants, so stick with the Threema Shop!
- Open source full E2EE (end-to-end encryption) platform with regular security audits
- Mobile clients can be linked to Threema Desktop/Web
- Source code available for Android, iOS, Desktop, and Web
- Threema Libre implementation for Android
- Liberated from Google Services, uses Threema Push for instant delivery
- Reproducible builds
- Available via F-Droid repository
- Simplified (normal human-understandable) Changelog
- Multiple ways to purchase through Threema Shop
- With or without Email Address
- Cash, Bitcoin, Mastercard, Visa, or bank transfer - Can leave every non-payment field blank!
- 4.99 CHF, EUR, or USD per license
- Pay anonymously with cash (rounded nearest 10, buy in multiples of 2)
The largest criticism levied against Threema:
- 2023010? - Accusation - Three Lessons from Threema - Analysis of a Secure Messenger
- 20230109 - Rebuttal - Statement on ETH Findings
- 20230110 - Coverage - Messenger billed as better than Signal is riddled with vulnerabilities
“While some of the findings presented in the paper may be interesting from a theoretical standpoint, none of them ever had any considerable real-world impact,” the post stated. “Most assume extensive and unrealistic prerequisites that would have far greater consequences than the respective finding itself.”
RadarScope Pro is the first that came to my mind. I don’t live in tornado country anymore, but got plenty of use out of it when I did
Meteogram, super customizable weather app. The subscription or one-time-for-life-payment allows access to all paid weather providers that are currently implemented
Super custom widgets though? Without that it’s worthless.
The main thing of the app is to create widgets. If you open the app it’s just so many settings to tune your widget as you want it. The Dev is also super responsive, so if you miss a specific feature it’s worth reaching out
Boost for Lemmy - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rubenmayayo.lemmy
I’m more of a fan of Thunder, myself.
+1 for boost as well here. It’s the closest I got to RIF, which was awesome… sucks that the dev went to tildes, with not even half the activity as lemmy.
Boost isn’t paid
Yes, but it has ads, for which you have to pay to get rid of. I can’t stand ads so I’d pay, and so would most people.
My client of choice.
Aio launcher… Slick and I just like what it provides.
And before it became the next great yt sponsor… Ground.news . I’ve had it for like 4 years and it’s refreshing … I do miss the comments section but I also understand it was becoming a mess to moderate with their tiny team
Did anything change after they became a big YouTube sponsor?
Stardew Valley
Is there any Lemmy android client with the push notifications?
Eternity has notifications. It is free as in beer tho
Thunder has local notifications and is completely free.
Windy. The best weather forecast app. You can have a free account, but with premium you get more often updated data from various models.
Buzzkill! Perfect to remove distracting notifications during work hours or to not see some notifications altogether
What does it offer over Android’s built-in Focus mode?
You can create rules based on the content of the notification to group different notifications together as one, to delay them, to change the ringtone or to dismiss them all together.
You can also automatically click a button inside of a notification if certain requirements you define are met, you can stop the same app to send many notifications within a set amount of time (like when someone is writing a lot in a WhatsApp group then you only get one notification per minute for that group)
It’s way more than just focus mode
Buzzkill is very nice. I’m in a group chat that gets huge bursts of activity (like a hundred messages) and then goes dormant for a bit, so I set buzzkill to only give me at most 1 notification every 30 minutes, and keep the rest of them silent. That way I can still keep up with it without my phone blowing up
The only paid app I’ve got is Sound Profile. Puts the phone on quiet (except for family) at night, or silent (with auto resume to normal) in meetings. It’s on my & spouse’s phones.
Idk about the meeting thing but do not disturb can do this already. Can set up a multiple schedules to auto turn on/off do not disturb and then allow exceptions from favorite (starred) contacts. You can also allow an exception from someone who calls you 3 times back to back in case they’re calling you from someone else’s phone. And can also allow some apps as exceptions in case you use a 3rd party alarm app or something else that you want to be able to make noise.
Easy question for me, Tasker. Don’t know what I’d do without it. Come to think of it, as someone has already mentioned, Stardew Valley is pretty good too.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm
This one? What do you use it for?
That’s the one. Lots of uses mentioned below.
Tasker would be mine too. Apparently i don’t have many paid apps lol
I like the idea of Tasker, but can’t think of usecases. What’s yours?
Some examples of using Tasker:
- When a specific contact sends a text message, it alerts me using TTS so I can be aware they are trying to reach me. I have an older family member she lives closer to, so having an alert from her is important if anything should happen forbid it does. When I plug my phone in to charge, it auto silences the phone and keeps it silenced until I unplug it, built into the same task, if monitors for phone calls from my contact and a few others and overrides it.
When a specific phone contact or contact calls, it raises the volumes to max. This is useful if you went to an appointment, set your phone on silent or vibrate but forgot to reset it. After the call has been completed, it returns the phone to the original volume you set.
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When I scan a NFC Tag, i have it send a webhook to my August lock to unlock it. As an apartment dweller, if I go down to the car to unload groceries, the door by default auto locks. This means I have to pull the phone out, unlock it, open the August App, and then tell it to unlock the door and sometimes use the biometric to do so. Having the NFC tag do this means I can put it in my wallet and when I put my phone in the same pocket where the wallet it is, it triggers the door.
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When connected to my computer only, it keeps the screen on all the time.
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When I launch certain apps, it keeps the screen on until the app is closed. Very useful when you are at the grocery store working within a strict budget and want to see how much you have put in to the cart!
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I have a widget on my screen which toggles my Private DNS on/off. This allows me to disable the adblock dns I use if I encounter a public wifi which insists I disable it. (I usually stay away from those, and use my mobile data, but sometimes it’s unavoidable when there is so much interference your 5G goes to NONE and you have to be there for a while.)
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Likewise, I have a widget which toggles my Tailscale connection on/off which comes in handy as well. Again, if the Wifi spot rejects custom DNS’s and I’m in the scenario above.
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If you have a Google Account (Sadly, this is the only way). You can view the list of profiles/tasks which other people have built. It’s a growing list. https://taskernet.com/shares/
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Using third party software such as Wake on LAN, when I come home and connect to my WiFi, it wakes my computer. (Or really any condition I set to trigger it).
I will say that the dev is very responsive and active in releasing updates and new features.
With that said, it has a slight learning curve which he(the developer) is working on to help simplify things and modernize it more. Since taking over the project from the previous owner, it’s really grown.
I admit though, I used to have a lot more tasks and profiles, but it seems that Android is starting to bake those functions in so it’s not as used on my end. But don’t let it it sway you. Your imagination is the only limit with what you can do with Tasker.
Generally, for less than a cup of coffee, it’s worth the purchase price. :)
I have a profile that mutes my phone between 21:00 and 08:00 but only if I’m at home. I frequently work late into the night. I have a large number of backdrop images which are randomly changed every three hours, the lockscreen image is changed to match. I also have a desktop button to change it manually. I have profiles to backup various files onto remote servers. I also have a profile to stop my workout app when I get home, in case I forget.
Personally I use it to
- put a slider on the display that controls the flashlight when it is on.
- Quick setting tiles for fast charging, mono/stereo audio and adb debugging.
- a basic local website, so I can copy text from my phone to PC and vice-versa
- toggle settings when specific apps are open i.e. when google wallet is open turn on NFC
- request music from Rockbot while at work
A couple of favorites that are different from what others already said:
- I strongly dislike autorotate on my phone so I always keep it off, however it makes perfect sense in apps like YouTube/Twitch. So I have one task that turns it on when opening one of those apps, and off again when closing them
- When I’ve got Bluetooth headphones, I can choose to have incoming texts read out to me. Very nice when walking/running outside and not needing to pull my phone out
- Similarly, I’ve got a task that will (optionally) read out the name of the song that’s playing to Bluetooth
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When my house guests text “#wifi” to me, they get an auto reply with the WiFi password.
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NFC tag stuck to my medication pouch. When I boop my phone to it (or tap a shortcut on homescreen), I can select what medication I have taken. The medication and the time gets added to the bottom of a Google sheets spreadsheet, that I, or someone supporting me can check to get an overview of how frequently I’ve been taking medication (especially useful for spotting high pain chunks of time due to more frequent usage of PRN pain meds).
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Another aspect of the medication tracking above is that it also can tell me the last time I took medication. For example, if I take ADHD meds at 12pm, then my next dose would be 4pm. If I tap the shortcut at 3pm, it’ll tell me I last took meds at 12pm and I’m next due at 4pm. Alarms tend to either startle me or not be noticed, but when I had smart lights and a notification light on my phone, I could make a colour gradient where “you have just taken meds” = red and “you are due to take meds” = blue, and as time progresses, the colour slowly becomes more blue. This works well for me, because I like visual reminders
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Stardew Valley.
The only other app I have paid for that wasn’t a game is “iVCam” so I can use my phone’s camera as a webcam that isn’t limited to some stupidly small resolution or have a watermark, can do more than 30fps, and also works as a source in OBS. I mostly use it for full body tracking in VR with the April tag system. But I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite.
Android has webcam support in USB mode and has for like 3 versions now, though?
When it asks you what you want your device to do when plugged into a PC you get options like "file transfer (ftp)”, webcam should be on the bottom
Works flawlessly for me in both Linux and Windows for OBS
To be fair, I bought the app years ago when that wasn’t a thing. But I also don’t see webcam as an available option when plugging it into my PC. I have a carrier branded Pixel 8 rn, so it might not have everything a regular stock android would. :/
I can actually just use some FOSS thing I found on GitHub to basically remote access my phone now via ADB, which is also handy in VR as I can use a VR version of it without taking off the headset.
