Focus on practical use and intuitivity, without ads is preferred but not essential since ads will be blocked on all devices with your homeserver setup, even when not at home. Free is preferred but not essential, as long as the essential features are free/unlimited. Although open-source is preferred, such projects could be managed by 1 user and could have a short lifespan or slow development cycle, which can be annoying when the app is not finished yet/missing basic features. Also the influence from the community (usually other developers or tech-savy users) might lead to it becoming less intuitive. Usability/intuitivity/practical use is more important. Goal is to have a list that works well for anyone, including non-techies.
Basic phone tools
| Purpose | App name | Ad-free | price | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home screen launcher | Microsoft Launcher | yes | free | Ensure you do not give any permissions! Without any permissions, this Launcher works fantastic. Extremely easy to use, allowing you to have folders in your app drawer, neatly organize your homescreen. If you miss the Google Feed, just add a shortcut for it on your screen (also helps you to scroll less). Other launchers have hard limits or are less easy to use. |
| Dialer | Phone by Google | yes | free | clean and neat, clear overview of Favourite contacts, call screening, caller ID using Google Search data, view only contacts with numbers etc. |
| Contacts | Contacts by Google | yes | free | clean and neat. Easy to use, with or without contact categories ("labels" in Gmail/Contacts) that also integrate with Gmail. |
| SMS | QKSMS | yes | free | replacing your default SMS app or "Messages" (a Google app with RCS2.0 built-in) with QKSMS is an absolute no-brainer and recommendation. This is a very clean SMS app, supports multisim and allows configuring the actions (buttons) in an SMS notification (like Delete, Mark Read). Especially useful for non-USA users where RCS2.0 is not and will never become a thing. |
| Browsing | Firefox Beta | yes | free | The Beta version allows you to set your own Firefox Sync server, unlike other browsers such as Chrome. This way, browser history, logins, browser personalisation is not stored on 3rd party cloud services. Also makes saving passwords of less important services like webshops a safe option. Additionally, the Beta also allows you to install my addon collection and enable Bypass Firewalls, allowing you to read premium articles, SponsorBlock, blocking sponsored videos in Youtube videos embedded in websites. |
| Browsing | Kiwi Browser | yes | free | Having a single browser engine ruling the world is very bad for many reasons > Firefox is very fast and easy to use and should be used as much as possible. Unfortunately, some webdevelopers only design for Chrome. This is a good de-googled version of Chrome with some additional features. |
Photos
| Purpose | App name | Ad-free | price | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Camera | Gcam/Google Cam customized for your phone model | yes | free | by far the best quality photos on Android are achieved by using the Pixel Camera app, adjusted for your non-Pixel device. For photographers that prefer highly advanced manual controls, your device stock camera app (Asus, Sony) might be better. |
| Photo gallery | Simple Gallery Pro | yes | Free when downloaded from F-Droid, one-time payment when bought in Play Store | Best local non-Cloud photo viewer, this app allows blazing fast scrolling, gestures for screen brightness (left side) and video volume (right side), automatic high brightness when watching full screen. |
Security
| Purpose | App name | Ad-free | price | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2FA/MFA Authenticator | Aegis | yes | free | open-source, secure and extremely user-friendly (ideal for the elderly as well) to store your 2FA/MFA codes and generate codes. Highly secure, no integrated cloud storage but very easy to store backups automatically on your own homeserver. |
| Password Manager | Bitwarden | yes | free | open-source and widely regarded as the absolute best password manager, no-brainer option. To be used for free with your selfhosted Vaultwarden instance. Alternatively, there are cloud subscriptions available. |
| VPN | Wireguard | yes | free | allows you to connect to your VPN server via the fastest secure protocol, Wireguard. You can add multiple profiles for the same VPN server, for example one that only let DNS traffic go through VPN for ad-blocking though your selfhosted AdGuard Home and additionally a profile to let all traffic go via your VPN, a no-brainer when connecting to public WiFi, airport WiFi etc. |
| Automate tasks on your phone | Automate | yes | free | While Tasker app is more popular, if you only need to automate 1 thing, it is not worth paying for Tasker. Automate can be useful to let your phone automatically connect to your VPN when your phone disconnects from your home WiFi. This way, you can always connect to your AdGuard Home DNS server, blocking ads and malicious sites/tracking. |
Documents
| Purpose | App name | Ad-free | price | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | App name | Ad-free | price | Notes |
| Document viewer | Office Reader | yes | free | Supports both Office (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX) and PDF formats. Easy bottom button bar to quickly search text, share file or print a document. |
| Document editor | Collabora Office | yes | free | all-in-1 app to edit any kind of office document. Microsoft Office individual apps are better for power users. But if you don't edit docs everyday on your phone this should do it. |
| Singing PDFs | Adobe Reader | yes | free | the only app that makes it easy to sign and always works. |
| Scanning documents/books | vFlat | Free up to 100 OCR/day | Very easy to use, using latest code libraries thus very performant. Especially handy for scanning multiple sheets or books. Includes a good OCR solution with a very high limit of 100/day. | |
| Notes | Google Keep | yes | free | While there are good open-source free Keep alternatives these days that store data only on your own server through webDAV, they often lack the intuitivity/usability, the very nice screen widget or collaboration features for example to have a shared grocery list with your family. This makes Keep unbeatable. |
Playback and media
| Purpose | App name | Ad-free | price | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Play local music files | yes | free | easy to use when you want to play music organised in folders on your phone. | |
| Manage downloading of TV shows and movies | NZB360 | yes | one-time purchase | Absolutely worth the price, very intuitive app providing all the features you need, you will no longer open your * arr apps or download client. Highly recommended for anyone with a NAS/server downloading media, also for your partner or kids to manage what they want to see. Also provides discovery of new or popular movies and shows. |
| Youtube | Youtube Vanced | yes | free | although no longer developed due to Google taking action, you can still download and use Youtube Vanced without issues. Highly recommended as it blocks all kinds of advertising and sponsored videos. |
File management
| Purpose | App name | Ad-free | price | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| syncing photos and app backups | FolderSync | no | free | FolderSync supports several cloud services but also allows you to add a WebDAV account (like your FileRun account) and add folderpairs (a folder on your phone paired with a folder in your FileRun/cloud account). Next you can configure whether you like to have one-way sync, backing up files, or 2-way sync to always have a mirror of your files on your account. Deleting a file on your phone would also delete the file on your server (= 2-way sync). If you follow this homeserver guide, your user data is backupped nightly, allowing for a real backup solution. |
| File browser | CX File Explorer | yes | free | Very clean and easy to use filemanager with support for webDAV allowing you to share files from any other application to your selfhosted filecloud or the other way around, accessing and browsing your files in your cloud. |
| Cleanup files | Google Files | yes | free | no-brainer easy to use tool to cleanup temporary, cache files or get insight in large files or folders. |
Other tools
| Purpose | App name | Ad-free | price | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Translation | DeepL | ad-free | free | Much higher quality translation than Google Translate, but supports less languages and features. |
| Remote support with mobile screen sharing | TeamViewer | ad-free | free | until an RDP solution becomes available to share your Android screen, Teamviewer is as good as it gets. Not recommended for desktops/laptops, for that, RDP through wireguard VPN is a secure and fast option, also very easy to connect from MacOS, Windows, Linux. |
| Terminal access | Termius | yes | free | Termius free option gives you quick and easy terminal access to your server with quick access to arrow keys etc. |