Any suggestions for paid one time purchase apps on the Google play store?
Slay the Spire
Symfonium is an awesome music player that’s a one-time $5 purchase.
Great question, btw.
It was the first (only?) app where I was baffled at the features compared to the price. It’s a joy to use. If you self-host music, it beats the competition by miles
And the developer is super responsive. I pointed out a bug and once he was able to reproduce the problem, he released a fix by the next day.
I wish sonos had better interoperability, but I did discover if you make a group of speakers and then cast to the “primary” speaker with symfonium, it broadcasts to the whole group.
Was my only issue with it, but that’s 100% a “sonos is shit” problem, not the app.
You solved the single issue I had with Finamp: Casting to audio devices.
THANK YOUsymfonium is amazing and id use it if i didnt pay for musicolet
Trying to use up some playstore credit. I don’t have time for a one month subscription, I just want to buy it now and use it later.
Fx file manager. if you do file management locally or want to access SMB share content , cloud, bluetooth etc, this app ia awesome.
I love it but I can feel it getting neglected with each Android update.
The worst for me was transferring a video to a computer using the FX Web feature and discovering it silently truncated the video… when it was already too late…I bought solid explorer at the dawn of android and still use it to this day
Macrodroid. It is like Tasker, but with a much much better UI.
I love Simple Audiobook Player+. The UI is super minimal (and really maxes out the whole OLED black thing if you choose it) without compromising on features that are kind of essential for audiobooks (e.g. delayed pause/sleep timers, speed settings, volume boosting, an EQ). My favorite thing is the “undo seek” button. I’m an oaf who is constantly inputting accidental touches. When I was using Audible, I’d have to manually find where I was after accidentally hitting the next chapter button or moving the dot on the progress bar. SABP lets me just undo that shit.
It hasn’t been updated in a while, but it doesn’t need updating when it does its job so well. There are no ads, no marketing notifications, just books. It’s like a program from
coreutilsin app form. It might be a bit ugly or outdated looking, but I’m about that.Smart audiobook player is great, but I do wish we had an open source alternative. The audiobookshelf app is almost there, but it still requires a self-hosted server I believe.
Smart Audiobook Player is different from Simple Audiobook Player. I actually didn’t know about Smart ABP, it looks pretty nice!
I agree, I’d prefer a FOSS option that’s self-contained. The only server I need is one that I can rsync books down from.
Threema.
Neutron music player.
FairEmail.
MiXplorer: Tabbed file explorer with many features. You can get it for free from their website, but it’s available paid on Google Play.
Symfonium: Music player compatible with many backends, such as local storage, WebDAV, Subsonic (which includes Ampache, Navidrome)
aCalendar+: Calendar app with many widgets. Best part is the persistent notification, which shows what’s happening today, and will happen tomorrow.
Cryptomator: Cross-platform file encryption program, also open source.
Others have recommended other file explorers, but I use FX and rather like it.
Just to mention another file explorer, Solid Explorer is great especially becase it’s easy to access Google Drive without having to use the Google drive interface.
I’ve been using FX File Explorer since 2012. It’s straight up the best file manager on Android, especially when you use SMB and SFTP. Multi window makes moving things around easy as, and the built in text editor works a treat. Being able to share images from apps to FX’s “Save As” option is awesome to. It means every app can save where you want.
No idea why it isn’t more popular compared to the alternatives.
FX is one of the only 2 apps I ever paid for and it’s great. I needed something to access SMB shares and it has always worked wonderfully. It’s good for poking around in the file system on the phone too. There may be better stuff out since I bought it years ago but I’ve never had a reason to check.
just scrolling trough my phone, here’s some I like
app opps - lets you change permissions for apps, handy if you want to have multiple things playing audio or use google photos without it scanning your phone.
calcu - it’s a calculator!
simple draw - exactly what it says on the tin
es file explorer pro - versatile, but not bloated
moon+ reader pro - a handy reader for all sorts of docs, including search etc
polarr - a photo editing app with features not a lot of apps have. The devs are pushing some dumb filters tho
handy photo - same as polarr
mx player pro - got videos to play?
poweramp - a music player
poweramp equalizer - is what it says on the tin
sd maid pro - for clearing out old files and such
poweraudio plus - used to be the only app with a parametric equalizer. Now poweramp does too
ultrachron - just a nice timer/stopwatch
unified remote - a remote control app, be careful tho, I doubt this thing is secure
web video caster - also downloads videos from plenty of places
and a couple more apps, where the developer has decided to pull the lifetime license and move to a subscription, even after I had bought it
officesuite pro - it’s handy, but f them
Thanks for reminding me! I have the free version of unified remote and have been meaning to upgrade.
I will second Moon Reader and Web Video Caster.
So I’ve used Moon reader pro for several years and love it, but I cannot get reading states to sync between my Samsung phone and Samsung tablet. The book files are named exactly the same on both. I’ve tried syncing using Google Drive and Dropbox. It treats the books as two separate reading states, though I see the metadata/reading states file edited in Google Drive upon reading for a bit. Any suggestions?
I don’t have it installed right now, as I’ve been trying out a FOSS reader for a while now on my new phone, but there is a troubleshooting section about syncing on their site, and also they recommend this guide made by a user discussing sync troubleshooting.
It’s not a feature I’ve used, so maybe those guides have something you haven’t tried. Since you replied to me though, I feel partially responsible for making sure you get helped now. 😅
Heads up, SD Maid is being rebuilt as SD Maid SE now with more/better features.
Already purchased it. I’m still missing some features, so I currently use both
If you’re a fan of customization and getting your home screen just how you like it, KLWP and Nova Prime.
Nova Prime is a launcher with a bunch of customization options for how your app drawer works, how apps are laid out, how big they are, how folders look, etc. I use it for the fact that i can set folders to have the icon of the first app inside, and a gesture so that tapping them opens that app, while swiping up opens the folder.
KLWP is essentially Rainmeter for Android.
If your device has stylus support I recommend Artflow for drawing/image editing
Game: crying suns It’s a full ftl type game that’s on steam as well. Big story. Took me a while to get through it
CamScanner (intuitive and powerful scanner app that processes images exceptionally well and interfaces cleanly with all sorts of other apps) and Hiper Calc Pro (scientific calculator that shows you your input and looks like a classic calculator interface)
There’s an open source pdf scanner that works exceptionally well
That’s great! It’s not super helpful for me, though, since I teach students that often aren’t good at troubleshooting technology issues on their own so I need an app that’s pretty universal and user-friendly. Plus, the question specifically asked about stuff in the Android play store…
The github has download links for fdroid, apk, obtainium, and play store. Here’s the play store link if you want it
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.akylas.documentscanner
I was going to mention camscanner, but it’s been years since I was in the android phone, so I wasn’t sure if it’s even still around.
Minimalist phone Launcher that helps to use addictive apps less. And overall a boring home that demotivates you to use your phone.
Plenty of those for free on F-Droid & IzzyOnDroid.
Tasker. Basically an interface for writing scripts for your phone. Even if you don’t have a use case in the beginning you’ll start finding things to do with it.
I used it to identify the cell towers near my home and turn wifi off when I was out of their range and back on when I was in range. It seemed to help save battery by not constantly looking for wifi networks and I didn’t have to remember to turn it off and on manually.
Cell towers are not wifi, but I think I understand what you mean.
Never said they were lol
At home I want wifi on, and away I want it off. This saves battery so it’s not constantly looking for wifi networks.
I could achieve similar with location service turned on all the time, but that drains battery even more.
Since cellular data is always connected to some cell tower nearby, and Tasker is able to identify the cell tower names, I used the ones near my home as flags to indicate “I’m close to home, therefore turn on WiFi because I’ll be home soon”. And turn it off when I leave my neighborhood.
Ok. I did not see what you meant.
I have a home zone that triggers things. I don’t think location services uses enough battery for me to worry about
How does the home zone work?
For me location service eats my battery up - can’t last a full day with it on.
I do mine from home assistant. I can leave location services, Bluetooth, and wifi, all on without worrying about battery life for the whole day.
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That’s smart!
I have a few triggers that turn on Do Not Disturb mode:
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When I open an app that I doom scroll before I fall asleep and when I wake up.
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When I connect to my doctor’s or dentist’s office wifi.
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I used tasker to display an icon on my status bar to tell me whether auto rotate is enabled or not. I kept lying down on my side forgetting that I had auto rotate on and my display would rotate when I didn’t want it to.
It’s an incredibly specific and minor thing that was annoying me, but tasker let me fix it. It’s a great tool, but can be complicated if you aren’t familiar with scripting. Luckily it’s got some presets and a “basic” mode.
There’s a completely free app (no ads, either) that prevents auto-rotate from actually happening unless you want it to. It pops up an icon when your phone wants to rotate, and it you don’t tap it within the timeout (adjustable up to 3 seconds) then the icon goes away and the rotation never happens. It’s highly customizable, and I just can’t live without it since I found it.
I also find that super annoying!
I created a trigger to disable auto-rotate when I’m using the apps I’m usually browsing while in bed (i.e. doom scrolling social media) but I like your idea.
I migrated to Macrodroid. Much more intuitive and straightforward.
You’ve reminded me that I have premium from like a decade ago. I should have another go with it.
What are some things you use it for if you don’t mind my asking?
Lots of things
- Change my ringtone based on time/location
- Silence phone if my calendar has the word meet or meeting
- Parse a local news website and read the headlines to me after I dismiss my morning alarm
- Set up car mode if it is plugged in and connected to my car’s Bluetooth
- Turn on WiFi based on location
- etc
I have a script which saves my fine location to a Google sheet when I disconnect from my car’s Bluetooth. If, like me, you are the sort of klutz who can lose their car in a two-car garage…
The main thing is a script to stop any media playing and turn off the screen after x minutes, so I can fall asleep watching YouTube or listening to something. There’s probably already an app for that but this is pretty customizable.
Another stupid use is putting the phone on silent while using the camera app because Samsung won’t let you turn off the camera shutter sound.
I’ve got some that pulls the picture from Bing and the picture from NASA and set them to my wall paper and lock screen back grounds.
I’ve got another one that silences my phone when I’m at work or church and not connected to my car blue tooth. I used something similar in college to silence my phone when a calendar event was happening. My phone never made a peep during a lecture! It resets volumes to normal levels after the silent period is done.
I used to get up at 5am and had to get ready for work in the dark so I didn’t wake my family. I’m a klutz and fumbling with my phone’s flashlight constantly just got annoying.
I ended up making a little script so that between 5am and 5:30, shaking the phone turned the flashlight on. After 5:30 the sensor turns off to save battery, since I didn’t really need it at that point.
You can do all kinds of handy little things like that
YMMV depending on your phone manufacturer (or, really, the OS). Some are too locked down to use Tasker, or need annoying workarounds to let it always run.
I completely forgot I bought that once during a discount, but didn’t even have it installed. Started using it now, thanks.
