Last Updated on May 23, 2022
We’re compiling the best free Android apps you can download today, so you can find exactly the best apps without spending an inordinate amount of time exploring the Google Play Store.
There are apps for everything you can imagine, and many of them on the Google Play Store are free to download and use. While there’s a large range to choose from, only some are quality apps. And most free apps in the Google Play Store don’t meet our eligibility criteria. The ones featured here are the cream of the crop!
Given that finding apps that meant our high standards can be difficult, we hope you appreciate this series.
This is a new series with apps being added on a regular basis.
| Multimedia |
 | AntennaPod is a podcast manager and player that gives you access to millions of free and paid podcasts. |
 | foobar2000 is an advanced music player with DNLA support. |
 | Kodi is an award winning media center. |
 | Musicolet is an offline music player sporting an extremely stylish interface. |
 | Podcast Guru is an amazing podcast player with a sublime interface. |
 | RadioDroid 2 is an internet radio streaming app which uses www.radio-browser.info, a community driven radio station directory with the aim of collecting as many internet radio and TV stations as possible. |
 | Radioplayer lets you listen to hundreds of UK radio stations. |
 | Shazam identifies music, movies, advertising, and more, from a short sample. |
 | Skywave Schedules is a shortwave radio listing guide and lets you listen live to remote receivers. |
 | VLC is a fairly complete port of VLC media player supporting a huge range of formats. |
 | Voice Audiobook Player is a simple to use audiobook player. The app sports a good range of features including bookmarks and configurable playback speed. |
| Internet & Networking |
 | Discord lets you communicate directly via voice, video, or text. |
 | Feeder is a RSS Feed Reader which doesn't track your activities. |
 | Gmail is an easy-to-use email app for both Gmail and non-Gmail addresses. |
 | K-9 Mail is an excellent open source email client supporting both POP3 and IMAP protocols. |
 | JuiceSSH is an all in one terminal client including SSH, Local Shell, Mosh and Telnet support. |
 | Remote Desktop lets you work with Windows apps and desktops directly from your Android device or Chromebook. |
 | Tor Browser lets you stay safe while surfing the web. |
 | Tusky is a well designed Mastodon client that works seamlessly. Mastodon is a social network. |
 | WhatsApp is a hugely popular messaging application with more than 1 billion users. |
| Utilities |
 | Cx File Explorer is a powerful file manager with an easy to configure network support function. |
 | CPU-Z is an Android version of the popular CPU identification tool. |
 | FBReader is a slick, fast and highly customizable e-book reader. |
 | Joplin is a popular note taking and to-do application. |
 | KeePassDX is a password manager to help you manage passwords in a secure way. |
 | KOReader is a wonderfully responsive document reader. It’s fast, brimming with features, and highly customizable. |
 | Orgzly is an outstanding outliner. It’s the perfect app for making notes and managing tasks. |
 | PDF Viewer Lite is a lot more than just a PDF viewer. |
 | Pure Writer is a plain text editor which helps the writer focus on writing content. |
 | Termux is a capable terminal emulator and an extremely useful Linux environment. |
 | ZArchiver is an archive management tool. |
| Science |
 | Google Earth lets you discover the world in depth. |
 | OpenWeather offers a simple way to access the latest weather forecast from your Android device. |
 | SkyWiki puts astronomy at your fingertips. |
| Games |
 | Beach Buggy Racing 2 is a 3D off-road kart racing game. |
 | Data Wing is a story-driven, racing adventure with an immersive soundtrack. |
 | DroidFish is a very strong chess playing software sporting an attractive interface with stylish pieces. |
 | Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is a roguelike game of exploration and treasure-hunting in dungeons filled with dangerous and unfriendly monsters in a quest for the mystifyingly fabulous Orb of Zot. |
 | Freeciv is an empire-building strategy game. It's a clone of the classic Civilization. |
 | OpenLierox is an addictive realtime worms shoot-em-up game offering online, LAN, and local games. |
 | OpenTTD is a reimplementation of the Microprose game “Transport Tycoon Deluxe” with lots of new features and enhancements. |
 | Simon Tatham’s Puzzles is a collection of 40 puzzles (39 are included with the Android app). They are re-implementations of existing game concepts. |
 | SudoQ is a sublime implementation of the classic Sudoku logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. |
 | Vector Pinball is a fun pinball game sporting simple vector graphics. |
| Maps & Navigation |
 | what3words is an app to ensure you never get lost again when you're out and about. It offers lots of use cases. |
| Education |
 | AnkiDroid is a simple to use flashcard app. It has a great feature set including spaced repetition, text-to-speech integration, and the ability to sync with AnkiWeb. |
 | GCompris is an educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10. |
 | Sugarizer is a learning platform. It's an implementation of the Sugar Learning Platform offering a whole raft of educational activities. |
If you have any suggestions for other apps that meet the eligibility criteria below, drop us an email at [email protected]. Remember to remove the NOSPAM.
| For an Android app to be awarded our love, it must satisfy the following criteria: |
 | High quality with a good set of features, stable in operation and mature software; |
| | No charge to use the app; |
| | No intrusive ads in the program; |
| | Open source and proprietary software can be included; |
| | Apps where additional functionality is available for a payment can be included where appropriate. |
