Any suggestions for paid one time purchase apps on the Google play store?
Read Era is technically free, but I paid for premium years ago and have never regretted it. I can open any kind of uncorrupted book file, from the Amazon reader format to PDF to epub, and everything else I’ve ever come across. It has a great search function, and the ability to file a book into a custom ‘Collection’. You can edit the details of a book, like adding Author or pusblisher info, add your own personal notes to a page or highlighted quote, see an aggregate of all your highlights in a particular file, and adjust the font, background color, and contrast to your hearts content.
I make my whole family use it now, cause I love it so much and Premium works on Family share.
I bought moon reader 7 years ago and still use it.
- OSMAnd+
- Symfonium
MiXplorer - https://mixplorer.com/
A file explorer allowing for me to transfer files over the network. When Solid Explorer suddenly didn’t seem to want to do network transfers anymore (likely because Windows updated something), I waited for that app to update to fix the issue. It never did. I found that MiXplorer was a good alternative that transfers files over the network just fine and works nice and fast as well. The interface takes a bit to get used to (meaning it isn’t the same as Solid Explorer) but the app is certainly worth using. Importantly, I can transfer files over the network without issue again.
Notably, this app is free to download (from XDA) however the Google Play version is not free. The Google Play version (which supports development) is a one time paid fee.
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.
Don’t know how you got there. Seems to me they meant when they don’t detect being connected to the cell towers used at home, then they automatically switch off Wi-Fi (and possibly turn it back on when they do detect a connection to those towers).
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.
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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What are some things you use it for if you don’t mind my asking?
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
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.
You’ve reminded me that I have premium from like a decade ago. I should have another go with it.
I completely forgot I bought that once during a discount, but didn’t even have it installed. Started using it now, thanks.
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.
Not after they have been acquired by analytics company Branch
Nova was amazing but they’ve been bought out. I tried Niagra Launcher and after being frustrated with a new UI, I absolutely love it.
Fair enough! Everyone has a different flavor palette. It also takes a week to get used to. After that one week, I never went back.
Yeah, I’m with you on that. I tend to install a ton of interesting apps when I see them, and categorize them into groups (many apps fit multiple groups) so when I’m looking to do something in particular the apps that might fill the need are together to try it with. If those search launchers allowed for adding multiple tags to each app for categorizing and searching, then they’d probably work well enough for me to try.
Also bought Nova Launcher Prime, but they were apparently acquired in the last year so now Nova is spyware? Anyway, I switched over to Kvaesitso and couldn’t be happier.
nova prime + netguard to keep it off the internet has kept me using it. “search focused” launchers are not how I use my phone and nothing else has all the features nova does without being able to just dump the stupid home screen search bar.
Macrodroid. It is like Tasker, but with a much much better UI.
Templar Battleforce is a great little turn based strategy game with a squad of persistent troops fighting across missions.
Tasks.org is a wonderful open-source todo/task app, that has a low-cost monthly subscription to use it’s syncing ability. It’s worth it to support FOSS wherever we can.
Subscriptions, no matter how low, are the antithesis of a buy once app.
Why are you even commenting with this
Because it’s supporting FOSS, and it’s one of the few foss apps on the play store iirc that let you pay for it.
Then make your own post. Just because its worth supporting, doesnt mean its appropriate for this.
Have some bloody respect please
Worth noting that it also has a bunch of free alternatives for sync, some self-hostable, and you were talking about the paid service hosted by the Tasks.org devs.
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.
I use Paprika 3 extensively.
I find recipes online, download them to the app stripped of all the online recipe bloat. It sorts all the information automatically, including notes and nutritional info. I can check off ingredients and highlight directions, edit tags, compile menus, add my own notes and write my own recipes, it automatically provides a grocery checklist, has a serving calculator to adjust amounts for whole recipes, built in timers, and that’s just the basics off the top of my head.
It’s free up to a certain amount of storage but I think all the features are available.
Came here for this. Best app I own.
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)
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.
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
FL studio is pretty good. Got it ages ago and it still gets updates
Just wanted to add that it’s a music sequencing/composition/recording tool. I also bought it some 20 years ago and they really delivered the lifetime free upgrade thing - bought some upgrades and plug-in packs now and then nonetheless - - great tool. I feel that presently, I use roughly 20% of its features, but I never find the time to dig deeper.
edit: refering to the Desktop version
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
PhotoPills
Invaluable as a photographer. I think it’s closed source though which is a shame.
