Google Play Store features thousands of new Android apps every year, but it takes a lot of work for an average user to find the best Android apps from such a huge bunch of newly released apps on the Play Store on their own. We had many useful Android apps released in the year 2023 and I featured some of them in our monthly best apps posts. Since 2023 has almost come to an end, this post is a look back at the top 20 best Android apps of 2023. I’ve handpicked these apps based on their functionality, ease of use, and uniqueness.
Must Read: 45 Best Android Apps Not Available On The PlayStore
20 Best Android Apps of 2023
1. Noterly
Noterly is a simple note reminder app that’s minimal and very easy to use. You can add a task or anything you wanna do shortly and add reminders with a repeat function, so you won’t be missing your important tasks as the app will keep reminding you about them as notifications. So, get it if you need a simple task manager.
2. Screen Time
Screen time is an OpenSource productivity app that displays your phone usage time in a sticky notification. It gets updated every second as you keep using your phone, so you can get a better sense of how much of the day you spend on your phone without having to launch any app, and then use your precious time to do something productive.
3. Touch The Notch
Touch the Notch is one of the best Android apps of 2023 that turns your front camera notch into a shortcut button. You can simply tap the punch hole to perform many actions such as taking a screenshot, toggling the flashlight, launching your frequently used app, and many more. The actions are up to you to set according to your usage. You can set actions to single tap only in the free version. Upgrade if you like to have more actions.
4. C: Simple
C simple is a unique live wallpaper app that uses blobs that move and deform as you interact with them. They are also customizable. You can alter the colors, layers, speed of action, and stuff as you prefer. It even allows you to create static images so you can set them as lock screen wallpapers. I find it cool, you try it and lemme know what you think.
5. Tooly – Tiny Tools Collection
Tooly is an all-in-one tool app that provides you with a huge number of tools of different categories such as texts, image tools, calculation tools, unit converters, programming tools, and more. Using these, you can edit texts, and images, perform calculations, conversions, and whatnot. Apps kinda these come in handy now and then regardless of what you do. So, get this tiny app that weighs just about 5MB. It’ll be useful.
6. Kvaesitso Launcher
This is an Open-source search-focused Android launcher that’s minimal yet feature-rich. The global search of the launcher not only lets you search for on-device apps, contacts, messages, and calendar events but also lets you search for your files, Search for anything on Google, YouTube, and Play Store directly from here including Wikipedia and website previews. The launcher keeps the home screen super clean with only the time and date displayed at the bottom, but if you swipe up you get to access a few widgets with the ability to add a few more widgets if you want.
You can further customize the launcher the way you want. You can change the app grid layout, change icon shapes and size, use external icon packs, Set gesture-based controls, and stuff. And you get this cool little charging animation while your phone gets charged. Overall, it’s super clean and it’s working fine.
7. My link manager
This app makes organizing and managing your web bookmarks easier. Using the app is pretty simple. You put your links in there, organize them, and retrieve them when needed. There is an import and export function as well, so you can back them up. It doesn’t need Internet access, making it a fully offline app.
8. Wallwow
Wallwow is one of the best wallpaper apps of 2023, that not only offers high-quality wallpapers of various categories but also allows you to customize and create wallpapers with these available options. You can create vector wallpapers, and gradient wallpapers with various color combinations, grab the color codes of all colors involved in any wallpaper, and the app also allows you to set any of your videos as live wallpapers. The app also offers a unique live wallpaper called disco wallpaper, which can be customized to your taste for free. It’s a nice one overall.
9. Tap scroll – Perfect Scroll
Tap Scroll is an incredible Android app that brings a handy iPhone feature to Android, letting you scroll back to the top of any app or website page by just tapping the status bar. All you need to do is, Install the app, allow required permissions, and set the actions for single tap, and double tap along with other swipe gestures. Having said that, it works on any app, so get it, comes in handy.
10. Save on Device
This app adds a handy option to the Android share sheet that allows you to save files to your device directly. To save anything, just share it, tap on more options, and then tap the save option to save almost any sharable content to your device directly.
11. Vanilla Music Player
This is one of the cleanest offline music player apps for Android that’s ad-free and follows the material you design. The UI is pretty neat and easy to navigate. The now-playing screen is minimal but beautiful in its way. The music player is minimal, but you get essential features such as playlist support, song metadata editing support, lyric support, and a 5-band equalizer, and the app is also customizable to some extent with different color palettes. Overall, it’s neat, minimal, and most importantly, it’s ad free. So give it a shot.
12. Focus Launcher
This is one of the best Android launchers for you if you want to be less distracted and more productive. The home screen features nothing but the clock, a lunar tracker, and a set of your favorite apps with a neon light theme. You can edit your favorite app list in the launcher settings. Swiping to the left on the home screen lets you access your app drawer with a search bar. In addition, the launcher supports icon packs, lets you hide the status bar, hide apps, and disable the home screen widgets for a much cleaner view. It’s overall clean and a minimal launcher.
13. Swipefy for Spotify
This is a free music discovery app for Spotify that works like Tinder. It suggests songs in the form of cards while the best part of the songs is being played for you to make a decision. You simply swipe left to dislike the song, right swipe to like it, and swipe down to skip it. All of the songs you liked will be directly added to the liked songs playlist on Spotify with the pro version. The app also offers a manual search and a few filters that you can use to discover new music. So, get it if you use Spotify.
14. Safe Space
Safe Space is an open-source Android privacy app that creates a separate space on your phone to store confidential files. The files saved in this storage are not visible to other apps and are encrypted by the system by default. You can simply create folders, and upload your files to them just like how you upload to Google Drive. You can store files of all types securely as it needs to be unlocked every time you launch the app. Also, you can copy and move files among folders created in this space. It’s easy to use and it works completely offline, so it is a safe space.
15. Musify
Musify is an open-source music app for Android that lets you have an ad-free music listening experience and also allows you to save them to your device for offline access. The interface is not the best, but it gets the job done. You can access tending playlists, manually search for songs, create your playlists, and stuff. In addition, you can customize the app to some extent. Having mentioned that, it looks ordinary but works well.
16. Image Toolbox
This mind-blowing open-source app is a single destination for all the image tools you ever need. With the tools the app offers, you can do anything with your images from resizing, applying filters, changing the image format, combining multiple images, image comparing, compressing, cropping to exif data editing, and many more. In addition, you also get a color picker that you can use to get the color code of any color shade involved in any image.
You can spend a few minutes exploring all these image tools and none of them is overly complicated. The UI of the app is clean, it follows the material you design and the animations are smooth as well. The developer seems to have put in some work in the making of this incredible app. So, give it a shot.
17. Gradia Icon Pack
This is a brand new icon pack that sports a colorful gradient look with line style. You get over 3700 distinct colorful gradient icons beautifully designed with white outlines. The app also offers a few wallpapers that match the icons, and you can request for missing icons as well. I got the pack for free when it’s on sale, so go ahead and get it if it’s available for free
18. Namida
This open-source free music player is one of the best-looking offline music players for Android I’ve ever used. It looks great and has a huge set of features that you can use to fine-tune every micro detail of the music player. You can customize the overall vibe of the theme with various available color and animation effects, manage how the music album library should look, customize the behavior of the music player overall, and many more. No need to mention that the app offers all the essential features such as playlist support, sleep timer, certain folders and files filter, tag editor, and many more.
You can also use the app to have an ad-free YouTube experience right here in the app. As of now, you can’t sign in to your YouTube account, you can only search manually for YouTube videos, and the YouTube stuff is a little buggy. So, overall as a music player, it’s good, but it still needs some work to be done.
19. Squawker
This one is a new open-source Twitter client that lets you enjoy an ad-free experience anonymously. You don’t even need to have a Twitter account to follow what’s going on on the platform. You can search for anyone, follow anyone, save their tweets and media to your device, see what’s trending worldwide, and many more without a Twitter account. The app’s appearance is also customizable with the available colors to your taste. And if you want, you can import all your subscriptions from your Twitter account. Overall, it’s one simple and neat Twitter client that you must try.
20. Waterfox: Privacy Web Browser
You must be familiar with Waterfox Browser which is available for Windows and Mac. Now this open-source, privacy-friendly browser has made its way to Android, allowing mobile users to have one more option for privacy-based Android browsers. Unlike other browsers, it eliminates analytics, telemetry, and other unnecessary closed-source integrations, making sure you have a private browsing experience. In short, it blocks online trackers and stops online shopping companies from profiling your browsing habits. Plus, the browser works against online censorship with encrypted DNS support. The browser is customizable to some extent, and it also supports add-ons so you can have an even better browsing experience. Overall, the browser is fast enough and privacy-friendly, so give it a shot.
Wrapping up
Well, these were the best Android apps of 2023. I hope you found the post informative and give some of these a try if not all. Meanwhile, if you think I missed any app, leave it in the comment section, and I will try it and feature it if it’s good enough. See you soon in the next post. Thanks for reading!
