Smartphone apps freeware

Tired of your stock launcher, looking to optimize your home screen performance, or just looking to customize your device's UI? Nova Launcher is among the best Android launchers , offering loads of cosmetic and utility customizations with minimal performance overhead, letting you set your home screen just right without slowing down your phone.

There are a lot of options to work through, from color themes to icon packs, scrollable docks to app drawer customizations, folder settings and infinite scrolling.

The Nova team is never content to rest on its laurels, continuously adding new features, such as Sesame Shortcuts, animations, new adaptive icon shapes and other improvements geared toward recent Android versions. While many customizations are available in this best free Android app, others such as gesture controls are gated behind the premium version. Download: Nova Launcher. In addition to being a top-notch running and cycling tracker — we think it's the best running app you can download — Strava adds gamified features to give the usual run-tracking recipe a competitive edge, whether you're monitoring your runs, bike rides, or swims.

The app records your running speed, distance traveled, time and course taken, but also combines it with leaderboards, achievements and challenges.

A premium subscription improves on the formula with filtered leaderboards, the ability to create exercise goals and view more detailed analytics and more. But the free version is enough for basic tracking. Download: Strava. Podcasting platform Castbox combines a clean and navigable interface, a good selection of podcasts, and powerful podcast audio searching to deliver an excellent mobile podcatcher and one of the best free Android apps.

Users can sign in with Gmail, Facebook, or Twitter, and then search and subscribe to podcasts, download episodes for offline listening and sync their subscriptions across multiple devices. You can stream podcasts through Chromecast or Amazon Echo. A premium tier of Castbox removes subscription limits, allows for homepage customization, and puts you on priority for customer support and new features. Download: Castbox. Now that Dark Sky is gone from Google Play , AccuWeather provides Android users with timely and detailed weather forecasts, from day outlooks to the hyperlocal MinuteCasts.

Forecasts come with animated weather info, radar maps, detailed summaries, and push notifications for extreme weather alerts in the US. Extra features include AccUcast, a system for crowd-sourced warnings on hazardous weather and road conditions, as well as customizable forecast details, weather-related videos, and Wear OS support so that you can get forecast info at a glance on your smartwatch.

Download: AccuWeather. For a bit more snark with your weather report, check out Carrot Weather. This free Android app delivers the forecast with a hefty side order of biting commentary. Carrot Weather pulls data from Dark Sky to provide current, hourly, and 7-day forecasts leavened with sarcastic humor to cushion even the gloomiest outlook.

Infographics put useful information in quick reach, with more detailed meteorological data available as you tap and swipe. You can even configure Carrot's sense of humor to be friendly, snarky, or murderous, with the ability to set how political the AI's jokes can get. While you can enjoy Carrot Weather for free, a Premium Club subscription removes ads and unlocks features like a Weather Time Machine and widgets.

Download: Carrot Weather. Waze is a godsend to many motorists, providing accurate, time-saving turn-by-turn navigation that takes advantage of traffic data and crowdsourced incident reports. You select your destination, and then Waze uses mapping data and traffic information pulled from a variety of sources including official data as well as your fellow Waze users to automatically create a recommended route, complete with turn-by-turn directions.

The app is remarkably adaptive, automatically adjusting routes based on the latest traffic info, as well as shifting routes on the fly should you miss a turn. In addition, Waze can display crowd-sourced incident reports, the cheapest gas stations along your route and other extras. Download: Waze. If you find yourself wasting a lot of time with repetitive internet tasks, or just want to automate tasks on your phone, try IFTTT.

The app comes with a variety of pre-built "applets" that automate tasks like backing up photos to cloud accounts, messaging your roommate or family if you're near the grocery, or having your smart lights turn themselves on when you return home from work. In addition to the pre-built applets in this best free Android app, users can also build custom tasks from these applets and services, combining multiple tasks and triggers in an "If This, Then That" structure from which the app takes its name.

Passwords and login credentials are a peculiarly internet age hassle. Thankfully password managers such as Lastpass can keep that hassle in check, serving as a mobile password vault that encrypts and stores your logins and automatically fills them in when using apps or signing on to websites.

In addition to keeping track of your logins, Lastpass can generate strong passwords and store encrypted data; it also supports fingerprint scanners. Cross-platform syncing is free to all users, so you can sync your password vaults between your Android phone or tablet and other devices such as your PC, Mac, or iPhone. Download: LastPass. Looking for something a bit more appealing than the standard emoji that come with your Android smartphone? Bitmoji is the app for you.

With Bitmoji's help, you can create your "personal emoji" that look like you and more effectively communicate whatever you might be thinking or feeling. It's a neat and popular app that works in Snapchat or anywhere else you're communicating with others. Download: Bitmoji.

Mint is one of the most popular personal finance tracking solutions online, and you can take it mobile with this dedicated app from Intuit. Track, budget, and manage your finances all in one place so you can see where you're spending and where you can save. Keep track of your savings, checking accounts, and credit or debit cards, input transactions, and set reminders for things like bill payments to avoid late fees. It might feel a little dry and dull itemizing and tracking your expenses and purchases, but it can make a real difference in your budgeting, and the Mint app helps by putting your budget and spending information in clear and readable graphs and charts.

Download: Mint. The best free Android apps include a versatile, all-in-one media player that'll play just about any file format that you can throw at it VLC for Android is the mobile version of the popular desktop media player. VLC is designed to play just about any file format out of the box, from ubiquitous.

In addition to playing local files, VLC for Android also supports network streaming and media library organization. Download: VLC. There are some questions about its privacy policy and we recommend reading it if those things concern you.

Cookmate is arguably the best individual cookbook app on mobile. A lot of people have a lot of dietary wants and needs so the use of a personal cookbook app benefits a lot of people. This one is particularly nice to use. You can create custom recipes from scratch, complete with instructions and an ingredients list.

Additionally, you can import recipes from virtually any website. The UI is clean and easy to use plus there is cloud backup, even in the free version. The premium version is a yearly subscription, but all it really does is increase the number of recipes you can sync or you can just use the Dropbox option. Of course, there are many other excellent recipe and cooking apps here if you want to see more.

The notifications also let you know if a new account was opened in your name. NerdWallet is a great alternative to this.

Check out some budget apps for Android for some other money stuff too. It can also sync between devices so your saved words go with you. SwiftKey is also great in a different sort of way and there are other great Android keyboards here as well.

These apps focus primarily on office use for documents, spreadsheets, and slideshows but also work for note-taking, backing up your photos, and storing whatever file you can think of.

These are all great free Android apps. You can also find more office apps options here if you need more choice. Imgur and Giphy are two image databases. Most of those awesome pictures you see on Facebook, Twitter, etc come from here. Imgur also happens to be the image upload service that most people use on Reddit.

Both Giphy and Imgur are completely free to download and use. Plus, you can upload your images to Imgur without limits for sharing to various places. There are other funny apps on Android, but we like these two the best. Musicolet is an intriguing option for local music playback. It does all of the basics, including playlists, tag editing, organizational features, file browsing, and embedded lryics LRC support.

You also get an equalizer, a sleep timer, widgets, lock screen controls, Android Auto support, and more. It covers basically all standard use cases and it still piles more on top. We also quite like the simple, effective UI. You can check out other music app options here as well if you need to or here for music streaming apps if you want that instead. The desktop and mobile apps are easy enough to set up and the UI is functional.

There is a pro version with some extra features, but the free version does the basics just fine. There are other great cloud storage services , but Resilio Sync is excellent for people on a budget. There is a pro version, but it adds things like calendar support and other additional features. The free version of this is far above what most other to-do list apps offer. However, the free version functions better than most free to-do list apps.

There are also other great options for to do list apps too. Zedge is pretty much a one-stop shop for things like wallpapers, ringtones, notification tones, and alarms. There is a very large selection of all of those things available in a variety of genres including fantasy, mainstream, funny, and pretty much whatever else you can think of.

AWS went down hard, yet again - here's what happened. It might be time to consider running Ubuntu on your smartphone. Can't get a PS5? Sony may try to sell you a PS4 instead.

Boring's Las Vegas Tunnel is no wormhole.