I am covering the top 10 must have Android Apps for 2021 in this post.
As humans, we hate decision-making, and too many choices make us anxious. The fewer the options, the easier our lives are. But you will agree, that ironically, this is not how the world is supposed to be.
These days smartphones are a crucial part of our daily lives, and we choose our apps from the vast number of available apps on the play store.
We know that as users, it is incredibly tricky and cumbersome to figure out which are the best Android apps that will add convenience to our other-wise hectic and time-pressed lives that demand so much from us. Also, we wish there could be simple ways to make our lives more comfortable, convenient, and hassle-free.
And yes, the dilemma of choosing the best app further grows manifold when the Play Store has a multitude of Android app suggestions for you, and new ones keep popping up time and again. At such times, we often rely on our social circle – friends, peers, and acquaintances – for the best recommendations.
What if I shared with you the top 10 must have Android apps, which are easy to use and thoughtfully designed, on your phone?
So worry not, I have tried my best to make your life easy. Because I have done the challenging part for you, I have tried and tested many apps to share the best user-friendly, time-saving, and convenient apps that will make your life as app users and smartphone users more relaxed and comfortable.
So, sit back and relax. Read on to find out the top 10 must-have Android apps on your phone.
Criteria For Picking Up Top 10 Must Have Apps for Android in 2021
I am sure there will be millions out there who will not align with my ranking. If I have to pick up the ten best apps without criteria, I will pick up a food delivery app or a banking app as I use them most of the time. However, I wanted to include the apps that pass specific criteria and are available for most Android user bases irrespective of Geography and any other constraint.
- Removed food delivery apps from the list as not everyone can use them.
- Removed payments and eCommerce apps specific to a country, as they do not serve every geography. Users can have their preferences.
- Removed chat apps such as WhatsApp because I do not have exposure to many of them except a few.
- Removed banking apps as users don’t install the app first and then start their relationship with a bank. Which app will a user install will depend on their banks.
Top 10 Must Have Android Apps in 2021
Evernote
Suppose you keep stumbling upon droves of information in your daily life and feel disorganized managing this treasure trove of information; this Android app, Evernote, will allow you to keep your documents well-organized.
Organized digital document storage also means that they are easy to track whenever you need to refer to them. Be it your work files, links, ideas, medical receipts, health reports, or snippets from the book you are currently reading; your every document can be stored in the Evernote app in a very safe and secure manner.
You may also click pictures of something interesting that you stumble upon and maintain in your digital repository by using the Evernote app.
The goodness of Evernote doesn’t end here because, with the Evernote app, you can sync a plethora of your documents, files, photos, receipts, snippets from book highlights, and reports across multiple devices such as desktop, tablet, and phone.
You can share the content from your emails to Evernote and vice versa. You can also use the sync feature to keep your family, friends, and colleagues aligned on specific common topics. Evernote helps you save a tremendous amount of your time and efforts, gives you fewer reasons to be disorganized, and helps your work efficiently to accomplish both your personal and professional goals alike.
Though the app does have in-app purchase options for some of the premium features (primarily around the size of notes and cloud storage), I found the app’s basic free version good enough for my usage.
Just a warning, the notes will not be present offline if you are not on the premium model.
So, what are you waiting for now?
Head to the Play Store, download the Evernote app today.
Get all your files organized now, and experience how your life feels more organized than before.
PicsArt
We know that you love embellishing your pictures and videos. You also like to share them on social media for all the artsy folks out there.
So, here is an interesting Android app that makes this process super easy and time-saving for you. I recommend you this super awesome picture and video editing Android app – PicsArt.
Crop, tilt, add stickers, make a collage, create doodles, draw or add frames. You can do a zillion things with your pictures and videos using this easy-to-use Android app.
It allows you to edit your photos and videos with just a few clicks and taps. So wait no more.
Whether you want to make a Birthday video for your best friend or congratulate your sister for her graduation, express your joy and happiness by using this all-in-one picture editing, video editing, and collage-making Android app – PicsArt.
Last moment picture collages for a greeting card? Worry not.
Tap on the PicsArt app.
Download the PicsArt app and unleash the Picasso within you because each one is an artist with the PicsArt app. So, set your creative juices flowing by giving wings to your ideas using this Android app, PicsArt.
This is one of the top 10 must have Android apps in 2021. If you are a photographer running short on time and are looking for a quick solution to pacify yourself – Go For It.
Habit Tracker
Yes, we all know what a task it is to build new habits and get rid of the old ones. Habit building puts our patience and tolerance to the test.
It takes so much to build a habit. Many a time, it feels a daunting task to keep oneself motivated to move towards creating a particular routine.
Well, after all, we humans are all creatures of habits. One slight change in a routine, and boom! Our day goes for a toss! The power of practices, you see?
Check out this excellent Android app, Habit Tracker. It is figuratively a personal-habit-police-man that will be your buddy in managing your good and bad habits.
From reading a chapter a day to eating an apple a day and working-out thrice in a week to consuming eight glasses of water a day, set all your goals in the Habit Tracker app and leave your worries there.
Trust me; this app will contribute immensely in transforming you as a person and as a professional. It will make you to stick to the good habits by setting your goals, timeline, and schedule. This will help you get rid of the bad habits.
That’s not all. You can also connect with the like-minded folks out there who share common goals with you. Well, isn’t it super interesting to follow dreams shared by larger groups?
I think that’s enough motivation to pull you out of the blues when you don’t feel like following a routine to build a habit. Habit building just got so very easy with this Android app, Habit Tracker!
Download the Habit Tracking app today and take control of your life. Watch yourself transform into a better person with every single passing day.
Goodreads
I understand the hassles of hunting for the best books, getting recommendations. I also find it difficult staying updated with the latest books and authors in the world.
And yes, visiting a library or a bookstore to check out the new books is troublesome. We feel you.
So all the bookworms, this Android app, Goodreads, is one of the best things out there. This Android app helps you connect with your friends and stay updated with the books they’ve read. You can browse a whole library of books, and manage them using your ‘to-read’ and ‘read’ list.
You can read and write reviews for millions of books in space and recommend your social circle. The icing on the cake is the challenges you can participate in. This ensures the reader is always motivated to grab new books.
From romance to self-help, from business to philosophy, and from fiction to humor, Goodreads will give you a sneak-peek into every book genre and every other book under the Sun.
The world of books, authors, and book-lovers just got well-connected with the Android app, Goodreads.
This is definitely one of the top 10 best Android apps in 2021 specially for the readers out there.
It is an unbelievably unique and user-friendly app that every single book-lover ought to have on his phone! Stop there right now! Download the Goodreads app now!
Kindle for Android
I’m a massive fan of comics, so readers like me can understand that comic books are always associated with colors. Reading bright, colorful looking comics in black and white does not make anyone happy.
Unfortunately, in a standard Kindle device, the comics comes in black and white. Thanks to Kindle devices as most Kindle devices cannot handle colors.
Sometimes, I was reading comics on my previous Kindle device till I found the Kindle app.
I was always skeptical about it. I thought it would not match the way a book renders on the device.
However, all these things went away when I installed the first version of Kindle and started reading comics in it.
Right from my childhood, I’ve been a big fan of Indian comics. Unfortunately, a lot of them are extinct, and they do not sell on the Internet anymore.
Somehow I got hold of a few of them in PDF form. By sending these files to a particular email address assigned to me by Amazon (which is a core Kindle functionality), I could host them onto my Kindle app.
In the form factor of a small tablet (anything more than 7 inches), the comics correctly render how they should have rendered and take me back to my childhood.
I would recommend this app to everyone who is a reader but cannot carry the Kindle with them all the time. It’s a cheap and good recommendation for people who do not have a Kindle.
Audible
The one app which I recommend to everyone whether you like to read books or not is Audible.
In the fast-moving world where the boundary between work and life is diminishing, it is challenging to find personal time. Watching television can be one way to get passive entertainment (switch on the TV while you work). Unfortunately that does not add much beyond a limit.
In my personal experience, reading a book or listening to a story soothes me much more than just watching television or videos on the internet.
When my wife introduced me to Audible, I was not inspired to download it. I always believed, an audiobook will snatch away the feelings of holding a book from me.
I also felt that I would be doing wrong to my bookshelf and cheating on all the kept books, by bringing their replacement.
How wrong I was.
The moment I downloaded the app on my iPad, I was overwhelmed and have never looked back. The quantity, along with the quality of books available on the platform, just blew me away.
The app comes with two free books in the first month along with the download. Post 2 books or one month, the user is supposed to pay a small monthly fee. Rs. 199/- which is very small compared to the benefits and happiness this app brings to the face.
A must-have in your devices.
This app has to be in Top 3 in the list of top 10 must have Android apps in 2021.
Pacer App
For the past many years, fitness apps and fitness bands are making a presence felt in the market. Most of these bands come with their app, synced with the band add capturing the data.
With a considerable number of cheap fitness bands available in the market, it’s a Golden time for customers to buy one and start tracking their daily fitness regimen. It has its advantage that users are now more health-conscious. They’re chasing their workouts, following their steps & calories. However, one of the more significant problems it has brought is that the data is very app-centric.
If you shift to a new fitness band or you lose one, you lose your data along with that. Often, customers go with the cheaper bands first and then, based on their activity and interest, move to the next level bands.
I take my example. I started first with MI band 2, then moved to MI band 3. After losing both of them, I have a fitness band by a company called Fitbit now. Both MI and Fitbit have their algorithms to capture the steps have their apps to capture the steps, and now when I’m on Fitbit, I’ve lost all the data I caught on the MI band. More than the steps, it is the sleep data that matters more to me. Given my lifestyle and a thin line between Work and Non-Work hours, adequate sleep means a lot.
To solve this problem, the app which I’m talking about – pacer comes into the picture. This app integrates with many of such platforms, including Fitbit am I bad, and consolidates the data from all the possible sources you can be wearing.
This app can connect to Google Fit, Garmin, and even your phone to capture the data. Data from one source or app can vary a lot from data from another source. As per my observation, there is a significant difference in steps counted by Fitbit Vs. MI band. My wife has a Garmin, and she also talks about the data difference between Garmin and MI band apps.
So, consolidating 2 data sources in one is always a good option if you’re too conscious about recording. You don’t care about the steps; you care about the activity you do right because it gives you a clear picture of what you are doing.
I will rate this app as one of the top fitness apps available.
This app also allows me to create a group of like-minded enthusiasts very easily. We can post monthly or daily challenges in the Groups. We can then rank ourselves against the other members of the group. It keeps us motivated to walk and to care about our fitness. On the gamification front, this app does well. You get a batch upon completing every challenge. It might be small but a nice feature to have.
This app comes in 2 versions the free and paid. While the free version comes with all the necessary functionalities needed to capture your activities, I recommend going with the premium version. Priyam version comes at slightly more than ₹2000 per year, translating to less than ₹200 a month. I believe this is a minimal price for the features you can get to better your health.
Grammarly Keyboard
If you are a writer who loves to write eloquently, whether as a hobby or as a profession, here’s your go-to Android app that will make your life as a writer super easy breezy.
Check out this Android app, Grammarly Keyboard, which is nothing less than a virtual school teacher who will help you deliver the best-written content by correcting your grammar, phrases, vocabulary, and punctuation. That’s not all; this Android app, Grammarly, also gives you relevant and super apt suggestions to replace some of the long-form words and phrases.
Do you see how writing essays, documents, emails, and messages can get more comfortable and quicker using this app?
What else can you ask for as a writer? As a writer, you can now invest your time thinking out of the box and letting your creative ideas come in because Grammarly is here to take care of the rest.
This Android app is sure to help you save the massive amount of time that you otherwise spend on editing and proofreading your written content.
So, get your hands on the Grammarly app now, and make your writing clear, crisp, and compelling.
Writing has just got a lot easier and a fun activity. It is time to put on your thinking caps and unleash the Shakespeare within you!
This app comes in two versions – Free and Paid. I found free to be suitable for most of my needs. The paid version also allows you to correct your sentence structure and tone, which I thought is not needed in my writing style, which is more factual than promotional. However it is surely an add on to have if you are into creative writing.
Amazon Prime
Yes, you read it right; it’s Amazon Prime. Wait, isn’t it a program rather than an app? Yes, you are right Amazon prime is a program, but its apps are fantastic. This program is one of the best subscription program available today because of:
- Faster and free e-commerce delivery
- Excellent music app in the form of Prime Music
- Superb video app in the form of Prime Video
So I would like to highlight two primary apps which this program brings to the user. The first one is Amazon Prime Music, probably one of the best music apps. A clean interface, easy to use search-bar, option to download the audio to play it offline – this app has it all.
The app comes with a vast library. I downloaded songs in the range of 150 GB only to realize I’m just wasting my space when I can easily access them online. You name an album, and it is available on prime music. Also, the way it integrates with Alexa is incredible. Just open the app, ask Alexa to play a song for you or maybe search for a song for you, and that’s it. I have a Google home, so I do not plan to buy a similar value product like Alexa. However, this app has given me all the reason to use it on the app to search and play music.
Amazon Prime Music is a must-have app for all music lovers out there.
The second app which I would like to talk about is Amazon Prime Video. With the advent of platforms like Android, video and movie publishers can directly publish their films to the audience rather than going through the old school channels or theatres.
Off late, the market has seen a surge in high-quality video series with top-notch actors and star cast. A lot of these series are directly from the publishing House of these apps. While Netflix has original series like She, Masaba Masaba, and Betal, Amazon Prime has highly successful series like Mirzapur and Paatal Lok in India.
What’s good about the Amazon Prime Video app is that it comes as a complimentary subscription with your Amazon Prime membership (Get it here). So with one membership, you can have all the benefits on Amazon online shopping, Amazon Prime Music, as I mentioned above, and Prime Video app.
Moreover, the availability of supporting products like Chromecast, Amazon fire stick, and low-price smart televisions are making these apps the go-to apps for television. I have all the subscriptions ranging from Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney hot star to epic Zee5, and more.
Amazon Prime Video is one of the apps which is on the top of the list.
Inshorts
Are you the one who likes to stay abreast of all the current happenings from global politics, trade, technology, sports, entertainment, and business?
Do you find it super tough to squeeze out time from your hectic schedule to get your hands on the daily newspaper or to sit in front of the television?
Here is an Android app, Inshorts, that will feed you national and international news on the go.
Inshorts offers snackable news-content in English and Hindi, which you can consume with just a few swipes.
It covers most of the popular news genre and summarizes and provides short brief news in snippets of 60 words. You can always stay updated with the current affairs while saving both your time and efforts.
Whether in an elevator, in a queue, on public transport, or at the office lunch table, grabbing news bytes is made convenient and easy like never before with this Android app, Inshorts.
That’s not all. If you find a piece of exciting news which you would like to share in your social circle and have further discussion on the topic, you can do that as well! Because, this news app, Inshorts, allows you to easily share brief news with just a tap of your thumb.
With the Inshorts app, the global and national news is literally at your fingertips as you can consume the information anywhere and everywhere as per your time and convenience.
Consuming news and fueling your brain has just got easier. Download this app and stay at the forefront when discussing and debating about all the latest affairs, be it in politics or business.
Concluding Remarks on Top 10 Must Have Android Apps in 2021
This is just a view from me based on my usage and use cases (as a Product Manager I use this term more than a normal person for sure). This blog post in no way is meant to demean or lower the other apps present in the Play Store.
Feel free to comment in the comments section if you think there are other apps to be included in this list. I am ensuring that I will review the recommendations for sure and include them in my list if they are useful.
If you are still reading this, I thank you for being with us all through and making it till here. So, this was our compilation of the top 10 Android apps that is sure to take good care of your daily habits, goals, news consumption, reading, travel and much more. I highly recommend you to use these top 10 Android apps so that your personal life as well as your professional life moves up a notch higher and you enjoy a life that is enriched intellectually and emotionally.
If you use some of them already, congratulations, go and download the rest. If you don’t yet use any of these apps, download all the mentioned apps today and save yourself the time, efforts and worry.
Come on, there is so much to do in life with so little time on our hands! I hope this piece has left you better than it found you and it helps you live a more fulfilling life by working and living more effectively and efficiently. Happy scrolling your way through the apps! Cheers!
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