15 Best Android Apps in 2022

We’ve come to the end of another year and it’s time for fun yearly roundups. Android apps aren’t quite the draw that they used to be. After all, it’s difficult to break out into a scene where there are already so many excellent apps. Still, we think quite a few made out well this year, and we’re going to talk about them. These are the top Android apps that were released in 2022.

For this list, we sorted through more than 200 apps. There are many more in the cutting room. Our cutoff this year was December 10th, so apps released on or around that date didn’t make it because we couldn’t test them thoroughly first. Thank you for understanding.

Except for the last three apps, the list is alphabetical. We chose them as the best Android apps. We hope you enjoy this read.

AetherSX2 was a PlayStation 2 emulator, which was launched in beta in late-2021. It was released in its first official release in 2022. This app is

It’s great for many reasons. For starters, it’s the first PlayStation 2 emulator on Android ever. It works well. Some features include hardware controller support and save states. You’ll also get stuff like 1080p upscaling, per-game settings, and widescreen patches for select games.

You do need a PlayStation 2 BIOS file, and the developer doesn’t provide one for obvious reasons. It seems to work well on all modern high-end phones. The developer notes that Mali and PowerVR GPUs don’t run the emulator as well as the more popular Adreno GPUs, so your mileage may vary. In any case, it’s nice to have PlayStation 2 support on Android now, along with all the other good emulators.

Console Launcher

Price: $4.99

Console Launcher is a launcher designed for mobile gamers. It’s set up to look like a Nintendo Switch UI, where your games show up as large tiles. You can scroll through your games using the joystick. It’s definitely a neat little feature for people who game with controllers a lot, but a bit niche otherwise.

Some downsides include a lack of customization and less-than-ideal accessibility support, and it’s actually less ergonomic to use without a controller. This certainly isn’t something we’d run on a daily driver, but it’s a unique premise. Kodi is a multimedia platform. Why shouldn’t there be a launcher for gaming? The launcher is available for $4.99 and does not require any in-app purchases.

Daily Diary

Price: 2.99 / Free

It’s a little weird putting a diary app on a best-of-the-year list, but this one is surprisingly good. Daily Diary offers everything you’d expect from a good diary app. You can add photos to your diary entries, have biometric locks, set reminders, create mood tracks, and keep track of your appointments. Most people will find the soft, muted colors and simple-to-understand controls appealing.

The app’s price is one of its best features. Most diary apps require a subscription service. This one is only $2.99 and does not require any additional in-app purchases. Google Drive is used to back up your diaries if you have to switch devices. Its excellent execution is what makes it stand apart from other similar programs. other great diary apps. We know diary apps aren’t the most popular segment on mobile, but this is definitely among the best apps in the category, so we’re writing about it.

DanceFitme

Price: Free trial / $7.99 per Month / $59.99 Per Year

DanceFitme is a mix of a fitness app and a dance app. Create an account, subscribe, and you’re treated to a variety of videos that help you learn how to do some dances while also losing weight. You can find videos of different dances and workout plans to help with your fitness goals. Of course, you’ll learn the steps for the various dances as you do them.

The app can also track your progress and customize your workouts based upon your level of fitness. We wouldn’t recommend a subscription-based fitness app if it didn’t offer those things. This kind of workout isn’t quite my thing, but I definitely see why a lot of people hopped on this one this year. The subscription also isn’t terrible, as many fitness apps go for $9.99 per month or more.

DeepL Translate

Price: Free

DeepL Translate is a foreign language translator. It supports 29 languages currently. It can translate in several ways. You can use your camera to view text, type words and even talk to it to get translations. The UI is simple, but effective, with a few modern flourishes, so it doesn’t look outdated.

It doesn’t support as many languages as the big dogs like Google Translate or Microsoft Translate. These apps are more mature and have been around for years, so it’s still impressive that this app supports more than two dozen languages. Our testing revealed that translations were fast and accurate. It’s nice to see another option in the translation space that isn’t a Google or Microsoft product.

Duolingo ABC is an app for learning for children. This one helps to teach literacy, as indicated in the name. It basically takes Duolingo’s winning formula and applies it to reading. Children learn in bite-sized chunks through stories. The app offers over 700 lessons in reading.

The app also offers offline support, zero advertising, and lessons to children from kindergarten through first grade. You can use the app even if you have reading difficulties. A lot of children’s learning software is much of the same stuff presented in the same way. Duolingo does it differently. This is a great way to teach kids how to read.

Dream by WOMBO

Price: Free trial – $4.99 per Month / $99.99 Once

Dream by WOMBO is Google Play’s choice for its app of the year. We think it’s pretty good as well. It’s an artificial intelligence art tool that can create all kinds of neat images. It specializes in dreamscapes that are vaguely reminiscent of posters you used to be able to buy from Spencer’s back in the 1990s. These images can be shared on social media and used as background images.

It functions a little like a search engine. You just need to enter the nouns you wish to see. The app then creates a dreamscape from those nouns. I found the functionality to have a few glitches. Sometimes it would create the artwork exactly as described. Other times it would skip keywords. There are many apps like this on the Play Store. However, despite its quirks this one does it better than any of its competitors.

Linktree

Price: $5+/Free per Month

Linktree can be used to create a biography. It allows you to create a profile page. The website generates a link that you can insert into your bio on social media profiles. You’ve likely seen Linktree links on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter profiles. The app is an extension to the website, and allows you to create the exact same things as you see on the website.

There really isn’t much to it, and it kind of reminds me of a MySpace profile. You can add your name, information about yourself, likes and dislikes, as well as other details. It allows you to link things like music playlists, videos, podcasts, and other media. This gives me the MySpace vibes. It’s made specifically for sites with short bios, and we see people using them all the time.

NoteIt Widget

Price: Free with all in-app purchases

We’re honestly surprised NoteIt Widget has as many downloads as it does. The app has over ten millions of downloads at the time of writing. It’s a novel concept. The app connects to you and places a widget onto your phone. Once you have connected, you can message the other person directly via the widget by writing words or drawing little doodles.

It obviously won’t replace the utility of standard messaging apps, but we found that it’s a nice little app for couples or best friends. The app tracks streaks in a similar way to Snapchat. You can also buy back your streak with in-app purchases if you break it. This one is a bit more buggy than we’d like for a best-of-the-year list, but we can’t argue with those download numbers. People love this one.

Recover Athletics

Price: Free / $7.99/month / $79.99/year

Recover Athletics is an entirely new kind of fitness app. The main premise isn’t to help you get into shape. Instead, it helps you recover from fitness training in a healthy way. The app offers a variety of tips, tricks and tutorials to help you prevent injury and manage aches and pains. Integration with Strava is another feature that allows you to plan your recovery and get personalized recovery recommendations.

The app is easy to use. Although it takes some time to get used to, most fitness apps take less than a minute. This subscription comes with a cost. It’s cheaper than most fitness apps, but since this is meant to run alongside your primary fitness app, we think it could’ve been a little cheaper.

Symfonium

Price: Free / $3.99

Symphonium is a cloud-based music player. The app allows you to connect to Plex. Subsonic. Jellyfin. Emby. Kodi. It connects to your music collection on your computer, and allows you to play it like a normal player. any other music app. It sounds niche, but there really aren’t any other apps like this on Google Play, and that’s why it’s on this list. We know of no other app that does what this app does better than the one it replaces.

Additional features include song ratings and smart filters, smart playlists and Android Auto support. After everything is set up, it looks and functions just like any other music player. This one is excellent, and we think it’ll end up on some of our best lists within the next year.

Ukulele by Yousician

Price: Free / $14.99 per Month / $139.99 Per Year

Yousician already has a popular app for guitar, singing, and bass. This app is an extension to that app, but only for ukuleles. To be perfectly honest, we’re not sure why the ukulele got its own app instead of just being integrated into the main Yousician app, but we don’t make those decisions. The app works exactly like the main one. Log in to find lessons and learn how you can play the ukulele. There are lessons in tuning, chords, reading sheet music and various picking patterns.

The only problem is the price. It’s substantially more expensive than the base Yousician app at $14.99 per month. The free trial is somewhat basic. We assume it’s because it’s catering to a smaller group of people, but we think it probably should be a bit cheaper. Otherwise, the app works great.

Mastodon is second runner-up

Price: Free

Mastodon’s official app was released in April 2022. Mastodon was flooded with new users months later when Elon Musk purchased Twitter. We can’t think of a better-timed release than this one. The app works well. You can sign into your instance, create posts, and check out what’s going on with the people you follow. It’s a clean experience that isn’t terribly difficult to use once you get set up.

Most bugs that users report are found during the setup process. The rest of the process is quite straightforward. Although the app could use some polishing to keep up with modern social networking apps, it works well without it.

Runner-up: BeReal

Price: Free

BeReal is Google Play’s app of the year. It’s a social network that tries to remove the fake from social media by only giving users a couple of minutes per day to post. The app chooses when you post, so you can’t really plan it. You just take a picture of what you’re doing and go. I find it difficult for influencers to get on this platform. This makes me happy.

The app is very easy to use. You follow your friends, check out their stuff when they post, and that’s it. Since it doesn’t give you a constant stream, you have to leave when you’re done because you have nothing else to do. That’s kind of the charm with BeReal. Although the app works well, there are intermittent network bugs and annoying notifications that can slow it down.

DynamicSpot: App of the Year

Price: Free / $2.49 – $4.99

We’re going out on a limb here and saying that DynamicSpot is Android Authority‘s app of the year. It’s a customization app that mimics the iPhone’s Dynamic Island. It can be set up to work with a variety of apps and in many different ways. It’s a great way to use the notch or pinhole camera on Android phones. It also works very well and, to our knowledge, is the only Dynamic Island app on the Play Store that doesn’t have a ton of bugs.

Some of the ways you can customize DynamicSpot include iOS-style music controls, a countdown timer, battery charging, and sending notification replies from the pop-up — and you can set up your own custom interactions as well. Plus, unlike BeReal, this app actually launched in 2022, is an answer to a 2022 trend, and it’s honestly fun to use. Congratulations, DynamicSpot.

Honorable mentions

Each year, we choose the 15 best apps to rank as the best of the year. However, there are other apps that are very close to making it onto the list. We decided to add ten more honorable mentions because listicles such as these are subjective. You could easily swap them out with almost any other app. Here are our honorable nominations for the top Android apps of the year.

• 28 — 28 is a hybrid fitness app and menstrual cycle tracker. It recommends fitness routines for your body that can be modified based on your monthly cycle. It also tracks your cycles and provides information based upon each phase. With a 4.4 rating on Google Play, and an increasing focus on women’s fitness in Google Play, this app hit the ground running.
• Breathwrk — Breathwrk is a meditation app with breathing exercises. Breathing exercises can be used to control stress, anxiety, depression, or other high-blood pressure issues. The app works well and is very relaxing. The only downside is that it’s pretty expensive.
• Google’s busy year — Google revamped a few of its apps this year, including Google Family Link Google Home. Family Link has been redesigned to be easier to use and manage. Google Home finally has Wear OS support. The company also re-released Google Home. Google Wallet. These changes didn’t fix all the issues, but it seems Google is on the right track with this stuff, at least.
• Lensa — Lensa received significant attention this year as a social media trend. The app converts photos you take into AI-generated images. The app also includes photo editing tools and does a lot of other stuff. Most people are aware of it and use it to do AI stuff. You can create one package for $7.99, but your mileage may vary.
• Lightness — Lightness is an anonymous social media network. Users post stuff as lanterns. You tap those lanterns to read someone’s posts. Since it’s anonymous, people use the platform to post secrets, admissions, emotional stories, and stuff they may not post elsewhere. We don’t think it’ll disrupt the status quo, but it’s a neat idea with good execution.
• Little Lunches — Little Lunches is a meal planner app designed for people with kids. The app can help you create meal plans. You can also include dietary restrictions or calorie intake requirements. It also offers information on meal plans for kids. We find it a bit finicky but we think it is a good idea. Not many meal planners focus on kids.
• MJ PDF Reader — MJ PDF Reader is a well-done, totally free, and open-source PDF reader. It doesn’t have a lot of features and provides a simple but useful experience. You can do things like print PDFs and view them in true full-screen mode, and it’ll remember where you left off when you leave and come back. It’s the best PDF reader launched this year.
• PetStar — PetStar is an entertaining little app. The app takes a picture of your pet and draws a line around the mouth. It will then ask you to sing along with your pet. It’s not a serious app by any stretch, and it’s meant to give you a few minutes of entertainment and laughs. There are many songs in the app, and they keep adding new ones. We don’t think it’s worthy of a top 15 vote, but people seemed to enjoy it.
• Plant Parent — Plant Parent is an app to help you take better care of your plants. It features smart reminders and a Plant ID function. A calendar is also included. Additionally, it has several guides for helping sick plants return to health. The UI is modern and easy to use. Good gardening apps don’t along very often anymore, so we’re just happy to see some competition in the space.
• Wamble — Wamble is a discovery app of sorts. It allows you to find things within one mile of your current location. We don’t think this sort of thing helps all that much for long-time residents of a spot, but travelers can get a ton of use out of something like this. There are chat functions, buy and sale functions, and you can also find events. We think it’s niche, but the concept is good.

We’d love to hear about any other great Android apps that we missed in 2022. You can also click here to check outCheck out our latest Android apps and game lists.