Any suggestions for paid one time purchase apps on the Google play store?
Threema!
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.
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.
I love Simple Audiobook Player+. The UI is super minimal (and really maxes out the whole OLED black thing if you choose it) without compromising on features that are kind of essential for audiobooks (e.g. delayed pause/sleep timers, speed settings, volume boosting, an EQ). My favorite thing is the “undo seek” button. I’m an oaf who is constantly inputting accidental touches. When I was using Audible, I’d have to manually find where I was after accidentally hitting the next chapter button or moving the dot on the progress bar. SABP lets me just undo that shit.
It hasn’t been updated in a while, but it doesn’t need updating when it does its job so well. There are no ads, no marketing notifications, just books. It’s like a program from
coreutilsin app form. It might be a bit ugly or outdated looking, but I’m about that.Smart audiobook player is great, but I do wish we had an open source alternative. The audiobookshelf app is almost there, but it still requires a self-hosted server I believe.
Smart Audiobook Player is different from Simple Audiobook Player. I actually didn’t know about Smart ABP, it looks pretty nice!
I agree, I’d prefer a FOSS option that’s self-contained. The only server I need is one that I can rsync books down from.
Balatro
I think my cousin told me he really likes this game. Is it really worth the price?
I didnt enjoy it but my friends that do have lost days to it lol
I got it yesterday, it’s bloody solid. Did tend to demolish my battery a bit, but that night just have been because time was dissolving before by very eyes. If you commute or have to burn time a lot (I spent a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms recently) then it’s amazing m no microtransactions either
Yes
Torque and a $5 BT car computer dongle. It tells you everything about your car. You can see what warning lights mean and clear the codes.
What are the main things you use it for? All I ever do is change tires and oil. Both my cars are old, but have never broken down.
To oversimplify, your car maintains a list of faults, and if that list isn’t empty, it’ll turn on the check engine light. An obd2 code reader let’s you see those codes. I can vouch that these Bluetooth readers + torque are the cheapest way to get these codes without going to a parts store. Even if you have no intention of doing your own work on your car, it’s good to have an idea what the problem is so your mechanic doesn’t rip you off.
They generally only return obd2 codes though, which are required by law for emissions. Many automakers keep extra, proprietary codes that require expensive, proprietary tools to read.
I’m not the person you replied to, but it’s great for telling you why the check engine light is on. If you’re somewhere that requires emission testing: you can diagnose if you have an exhaust leak, bad O2 sensor, clogged catalytic converter, etc. Besides that: its good just to know if the check engine light can be safely ignored.
Stardew Valley
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 migrated to Macrodroid. Much more intuitive and straightforward.
What are some things you use it for if you don’t mind my asking?
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’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.
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.
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.
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.
Sleep as Android
It’s just a really great alarm clock app, but with tons of other sleep tracking functionality. I’ve always had trouble sleeping through my alarms, but I never do with this.
If you run Home Assistant, Sleep as Android can publish events to an MQTT broker so you can create automations based on those events, like “smart_period”, “awake”, “not_awake”, “alarm_alert_smart”, etc.
I used tasker to slowly ramp up my bedroom lights before my alarm goes off. Makes it easier to get up and not as jaring.
Slice and Dice is a very entertaining one time buy game. No bullshit in game purchases, no ads, I think developed by a singular guy.
Slay the spire, balatro and Peglin also fit here.
Amazing indie games, all one time buys.
Symfonium is an awesome music player that’s a one-time $5 purchase.
Great question, btw.
It was the first (only?) app where I was baffled at the features compared to the price. It’s a joy to use. If you self-host music, it beats the competition by miles
And the developer is super responsive. I pointed out a bug and once he was able to reproduce the problem, he released a fix by the next day.
I wish sonos had better interoperability, but I did discover if you make a group of speakers and then cast to the “primary” speaker with symfonium, it broadcasts to the whole group.
Was my only issue with it, but that’s 100% a “sonos is shit” problem, not the app.
Trying to use up some playstore credit. I don’t have time for a one month subscription, I just want to buy it now and use it later.
HiPER Calc Pro. A great scientific calculator I use constantly. (There is also a unpaid, ad-supported version, and the ads weren’t too intrusive the last time I tried it)
Qalculate is now on Android.
Others have recommended other file explorers, but I use FX and rather like it.
FX is one of the only 2 apps I ever paid for and it’s great. I needed something to access SMB shares and it has always worked wonderfully. It’s good for poking around in the file system on the phone too. There may be better stuff out since I bought it years ago but I’ve never had a reason to check.
I’ve been using FX File Explorer since 2012. It’s straight up the best file manager on Android, especially when you use SMB and SFTP. Multi window makes moving things around easy as, and the built in text editor works a treat. Being able to share images from apps to FX’s “Save As” option is awesome to. It means every app can save where you want.
No idea why it isn’t more popular compared to the alternatives.
Just to mention another file explorer, Solid Explorer is great especially becase it’s easy to access Google Drive without having to use the Google drive interface.
MiXplorer: Tabbed file explorer with many features. You can get it for free from their website, but it’s available paid on Google Play.
Symfonium: Music player compatible with many backends, such as local storage, WebDAV, Subsonic (which includes Ampache, Navidrome)
aCalendar+: Calendar app with many widgets. Best part is the persistent notification, which shows what’s happening today, and will happen tomorrow.
Cryptomator: Cross-platform file encryption program, also open source.
Smart audiobook player, fit notes. That’s all I got and they’re kind of niche
Fit notes is free? Is it a different one?
You can donate and unlock some things
