3 apps that make my Pixel rather more enjoyable to make use of

The Google Play Store is house to an enormous library of cellular purposes, masking each style below the solar. Some apps are designed with productiveness in thoughts, whereas others goal creativity, leisure, and extra.

Personally, I like apps which might be pleasant to make use of, whether or not it’s resulting from offering an ingenious utility, providing a visually pleasing user interface, or some mixture of each components. Listed here are three Android apps that make my Pixel telephone a way more enjoyable expertise from the second I get up, to the second I name it an evening.

Groovy – Music Participant

The native music participant of my desires

I like an excellent offline music participant — a lot so, that I’ve beforehand compiled a list of my favorite options accessible on the Google Play Retailer. One entry that did not make that reduce, however that completely deserves its second within the highlight, is an app known as Groovy.

Groovy is a pleasure to make use of. Its embrace of Materials 3 Expressive design rules, along with Materials You dynamic colour theming, make it an ideal match for the Pixel. Actually, I might describe Groovy as a quintessential instance of an app that is so good, I’d have thought Google made it if I did not know higher.

A slick person interface, silky-smooth animations, simple choices for adjusting audio monitor metadata, and built-in help for tune lyrics all come collectively to type an app package deal that feels refined and intuitive. Listening to tunes is an pleasant time by itself, however with Groovy, it is in some way much more enjoyable than normal.

Groovy is offered to obtain and set up at no cost from the Google Play Retailer. Optionally, Groovy Premium will be bought for a one-time charge, unlocking further controls inside the mini participant, a music tag editor, playback velocity and pitch management, and several other different quality-of-life perks.

FlashDim – Dim your flashlight

A flashy little LED utility

On the iPhone, it is simple and handy to regulate the depth and even the sign beam of your rear-racing LED flash module. There’s some evidence to suggest that Google is engaged on incorporating the same operate into base-level Android, however, as of model 16, the function hasn’t appeared but for testing.

Fortunately, the third-party FlashDim app is right here to not solely graft LED flash depth management onto the Pixel, however to supercharge it with extra performance. Along with surfacing the precise variety of mild ranges accessible to your telephone mannequin, the app presents fast entry to an SOS mild sample, in addition to a devoted Morse code utility.

On my Pixel phone, FlashDim has confirmed to be a enjoyable app to mess around with. I’ve loved typing varied phrases into the Morse code textual content entry field, and having the handset flash its LED module accordingly. The addition of haptic suggestions makes for a nice person expertise, too.

FlashDim is a completely free and open-source utility, and it may be discovered over on the Google Play Retailer. It is price noting that the app requires Android 13 and above to operate correctly, as earlier variations of the OS do not help a number of brightness stage controls on the system stage.

BuzzKill Notification Supervisor

Make notifications for you rather than towards you

Regardless of its title, BuzzKill is something however a joy-zapper. The app features as a full-blown notification supervisor, including one other layer of flexibility on high of Android’s already glorious notification system.

BuzzKill offers a complete host of choices, together with a built-in notification cooldown operate, customized alerts, an undo button, secret notifications, auto-dismissal, and extra. Personally, my favourite operate inside the app is the Batch device, which delivers non-urgent alerts in a single, scheduled notification à la Apple’s scheduled notification abstract function for iOS.

I’ve all the time loved scheduling my notifications to reach in bulk on iPhone, and BuzzKill presents the right equal for Pixel. With little or no setup required, the app makes my Android person expertise a extra pleasant one by reducing out anxiety-inducing beeps and vibrations that in any other case are likely to distract me.

BuzzKill is offered on the Google Play Retailer, the place it may be bought for a small single-time charge. As soon as bought, the app options no advertisements, no trackers, and no different data-sharing bits of code. Actually, not like most fashionable apps, BuzzKill would not entry your web connection at any time throughout use.