Best Free Android Apps

The best free Android apps for moving files, watching movies, messaging, driving across town and more. Having a clear, real-time list of the devices attached to my home network is a huge time saver. Fing provides this for me without any extra effort. It even provides me with the assigned IP addresses, device manufacturer name and hostname for each appliance. Fing goes further by providing me with ping, traceroute and DNS lookup options. Reddit is a guilty pleasure of mine. But rather than bother to load up Reddit in Chrome, I prefer to use BaconReader. Its UI is intuitive, simple to use and runs very smoothly. I also like that I can share comments or a direct link to a Reddit post with minimal screen presses. I spend more than a fair amount of time in SSH these days, between checking logs and working with my crontab. I've been known to monitor server performance or track down issues, while using JuiceSSH on my Android phone.

I need SSH access to Debian ARM on a Pogoplug, Ubuntu Server on a Raspberry Pi and Ubuntu MATE and Arch (Antergos) dual-booting on my main rig. With JuiceSSH, I have simple access to all of these machines. Add in Dynamic DNS and I have SSH access from anywhere in the world. The biggest thing that sold me on JuiceSSH vs other related apps are the plugins available. I'm a cord cutter and my TV comes primarily from Netflix and Hulu, with my DVD movies being backed up to a Plex server here at my house. Out of all of the devices available, I've always returned to Roku. Not only does their set-top box do everything I need, Android has a great Roku remote app in the Play Store. With the Roku app I can manage my channels and control the Roku box. I can even add new channels to my Roku box. Hulu or Netflix. Even searching for video content with the Roku app is dead simple thanks to the keyboard built into the app. I manage no more than two NFS shares, since most of my shares these days are Samba based.

This is due to me living in a cross platform home and naturally, Samba makes the most sense in terms of compatibility. AndSMB provides me with quick access to my LAN-based Samba shares. It also means I can add files to my Samba shares from my Android device, should the need come about. As a rule, I avoid sharing files between my phone and PC over bluetooth. Using my LAN is far more effective and much faster. Still, sometimes I need to connect my phone to my computer to transfer data. To make this possible, I run the Astro Bluetooth app on my phone for local OBEX FTP support. After trying a number of alternatives, I've found this app to be the most reliable with larger file transfers. Growing up the era of phonebooks, I obviously recognized the term Whitepages. But with the Whitepages Caller ID app, you end up with some additional features such as call blocking.

Like I said before, using Bluetooth isn't the best way to move files and media from phone to PC. This is where AirDroid comes into play. It's like running your Android phone on your desktop. You can manage your media, files and apps from your desktop PC with AirDroid. I like to believe most apps installed onto my Android phone are completely safe. Unfortunately there are occasions where something nefarious manages to sneak past less savvy Android users. For these folks. I recommend Lookout as a malware scanner. It's good at staying out of your way, so it's not inhibiting your daily phone use. With each application install it provides a detailed scan to make sure there isn't anything dangerous bundled with the app. The software also periodically scans your phone's file system as well. I really like using MightyText to send and receive SMS from my computer. It's running through my Android phone via the MightyText app.