One of the hardest things to do on your Android phone or tablet is to discover new apps.
With the Play Store at your fingertips, you might think that finding the latest and greatest apps is easy, but Google goes out of its way to ensure that’s not the case.
Google built the Play Store to recommend apps based on sponsorships and its algorithms. It didn’t build it to help you search for new apps.
I love discovering new apps, but I was sick of trawling through the Play Store’s sponsored posts. I’m not the only one; we’ve discussed the enshittification of the Play Store on AP before.
To solve this problem, I gathered a selection of third-party apps and websites that helped me find the best new apps. These, plus some tricks for using the Play Store, are what I use to find and recommend the best Android apps.
The Play Store is effective when used correctly
However, you shouldn’t rely on it
Before I dive into third-party apps and websites, I want to share some tips for using the Play Store.
Thanks to its colossal selection of apps, you can theoretically build the perfect app library without heading anywhere else. The problem is that the Play Store makes it hard to find relevant apps.
If you’re hunting for new games, the first thing you should do is open the Play Store and immediately scroll down. Tucked about halfway down the menu is a selection of newly released games.
However, since Google doesn’t share how these are selected, I suspect they are presented based on their revenue streams, as the majority I see here are gacha games or microtransaction-riddled junk.
Alternatively, you can try searching by theme with AI. Limited to the US for now, this feature lets you search for topics like “improve habits” or “protect my privacy.” Google will then use AI to recommend apps.
It’s still not ideal, but it can help you refine your searches beyond the existing categories.
However, that’s about it for the Play Store. If you know what you want, the Play Store is great. But if you, like me, want to keep up to date on what’s new, you’ll need to try another method.
Keep a bookmarked list of websites that share new apps
Reddit is a valuable source of developer recommendations
Whenever I feel like browsing for new apps, I use a custom tab group that opens the best sources for new apps. I recommend curating your own list, but here are some to get you started.
Reddit is packed with app recommendations, but some subreddits are better than others.
r/androidapps is a fantastic repository of user-recommended apps, and r/droidappshowcase is where developers promote their apps.
Related subreddits like r/android also contain recommendations, but these are buried within generic Android posts.
Outside of Reddit, keep an eye on websites like Android Police. I research and share apps that improve my Android experience, as do many of my fellow writers.
AppBrain collates new apps and provides helpful tools to let you filter by trending, download count, user ratings, and other attributes.
ProductHunt also displays popular new apps, but I’ve found it’s been overwhelmed by AI apps in recent months.
There are fantastic alternatives to the Play Store
Whether you want open source apps or just more filters, these tools have you covered
On your Android phone or tablet, there are plenty of apps you can use to discover and install apps outside the Play Store. However, after testing the best Google Play alternatives, I’ve settled on two.
The first is App Finder, which offers a comprehensive set of filters to narrow down your search, and the other is Droid-ify, which lets you download apps from F-Droid repositories.
Of the two, App Finder is the easiest to use and requires no extra work.
App Finder opens directly into a search tool. There are no recommendations, suggestions, or sponsored content. It’s refreshingly direct, but it has its downsides.
While you can quickly narrow down your search to find what you need, you cannot filter by release date without paying a small fee.
The filters aren’t perfect either. The “No ads” option regularly showed me apps with ads.
Nevertheless, it’s light-years ahead of the Google Play Store, and it should be the first place you go to discover new apps.
Droid-ify searches F-Droid repositories for apps, which is the best way to unearth free and open source apps that don’t rely on Google Play Services to function.
It’s where I found many of my favorite replacements for Google apps.
However, its clunky UI and limited features don’t hold up against App Finder’s comprehensive set of filters.
Don’t rely on the Play Store to find new apps
I don’t recommend ditching the Play Store entirely, but it shouldn’t be your first port of call when you’re hunting for new apps.
For me, a quick search of relevant subreddits and websites, followed by a browse of the latest apps on App Finder, is sufficient to unearth some gems. I don’t rely on Droid-ify, AppBrain, or ProductHunt, but I have found valuable apps from these sources in the past.
Whatever your method, you can do better than the ad-riddled mess that is the Play Store.
