The Seven Best Android Apps to Customize your Device for a Distinctive Look

There is cutthroat competition between iOS and Android when it comes to smartphones. If people like iOS devices so do they love to have Android too as their mobile. Android has lots of apps that too mostly free on their Google play store compared to the Apple store. These apps are quite beneficial in having smooth work to flow on the device as well as are easy to customize and modify according to your needs.  Here are the seven best apps which will give your Android a distinctive look quite dependent though on your needs and what you exactly want to achieve.

The Seven Best Android Apps to Customize your Device for a Distinctive Look

1. Flashify

It is a simple app that requires root access, but once granted, it can do everything. You can install a custom recovery, flash custom ROMs, zip files, boot images and recoveries, as well as manage your backups. If you want to make extra sure that you have a safe backup of your phone somewhere before you start flashing, lots of root users use apps like Titanium Backup too.

2. Nova Launcher

It is widely regarded as one of the most customizable free apps where you can pretty much set up everything on your Android to behave the way you want with Nova, from appearance to animations to app icons to gesture controls. You can even import previous launcher settings from another Android device, which makes Nova a good long-term option. You can customize almost every part of how your phone looks and responds with Nova Launcher.

The paid Nova Launcher Prime version of this launcher adds a few more features, but if you are satisfied with the free version then not necessary for you to pay for the app in order to get what you want out of your phone.

3. Icon packs

With a custom launcher installed, and your phone is already taking on a new look, it’s time to delve into the expansive world of icon packs to mix things up a bit. As you’d expect, installing an icon pack replaces the current app icons on your phone with different ones.

While there are lots of different icon packs to choose between, when you settle on one or two, or five, you can then either apply them individually (many packs have thousands in each app) or you can set an icon pack theme to give everything a more streamlined look.

Icon packs are available from the Play Store and work with most major custom Android launchers, but you will need to pay for many of the best packs. There are free ones with in-app purchases too though. Don’t forget to check out exactly what icons each pack contains though, as it’s always annoying to add an icon pack and then you don’t have new icons for some of your favourite apps, particularly if you paid for the pack.

4. Zedge

It is a single app that allows you to modify a whole lot of your phone without installing three or four different apps. In addition to wallpapers and icon packs, you can add custom ringtones and notification sounds with such a huge number to choose between, you can also just set them to automatically update periodically, whether that’s each day or every hour. You can even download games directly within Zedge if you want to.

You can scale images to your phone’s screen dimensions, or you can set specific ringtones for every contact you have, so you know who’s calling before you even see your screen. Zedge also includes four different widgets that allow you to set a custom clock or quickly launch games, among other things.

5. Ringdroid

To set and customize ringtones Ringdroid is the best app as it’s open-source, free and doesn’t contain ads. Also, it’s really simple to use as you can turn any song into a ringtone-appropriate length: just isolate the particular riff or chorus you like and create a new audio file, which can then be used just like any other ringtone.

You can set your new ringtone as a notification or contact ringtone, or as an alarm. While there are other apps that do the same thing, Ringdroid is simple and gets extra ratings for being open source.

6. Defumblr

With Defumblr app you can make your lock screen a whole lot more useful by making it really easy to fine-tune the sort of notifications you get without wading through lots of options and menus. As such, swiping on a notification gives you additional options like blocking messages from a specific sender from getting to your lock screen or allowing you to block notifications from specific apps altogether.

At the bottom of the screen, there’s a little bar/arrow to pull up, which reveals your most frequently used apps and a few ‘challenges’ like seeing how few times you can unlock your phone in a day, for example, to try and keep things feeling fun. It’s also free to use, which is a bonus.

A potential drawback, however, is that it doesn’t support fingerprint scanners as yet, it seems. You can lock the Defumblr screen with a PIN or pattern though.

7. Xposed Framework

The Xposed Framework allows you to select and remove any features or modules that come pre-installed on your phone that you never use.

While it might sound like you need root access, you don’t – but you should make sure you have a recent backup of your phone stored somewhere else before you start, as the Xposed Framework does warn you that it can ‘soft brick’ devices by sending them into a boot loop.

There are different versions to install, depending on which build of Android you’re running though, so make sure you get the right one. Note that many Nougat phones aren’t supported at the moment either.

Any app you wish to share to customize Android? Do share.