A shortlist of the best Android apps of 2026
IT News's Ryan Whitwam compiled a list of the best Android apps that saw the light in 2026. As he says, the plethora of apps published every year can be overwhelming, especially if you are looking for apps that are useful. I have lifted the best Android apps of 2026 from Ryan's list that will be of interest to photographers, typists and the performance conscious.
The chat jungle
There are multiple chat apps available and most are associated with specific devices or mobile phone operating systems. This leads to friends using different or multiple apps for chatting. There's a free solution for Android users. AppChat creates a "generic" chatroom that works for all the apps on your phone. In AppChat you can talk to other users and even share files. In addition to listing all the relevant apps, it also shows chatrooms specific to devices and manufacturers.
For the photographer in you
Did you ever want more control over your phone's camera instead of leaving settings for the camera app to decide? Manual Camera gives you an easy interface that allows you to manually set zoom, ISO, white balance, RAW capture and more. It costs US$2.99. When it comes to editing your photos, Snapseed is an app that gives you a complete set of image editing tools, retaining your original images by default.
"Gallery" does a reasonable job of presenting your photos and videos together and categorizing them according to criteria that include which app they were taken with. If you want to apply more tagging, there's Focus, a free app that provides a private vault (US$2.99 upgrade required). Focus enables you to show someone a photo or video without allowing him or her access to the rest of your phone when you look away.
For the typist in you
If you do a lot of typing on your phone's keyboard, you'll want something more than just predictive text. With Texpand, you can set custom shortcut abbreviations to be used whenever you do any typing. The app also supports dynamic values like the time and date. The first 10 phrases are free.
For those who require a proper clipboard that is a step up from just the "cut and paste" function already available, there is free Native Clipboard. It's really a clipboard manager where you can save all your copied content using a highly customizable interface.
For the performance conscious
Lastly, if you enjoy monitoring you phone's performance, Trepn Profiler (free) is the answer. It comes with six preset profiles for analyzing your hardware performance, including battery usage. The CPU core load monitor will be especially useful to identify apps that are CPU-hungry.
It's a certainty that 2026 will bring a new set of “Best Android apps” that will be even more useful. We all look forward to re-writing the list of best Android apps in a year's time!
