I used none of those and have only heard of a couple, despite using Android from the beginning. Sigh.
So you don’t have to click
Google killing inbox was what radicalized me to that the entire business model of big tech is bullshit
Google killed an app? Shocking, i say!
After google killed inbox I found out Spark Mail has that exact same feature
I tried using Inbox but couldn’t get past the whole idea of it. I’m old school when it comes to email - just gimme everything and I’ll decide if its important or not.
That said, Google’s decision to kill it did open my eyes to the fuckery.
Then they killed Google Play Music a few years later. I had most of my library uploaded, but didn’t delete my local copy because I’m not insane. That one radicalized me.
Absolutely gutted at Inbox going away. Was such a great product, and they lied about implementing its features into Gmail.
My similar turning point was when they shut down Google Reader in 2013. Never forget.
Huh, never used any of those, only SuperSU. Google Plus being there makes the rest of the list suspicious
Android Authority has always been Google simp along with other companies that sponsor their reviews and get them free devices, merch, trips and invitations. There’s no low they won’t sink to. One of their author regularly promotes Google store android merch on their social media.
Google deprecating gmail to replace it with inbox just to depecate inbox in favor of returning gmail was so fucking stupid.
Replacements:
Titanium Backup -> SystemPanel2
MX Player -> Poweramp
Google Play Music -> YouTube Music
ES File Explorer -> FX File Explorer
Swype Keyboard -> Gboard
Google Plus -> Google One
Inbox -> Gmail
SuperSU -> Magicsk
You’re welcome :3
FX File Explorer == > Solid Explorer
MX Player
For this I’d suggest mpvKt as its a video player
ES File
Mixplorer (unless it breaks functionality without getting an update)
I bought music off of google play, and I downloaded the MP3s. YouTube Music has an atrocious downloaded music section, and I don’t enjoy it. I happily have returned to “finding” music and playing it in foobar2000.
Yeah, let me do it Authority
- Google podcasts
- Hangouts
- Google allo
- Google reader (I think it’s an app?)
Feel free to add your own
Reader was a site/service, but it was THE rss reader for most people. Fuck Google for killing it (and a lot of other things).
I have no idea how they could omit Hangouts.
Allo, on the other hand, which was supposed to replace Hangouts, did not live as long as Hangouts and should probably remain forgotten.
Hangouts was the death of all Google messages for me. People I knew where using it and when they killed it no one would move over to another messaging app from Google.
We’re on like the third generation of Google messaging apps since the death of hangouts. Giving up on them seems like it was the smart decision.
Google chat was XMPP compatible. The shit that ensued after it’s decommission still stinks to this day.
I’ve never heard about any of the apps in the post, but killing hangouts and podcasts still hurts.
Google allo did die quickly but had some nice stuff, most messaging apps still don’t. Like change text size, use google assistant inside the app eetc.It wasn’t anything amazing but I had some fun with it
And if Google had any sense, those were all improvements they should have just brought to Hangouts, haha.
But why improve a service when we can just create a competitor that does 2 things better, 5 things worse, and 1 crucial thing not at all?
Podcasts was good. Lightweight, cross platform and basic. YTM is a sink hole as a podcast alternative.
Apple Podcasts lives on as a far superior alternative whilst Google has left it’s users in the lurch. In an alternate world, Google would still be developing Podcasts not only on mobile but also on Wear OS
Ytm still doesn’t notify for new episodes. It’s absurd
I didn’t even try using YTM as a podcast client. Streaming music players doubling as podcast players always have a hindrance (but at Atleast Amazon Music has some ad free content from Wondery in some regions in case one is a Prime subscriber).
AntennePod is a good FOSS alternative whilst Pocketcasts is a decent cross platform one (but the latter basically is subscription based if one wants desktop and watch playback which is a downer).
I would 100% agree with you but pocketcasts recently added ads on free + has a really dated UI and antennapod is a pain if you want it to sync with other devices
Pocketcasts really is trying folks towards it’s subscription driven model though I have no qualms with the UI. AntennePod relies on gPodder service to sync but that is slow and clunky sometimes.
There is Podcast Republic as well I think, which is still a one time purchase.
This is where I ended up. Republic
I agree with all but G+
I miss ES File Explorer to this day…
Have you tried fx
Its a shame there are no updates anymore, but it works pretty flawlessly. Especially love the sftp integration
Oh I didn’t notice it was abandoned:( it was my go to for root file explorer
Yeah, there are some things I’d like added, but it works so well that I don’t mind. Also theres not a really any good alternative
I still miss Swype.
To this day it is still better than every other keyboard I’ve tried at recognising traces.
Microsoft has taken Swift and run it to the ground. Then it asks how it’s doing as if they’ve improved it. The fucking gall.
They really should’ve just ported the WP keyboard over to android, it’s still hands down the best smartphone keyboard ever.
ES File Explorer was very good at the beginning, but it enshittified quickly. Nowadays MaterialFiles is the best file explorer for Android, and it has more features than ES had ever. And it’s open source so it can’t have a similar fate. Google Play link, F-droid link
I would counter that I still feel Solid Explorer is the best, but I’m aware that’s just my opinion.
Solid is for people who want what es used to be. Not sledging it, but it’s unshittified ES.
Joining in on the love for material files. I’ve been using it a long time. The more I’ve got into FOSS apps I’ve come to realise that they are feature rich, lightweight and ad free. Its the difference between using something designed to be a good product vs something that is designed to squeeze as much out of you as possible
Looks nice! I use the Fossify File Manager; they seem very similar.
Fossify looks similar, but it misses some crucial features I use frequently. I downloaded it now to check it, Material can do these things, while Fossify can’t:
- Open multiple windows for commander like usage
- Connect to remote shares with SFTP, FTP, SMB or Webdav
- Connect to app storage with Storage Access Framework
Thanks for that! I don’t need those features for now, but great to know there’s a solid option if I do later.
What happened to Total Commander
Total commander was never open source, even though it’s freeware.
Yeah just realized. I am disappoint
Material files doesn’t have anywhere near enough. ES File Explorer could open a bunch of files, a text editor, sftp, ftp, audio, image viewer, etc. ES File Explorer was intolerable on the free version, but if you paid a few quid, you got a perfect product.
Total Commander is pretty solid although unfortunately not FOSS. Even allows you to share files via WiFi etc.
MaterialFiles can connect to ftp, sftp, webdav and smb. It has a text editor. There is built in image viewer and music player in most roms nowadays, and MaterialFiles has an “open with” option where you can select what you want to do with a file.
I can’t find an open with option
Tap on the triple dot next to a file, first option
Google Plus… legendary… what?
Legendary dumpster fire and generator of memes
Even if it was good, the fact that they wrote Google Plus and not Google+ tells me how much thought they put into this article
I was an early user of it and, unlike a lot of Google projects, there’s a reason they scrapped it: it sucked.
And we’re still stuck with its aftermath in that search engines require quotes rather than a + for requiring words, which they now ignore whenever the mood strikes.
Why?
Because some fuckwit at Google decided that the + was reserved for Google+ search results.
I had a lot of fun on it…
Legendar(il)y shit
I still miss QuickPic. :-(
The list is missing Google Now. A feature so useful Google cut it because it was reducing searches.
It wasn’t an app tho
This list of apps is ridiculous and none of them were even noteworthy.
Titanium Backup is the exception for me. All the others… 🤷♂️🙋♂️
I enjoyed Swype before it sold out to Microsoft.
It was a really excellent keyboard.
Best keyboard I’ve ever used. I even used a deprecated version for a long time before it just stopped working on my phone.
RIP Swype for sure. It was so much more accurate than anything else, short of physical keyboard buttons.
Google Play music was pretty good. simple and effective. easy to use.
Google podcasts was trash
YouTube music is … well it’s just kinda bad
wait, do I have that backwards? is it Google Podcasts that was good, and Google Play music that was trash? one of them was basically impossible to use for podcasts, like if you just wanted to find what you had downloaded, that was literally not an option you had to go to the podcast and then filter by downloads
Inbox was fantastic. I used an older version well after the shutdown date.
titanium backup has been made obsolete by swift backup
Loved minuum keyboard
Y’all remember bump?
