The Best Free and Open Source Apps in 2025!

0:00 [Music] you ever wish you could make your quick settings panel way more useful than it already is well wish no more cuz with an app called quick tiles installed you can do exactly that the app is filled to the brm with a stack of these Advanced Quick Settings toggles and you just enable the ones that you like then add them to your quick settings panel and that's it so check this out thanks to the quick Tiles app I have a toggle here that turns on and off my phone's adaptive brightness I have a toggle that lets me quickly enable or disable USB debugging I have one that lets me launch straight into my favorite app and one here that changes my phone's display timeout settings and those are just four of the options available there are a stack more on top of those to go with oh and the app is also completely free and open source too and with that welcome to a brand new

0:46 episode of the best Android apps and we're starting the year off with a bang by showcasing not just 10 not 15 but 20 applications and every single one of them is not only completely free but they're all also open source too so let's begin all right continuing on with our Quick Settings panel for a minute and next up are two apps that allow for even more advanced Quick Settings toggles but just keep in mind they both require the shizuku app to work the first is an app called Always on display toggle and as the name indicates this lets you quickly turn on or off your phones always on display and then the second is an app called private DNS quick toggle and I've mentioned this app a couple of times on the channel now but that's because it is just so dang useful but again with this toggle set up you have a really quick and easy way to

1:32 enable or disable the private DNS provider setting which is just so so useful like just look at this before and after on the left is me disabling the feature manually via the settings menu and on the right is with the Quick Settings toggle so convenient then moving on to a couple of customization related apps and next up is paperized which is an app that lets you set your phone's wallpaper to change automatically at specific time intervals you just create a library of images that you like then back on this wallpaper page you select your created library and below that you've got a bunch of settings that you can adjust including the time interval for when the wallpapers should change and there's even a few options for customizing the wallpapers too but that's it you can now close the app and your wallpapers will change automatically then we have pie launcher a super unique thirdparty homec

2:19 screen launcher that has a completely fresh take on the home screen experience so instead of icons and widgets you'll see well nothing on your home screen but you just press and hold the screen to bring up a floating P menu of your favorite apps you can then tap to launch an app draw filled with all of your apps and you can also access the settings via this page all right moving into some utility based applications and caner is a really neat app that lets you uninstall bloatware from your phone with the app open you'll see a list of every single app installed on your phone including system apps and it just selects whichever app you want to uninstall then tap the trash can icon and that's it and if you've accidentally uninstalled an app that you didn't mean to then you can also come over to this tab to quickly restore it and man I remember the days when we needed computers to uninstall bloatware so the

3:06 fact that we can use just a simple app like can now it is seriously amazing and then whilst K lets you uninstall apps install with options is an app that helps you with installing them but not your regular Play Store available apps but rather apps that you might be trying to sideload so with the app set up you'll see a long list of options that'll give you more control over any apks that you're looking to install such as the option to bypass Android 14's Target SDK limit meaning you can install apps that are outdated and normally don't work you can even downgrade certain app packages or get the app to Grant all requested permissions automatically immediately after it's installed plus there's a bunch of other options as well then we have sa tuna which is a really handy app that gives you way more control over your phone's battery saver options the

3:52 app has a range of these pre-built profiles that you can choose from depending on how aggressive you want the battery saving to be but you can then adjust all of these settings down here as much as you like for even more control and you'll be surprised at just how many tweaks you can make all of which have the potential to seriously improve how long your phone's battery lasts for then we have an app called file Navigator and if your downloads folder looks a little something like this well by using file Navigator you can make it look like this instead it essentially lets you set up rules which will then dictate where specific file types should get moved to on your phone so I've got mine set up so that all of these various file types get automat atically moved into designated folders within my downloads folder and man I cannot overstate just how useful this is and then speaking of files if you're

4:38 ever attempting to share a file with someone that is too large then FF share is the app for you when you go to share your media of choice all you need to do is share it to FF share first and that'll then compress your media with hardly any impact on quality it also removes exi tags which is great for privacy all right continuing on with our utility based apps and next up is lumo light which is a beautifully designed app that packs in some really handy features related to your phone's torch so you can adjust your torches intensity if your phone supports that feature under the hood you can also set it to turn off your phone's torch after a set amount of time or to Blink your torch at different beat per minute rates and then it also allows you to use your phone screen as a torch which you can then customize to different colors and

5:24 intensities following that is one of my all-time favorite apps local sand it's essentially an open sourced version of Quick Share but where Quick Share has been pretty spotty over the past little while local sand has been Flawless and as long as it's installed on the devices that you want to share between then it'll do exactly what it says on the tin the best part is that it works on both IOS and Android as well as Windows and Mac after that is an app called tidy and if you're someone without a pixel phone who wishes you could use the AI features found within the relatively new screenshots app well this app lets you do basically that when you first launch the app it'll index every photo on your device and this can take quite some time to do so depending on how many photos you have on your phone but once complete you can then use the app to type in any

6:10 description of an image that you might be looking for so let's say this one I prepared earlier that says boy on Sand with yellow spade and if I then tap to search there we go any photos matching those keywords they'll show up the app also lets you perform image to image searches which will search for visually similar images stored on your phone net guard is another utility based application that lets you block specific apps on your phone from accessing the internet so whether there's an app that chews up stacks of data in the background or you want to block ads in your favorite game well you can use net guard to select those apps and then completely stop them from being able to access the internet and that's it but it's a super underrated tool that is well worth checking out and then finally for our utility related apps is Shizu

6:56 tools and this is an app that unlocks a bucket load of shizuku related features and among a bunch of options my favorites are the audio related tools the first of which is this mixed audio tool that lets you play audio from multiple apps at the same time and the second and even better option in my opinion is this sound master tool which lets you control how loud or quiet the audio output is on an app bya basis all right 34s down the list and next up is nitaa and this is an offline music player app that has gotten quite a bit of coverage on my channel over the past year but that's because of how dang good it is it's got a beautiful UI with a bunch of these super slick animations and it also comes with this really handy video playing functionality built in and that's on top of its core feature set

7:43 playing music stored locally on your phone well worth a look if you're in the market for a new music player application and then staying on the topic of Music related apps and next up is one called Romi and if you've ever tried to open a music link that redirects to a music app that you don't actively use use well then this is the app for you so for example here's a link to a song shared via the YouTube music app but if I don't have that app installed when I tap on it it'll launch this new bottom sheet interface provided by Romi it'll show me all these other music streaming services and I can then tap whichever one I do use so Spotify for example and Romi will intelligently open that song in the music app that I do use then we have Breezy weather and if you're looking for an open source weather app to try out well this one is

8:28 one of the better options available it's got an incredible design it's packed to the brim with weather information and has a stack of these super clean widgets that you can add to your home screen as well second to last is an app called fad cam which actually lets you record videos without the camera app needing to be open so let's say you want to use your phone as a dash cam with Google Maps open well you can just open the app hit start and you can then close the app open up Google Maps if you like or even turn your phone's display off and the app will continue recording video using your phone's camera the the entire time once done you just jump back into the app and hit stop and there you go your video will be saved and ready to go and so finally today we have krono a really beautifully designed clock application that is a neat open- Source alternative to the stock clock apps that your phone

9:15 provides by default and all the basics are covered you can create alarms view World clocks create timers and start a stopwatch but then for me on top of the fact that it's open source it's also the app's incredibly clean design that makes it so good Plus the extensive amount of customizations that you can make within the app settings but that's it 20 amazing open source applications that I reckon are worth checking out in some way shape or form in 2025 if you yourself have any other recommendations for free and open source apps that you love using definitely let everyone know down in the comments below but aside from that hopefully you enjoyed the video thank you all very much for watching and I will catch you later oh

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