The First 25 Apps I Install Immediately On Each of My Android Phones

(in this exact order)

I regularly switch back and forth between iOS and Android. This week I switched to an LG G6.

I love to be on the bleeding edge of tech. Fortunately my T-Mobile Jump On Demand plan allows me to swap phones with astonishing ease. In a typical year, I’ll own 2–3 Android phones and 1–2 iPhones.

The biggest pain about all that swapping — besides losing out on the benefits of iMessage and FaceTime on iOS, and Google Assistant on Android — is setting up the new phones. I do not restore from backups because I like to keep my new phone experience clean and untainted.

So for the first couple of hours with the device I am installing apps and poking around in the settings.

Here are the 25 apps I immediately install on every Android phone (heads up that some of these come pre-installed on certain phones):

1. Authy — My two-factor authentication app of choice. Necessary for signing into plenty of the following apps.
2. Lastpass — My favorite password manager. It simplifies signing into the rest of my apps.
3. Textra (and Textra Emoji — iOS Style add-on) — Group and MMS texting don’t seem to work consistently on Android for me. Textra lets you poke around in the settings till it does. Also I prefer iOS emoji.
4. Facebook Messenger — I’m set on trying to move everyone I know to Facebook Messenger. It’s so much better than everything but iMessage.
5. Slack — My central communication hub for work.
6. Gboard — The best cross-platform keyboard. Made by Google.
7. Pebble — The slowly-dying Pebble Time is still a staple in my life. Long live the Pebble!
8. Google Photos — Best photo backup solution. And it’s free! I immediately put new phones through the works by snapping pics of my active toddler.
9. Inbox — My favorite cross-platform email app.
10. Google Voice — I use it for my work number.
11. Journey — I journal every day. Day One on iOS and Journey on Android. These apps make it so easy that I never miss.
12. Spotify — The best cross-platform music streaming service… in my humble opinion.
13. Facebook — Because Facebook.
14. Twitter — I use it to log on to other services, like Medium.
15. Nest — We have a Nest thermostat. It’s amazing.
16. Feedly — My go-to news aggregation app. Saves me from having to visit a bunch of individual websites to read the news.
17. Amazon — We buy way too many things from Amazon.
18. Google Calendar — Most phones come with a stock calendar, and all of them are inferior to Google Calendar.
19. Capital One — Online Banking
20. Simple — Shared debit card with my wife.
21. Wells Fargo — Banking
22. Instagram — The most visually-pleasing social media platform.
23. Pocket — Used primarily to organize my blogging.
24. Pocket Casts — My favorite Podcast app for Android. Breaker is my new favorite for iOS.
25. Nova Launcher (and Nova Launcher Prime add-on) — Consistently the best Android home screen experience. They always keep it up to date with current design trends and functionalities.

There you have it! Those are the first 25 apps I install on all of my Android devices. I, of course, download many many more, but none of the others rise to the same level of must-have-immediately status.

*Thanks for reading! Have some apps that belong on this list? Leave a comment below!