Gadgetory

hello again ladies and gentlemen I'm Joe handy from Android Authority comm and it's nearing the end of 2018 and that means it's time to round up the best new Android apps that were released in 2018 this year we did things just a little bit differently we started our deliberations with a reader poll on the site and then narrowed down our final list from there so some of this is influenced a little bit by our readers votes also instead of running through 15 apps in 30 seconds apiece we were decided to take a deeper dive at our five favorite applications from 2018 and if you want to see the rest of them we'll have the full list linked up in the video description below alright then let's get started our first pick is Hyperion launcher it was one of a few notable launcher releases in 2018 that also included rootless launcher and lean launcher we just kind of liked Hyperion launcher the best out of the bunch it features a buttery smooth UI plenty of customization elements and an optional Google feed plugin if you want the whole experience although the plug-in requires a little extra work you can check the Play Store listing for more details so what do you get here well the customization options are numerous and fun it includes support for third-party icon packs as well as custom fonts accent themes and the usual array of little things like desktop dock and app drawer grid sizes you also get some simple but effective gesture controls along with more advanced icon customization and animations look here's the thing folks there's nothing particularly mind-blowing about Hyperion launcher it just works really well with just the right amount of customization options to be enjoyable the developers thought of little things like letting you change the icon pack without diving all the way into the settings and automatically enabling some of the gesture controls out of the box it's just enjoyable to use and I honestly couldn't find anything wrong with it plus it reminds me a little bit of borderlands keyboard launches are pretty rare these days so it's nice when it competently done keyboard arrives on the Play Store grammarly keyboard was technically a 2017 release but we cut off our submission time sometime in mid-december so this happens occasionally anyway grammerly keyboard is an outstanding keyboard and unless I miss something arguably the best one of 2018 this keyboard does a lot of stuff right it's an excellent smooth typing experience that doesn't feel too bloated or ridiculous that constantly working grammar engine checks every sentence for proper grammar as well as proper spelling it'll give the reason for each grammar change as well just in case the meaning isn't clear and this is easily one of the best autocorrect systems that I've used in a long time you do get some basic features out of the box like a number row a keyboard size option and a dark theme on the other hand grammarly doesn't have a lot of the mainstream features like gesture typing predictions integrated searches or anything like that it's just a nice simple functional keyboard that keeps you from typing the wrong version of there we would like to see a few more features in future releases but no other keyboard does but this one does VPNs are kind of a big deal these days people use them to avoid issues at public Wi-Fi hotspots like the airport or Starbucks they encrypt your traffic they help keep hackers away from your precious data and keep your activities private from your internet service provider most of the time there were two good VPNs launched in 2018 and they were proton VPN and of course VPN hub from the venerable porn hub but for this list we chose proton VPN let's start with the good stuff first proton VPN hits every check mark for what makes a VPN good that includes a strict no logging policy strong encryption and it's based in Switzerland which has some seriously good privacy protection laws the UI is simple it's a little boring and it has one of the best free versions that I've ever seen you don't get the maximum speeds but you do get unlimited free bandwidth with no advertising or anything to gum up the works the pro version is inexpensive compared to many of its competitors and includes faster speeds and more servers ok so look here's the thing security apps are boring they just are there's nothing fun or exciting about encrypting your traffic over a virtual private network however in 2018 these things are fairly necessary for just about anybody who uses public Wi-Fi in almost any capacity proton VPN lets you safely check your email at a Starbucks without looping you into yet another subscription and it's easy to turn on and off this is the one that I recommend to both people on Android authority and in my personal life YouTube music the application isn't actually new however YouTube music the service is new and it's actually pretty good in 2018 there were dozens of music and video streaming services out there but YouTube music is one of the few that can do both competently well of course it's still quite new and it needs a lot of feature updates we like where it's headed you get a surprisingly large amount of music with YouTube music it has a collection of songs like any other streaming service however YouTube music adds almost all of the music videos from YouTube as playable tracks that puts it right up there with SoundCloud as the streaming service with the most possible songs we also really like how you can add normal songs to playlists right alongside those rare gems that you can only find on YouTube you want to add that post belong song you like along with two cellos cover of thunderstruck in that live song you can't find on Spotify and that really fun Japanese pop rock band that no one's ever heard of do a playlist YouTube music can do it nobody else can now it'll never cater to the audiophile crowd YouTube simply can't control the quality of the music being uploaded to its servers and that's fine the audiophile peeps out there still have title and other streaming services still we're excited to see youtube music expand its feature set more so that it feels like a full music streaming experience because the app is just the little bare-bones right now in any case it's damn good and it even took second place in our reader poll yes friends bouncer is our choice for the best new Android app from 2018 its permission management app in home-like goodness that sounds so much more boring than it actually is actually on second thought it is a little boring this is more security stuff and security stuff is again we're usually pretty boring but hey hear me out so here's what this application does it lets you enable permissions for any application on a temporary basis for instance you can give Facebook access to your camera so you can post a picture on your Facebook story or whatever and then have bouncer disable that permission later on that way you can use any feature on basically any application without worrying about digging into the settings to disable the permission later or otherwise committing to an application having a permission permanently it can also delete existing permissions and you can have it immediately withdraw a permission if you didn't mean to grant an app access to it the application can also blanket wipe all of your permission preferences in case you want to start fresh so my question is why can't I just do this why isn't this on stock Android you know what this this should be on stock Android it's a small thing but it's just so nice to have the ability to automatically remove permissions after a set period of time seems like something we should just be able to do on any platform frankly I'd appreciate something like this on Windows i OS or her any other OS for that matter we should be able to do this without an application but we can't and now we have this app so we can and it's nice anyway aside from the occasionally clunky UI this app really is that good bouncer best of 2018 period and that about does it for this one folks if you liked the video you know what to do and if not you still know what to do if you want to check out the full list of 15 apps that's linked up in the video description below along with the links to all of the apps we talked about in this video as always thanks for watching everybody and have a wonderful day