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10 best Android tablet apps

Android tablets are making a comeback, and we should see some awesome apps for it too.

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Published onMarch 21, 2024

Android tablets aren’t nearly as popular as iPads. However, many people still own them. The idea of a tablet is simple. You get the screen real estate of a laptop without the added bulk and weight of one. They are excellent for productivity, media consumption, reading, and academic pursuits. There are even some great games that work better on tablets than on phones.

Google seems intent on making tablets on Android great again. We have a Pixel Tablet coming, and new Android updates make tablets even better. Plus, Android’s native scaling capabilities make almost all apps more usable on a tablet. So there are only a few apps that truly work better on tablets than they do on smartphones. Here are the best Android tablet apps:

Krita
Microsoft Office suite
Pulse SMS
Solid Explorer
SwiftKey Keyboard

Adobe apps

Price: Free

Adobe has some of the most powerful Android apps for creative people, and most of them work on tablets. You can edit photos with apps like Photoshop Express, draw stuff with Illustrator Draw, read PDFs with the popular Adobe Reader, and even edit videos with Premiere Clip. Of course, the flagship product on Android is the venerable Lightroom for editing photography. There are well over a dozen other apps that can do various things. Most of them work well with their desktop counterparts. That means you can take your work with you. They’re not as powerful as the desktop apps, but we didn’t expect them to be. These are easily among the best tablet apps.

AirDroid

Price: Free /In-app purchases ($0.99 – $379.99 per item)

AirDroid is a super useful Android app that lets you manage your phone from other devices. This includes sending files, answering text messages, and even stuff like recording screenshots. With this, you can use your tablet to read and respond to text messages and move files from your phone to your tablet, or vice versa. AirDroid also has a bunch of add-ons, including AirMirror and AirDroid Remote Support. Both apps add all kinds of functionality, and the trio are three excellent tablet apps. Pushbullet is another decent app that does a lot of the same stuff.

Amazon Kindle

Price: Free

Amazon Kindle is an exceptional ebook-reading platform. Amazon has tons of books that you can buy. Additionally, you can buy books anywhere and sync them to any device. A tablet makes for a good ebook reader with its larger screen. The app has a variety of reading options, and it should be easy enough to download books for offline reading. There are even a selection of free books in case you’re short on funds. There are tons of ebook readers out there, but this one is about as solid as it gets. If your tablet has a blue light filter mode, we recommend using it to help reduce eye strain.

Pocket

Price: Free /In-app purchases ($0.99 – $44.99 per item)

Umme Aimon Shabbir / Android Authority

Pocket is a free Android app that lets you save articles, videos, and more from any source, like news sites or social media. It allows you to read or listen to them even while offline, on your phone, tablet, or computer. It has a user-friendly interface and options like dark and sepia themes for reading comfortably. The pro version, Pocket Premium, offers advanced search, unlimited highlights, and automatic article backups. The app does have some issues with updates as features go missing, but the developers are usually responsive and fix these issues promptly.

Google Drive

Price: Free /In-app purchases ($0.99 – $1,024.00 per item)

Google Play Store

The Google Drive suite of apps is excellent for tablets. The full suite includes Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Keep, and Google Photos. There is also integration with Gmail, Google Calendar, and other Google apps. The whole thing is intertwined in such a way that most of your office and cloud storage needs are covered. You can backup and access photos, make spreadsheets, write stuff, and keep notes of all different types. It’s about as good as it gets for productivity. You can purchase more Google Drive storage if needed as well.

Krita

Price: Free /In-app purchases ($10.99 per item)

Umme Aimon Shabbir / Android Authority

Krita is a digital painting app designed for tablets. It’s packed with features like versatile brush engines, stabilizers for precision, and more tools. It supports various file formats, including PSD. Krita also handles animation, storyboarding, scripting, and more. It takes some time to learn and get used to, but it’s a really great app otherwise.

Microsoft Office

Price: Free /In-app purchases ($0.49 – $99.99 per item)

Microsoft Office is about as well-known as it gets when it comes to office software. Like Google Drive, Microsoft has a whole suite of apps that all work together. You’ll have OneDrive for cloud storage, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and a few others. The result is a note-taking app, cloud storage, and a full office suite. Most of it can be had for free, although you won’t get a whole bunch of cloud storage with OneDrive. It’s a great option for those who are serious about productivity. These are good tablet apps to have.

Pulse SMS

Price: Free /In-app purchases ($0.99 – $99.99 per item)

Google Play Store

Pulse SMS is arguably the best way to get SMS text messages on your tablet. You install the app on your phone and then on your tablet. Pulse syncs your texts between the two devices (along with your computer, if you want). This is a very simple, clean, and effective method of seeing text messages on devices other than your phone. It also features MMS and group SMS support, theming and customization features, and material design.

The sync feature is a premium feature that requires either a subscription or a pay-once price of $99.99. We’re not big fans of how this price seems to go up every year, and it would be nice to see the app lower prices to make it more accessible to people. Recently, it has received a lot of bad reviews for annoying pop-up ads.

Solid Explorer

Price: Free /In-app purchases ($0.99 – $9.99 per item)

Solid Explorer is an excellent file browsing app. You can use it to check out the files on your tablet. This is good for finding ebooks, whatever is in your download folder, or moving stuff around if you need to. It has a design that complements the larger-screen real estate on tablets nicely. You can open two folders at once, click and drag, and browse multiple parts of your phone at once in landscape mode. There may be occasional app crashes with this one.

SwiftKey Keyboard

Price: Free

SwiftKey Keyboard is one of the best keyboard apps on Android. As it turns out, it’s also great for tablets. SwiftKey has a layout that moves half of the keyboard to either side of the device. That makes it much easier to type when you have a device where your fingers don’t reach the middle. Or you can set it up in other ways as well, for more comfort while typing. The keyboard is completely free to use. Even the themes are free these days. It works pretty well.

If we missed any particularly epic Android tablet apps that you think should’ve been on this list, tell us about them in the comments!
Thank you for reading.