10 fun, niche, weird apps for Android

There are so many apps in the Google Play Store. The last time we checked, there are over an estimated 3.5 million of them. Not every app is meant for popularity. After all, there can only be so many note-taking apps. This list is going to cover stuff that’s a bit more niche. Here are ten excellent fun, niche, and weird apps for Android.

10 fun, niche, and weird apps for Android

BuzzKill

Price: $2.99

BuzzKill is a notification-filtering app. An example of an app like this being useful is when someone messages you multiple times in rapid succession. The app can let the first notification through and then filter out the other two. It can also manipulate your notifications in other ways. For example, you can get reminder notifications, custom vibration for specific apps or contacts, and more. It’s kind of neat because notifications can come in large waves, and apps like this one can keep things reasonable. It’s $2.99 out of the gate, but there are no additional in-app purchases.

EKA2L1

Price: Free

EKA2L1 is a Symbian emulator. It’s capable of emulation several version of Symbial, including S60v1, S60v3, and S60v5. It’s mostly used to play old games like many great Android emulators, as you can see in the screenshot above. As such, some of the features are for gaming. There is custom key mapping and frame rate adjustment for those who want it. Symbian isn’t known for its gaming platform, so this is a fairly niche product, but it works well, and that’s why it’s here.

MacroDroid

Price: Free

MacroDroid is a lot less niche than other apps on this list. It has north of ten million downloads, after all. However, with apps like Tasker and IFTTT getting a lot of the automation love, MacroDroid is often the odd man out. It’s an automation app, similar to the aforementioned apps, and it can automate quite a few different things. You select a trigger, determine the action, and then configure it further from there if necessary. IFTTT is undoubtedly more powerful, but MacroDroid is nicer to use if you just want to automate some basic, on-device functions. We think it should be in the conversation more.

Purchased Apps

Price: Free

Purchased Apps is a simple app. It shows you all of the apps and games you’ve purchased in the Google Play Store. The Play Store lets you see purchases you’ve made in the Payments and Subscription setting, but this one is a bit cleaner, so it’s still useful. You can also sort by installed apps, uninstalled apps, and by purchase type so you can find just apps that you paid for or in-app purchases only. It’s nice if you want to find an old app or game you bought years ago.

Sensor Test

Price: Free / $3.99

Sensor Test is an app that helps you find issues with your phone. It can test a variety of sensors in your phone, including the gyroscope, accelerometer, gravity, light, pedometer, heart rate monitor, and any other sensor your phone might have. Obviously, your phone needs to have the sensor for the app to test it. Otherwise, the app works quite well and can help you narrow down potential issues if your phone is having problems. Some OEMs, like Samsung, have versions of this that you should use instead, but many OEMs still don’t.

Shizuku

Price: Free

Shizuku is a power-user app that most people won’t ever need. Functionally, it helps apps access system-level APIs so that you don’t need root to run something. Typically, you’d need to grant the app permission for these types of things with root or with ADB. Shizuku does it for you so that you don’t have to do either of those things. It doesn’t work in every scenario, but there are some apps that can mod your phone that use something like this to make life easier. Again, you’ll almost never need something like this, but if you ever do, here it is.

Square Home

Price: Free / Up to $4.99

Windows’ Metro design wasn’t the most popular thing in the world, but it did have its fans. Square Home is a launcher that brings a similar type of UI back to your Android phone. it puts widgets, apps, and other functions in squares on your home screen. It brings that Windows Phone feel to your Android phone in a way few others do, and it gives you a break from the typical icon and dock style of more popular Android home screen launchers.

SuperImage

Price: Free

SuperImage is an AI-powered image upscaler. That means it uses AI to take blurry images and make them sharper and better looking. It’s a neat piece of technology that does actually work. We just understand that the market for image upscaling isn’t particularly large. In any case, SuperImage is one of the newer apps on this list, having been released in 2023. We think it’s a fun app that works well, even if its audience isn’t huge. We even list it on our best AI apps for Android list.

Water Resistance Tester

Price: Free / $0.99 – $99.99

Water Resistance Tester is an app that went a little viral after its launch. All you have to do is squeeze your phone, and the app tells you if the water resistance is still intact. The funny thing is that it does actually work, and it works quite well. You squeeze the phone, the app measures the pressure, and if the pressure is over a certain threshold, it gives the all-clear. It obviously doesn’t work for every phone, so that is something to keep in mind. However, it worked fine on all three of our tester phones. The price seems exorbitant, but it’s an optional donation, so you can pay as little or as much as you want.

What3Words

Price: Free

What3Words is a navigation app. It takes a location, divides it up into 10-foot squares, and then each square is given a unique three-word identifier. You then use those identifiers to find the exact location of where you want to go. Obviously, navigation apps can do this since today’s GPS locations are pretty spot on.

This app is most useful when looking for things in a crowded area where the location isn’t terribly obvious. For example, a specific apartment in a complex with a unique layout. This is a list of niche apps, after all, so obviously, this isn’t going to usurp Google Maps, but you can actually send the location you find here to Google Maps or any other great navigation apps, so it works in tandem instead of as a replacement.

If we missed any great fun, niche, or weird apps, tell us about them in the comments.