Free Apps that people use on Android Smartphones in their daily lives

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I am curious what Free Apps members use on their Android smartphones.
If you have a list of top 3-5 apps you use, that is also helpful.

For instance, I use:
Voicenotes....for verbal notetaking
ColorNote.....for verbal notes and lists.
Flipp app....for looking at store ads.
Waze and Google Maps....for gps.

Specifically, I am looking for an App that would keep track of store receipts and use this in a monthly budgeting app.
Especially if the App could take a photo of the receipt and read it, and transfer to a budget app.
I think it's called OCR (optical character recognition), but I'm not sure which app would be the best.
If you have any suggestions for this, I'd be grateful.
 

sasha.mccartney2

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Morning!

I actually don't have many apps on my phone, even though I use it dayly.

For tracking my expences and budget I use 1Money, it's fairly simple even for a silly person like me who's boyfriend tried multiple times to explain this spreadsheet for tracking expences and I never understood it. The app is a little limited for free though, but it can be done without spending a single penny. But it doesn't let you take photos of your receipts, so beware. It's just a simple "input income here, input expences here, here's how much money you have left for the month" thing.

Like I said, I don't have many applications on my phone, just the usuals, social media like Twitter and Instagram. I have the app of the german version of craigslist, bank apps, paypal, uber and google home for my smart home devices.

I like to keep it fairly simple and also prefer using my laptop / tablet for most things like writing emails and also drawing. My phone is a bit too small for that stuff in my opinion. I mean, it gets the job done but it's tedious XD
 

MoonstoneWolf

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1. Fetch
2. Swagbucks
3. Inbox Dollars
4. Shopkick
5. Receipt Hog

The above are for receipts and some you earn watching videos or even checking into the store.

Oh and Ibotta
 
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For tracking my expences and budget I use 1Money, it's fairly simple even for a silly person like me who's boyfriend tried multiple times to explain this spreadsheet for tracking expences and I never understood it. The app is a little limited for free though, but it can be done without spending a single penny. But it doesn't let you take photos of your receipts, so beware. It's just a simple "input income here, input expences here, here's how much money you have left for the month" thing.
Thanks so much, sasha.mccartney2 sasha.mccartney2 . I've never heard of the 1Money, ...and really like how it uses colours, and circle graph to quickly show where the money is being spent.
I like how simple it is. :)

Similar ones that I have downloaded are 'Monthly Expenses' and 'Spending Tracker'...but I've never really used them, yet, so cannot comment on how I like them or not. (Basically I just downloaded them and left them on my phone...I am terribly lazy.):paperbag:

An acquaintance also told me about 'Microsoft Exce'l which came with my phone, but when he started talking about spreadsheets and cells and inputs etc...it was hard to follow and I thought it might be too difficult to do. It sounded like numbers, numbers and more numbers. :stars: (I did just look it up, and it didn't seem so hard, with youtube and other instructional videos. I may try that one, too.) Only if it has pretty graphs and colours. :blush:
...google home for my smart home devices.
Google home sounds great.
That is probably something for the future.
I like using Google Assistant on my phone, for recipes, general info, weather, etc
 
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1. Fetch
2. Swagbucks
3. Inbox Dollars
4. Shopkick
5. Receipt Hog

The above are for receipts and some you earn watching videos or even checking into the store.

Oh and Ibotta
Thank you MoonstoneWolf MoonstoneWolf . I've only ever heard of Receipt Hog, ...so will take a look at the others, too.
Thanks again.
 

sasha.mccartney2

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Good Evening!

Yea, I also like how it divides the different types with colors, so you easily can see where your precious dollars are going. Excel and using spreadsheets was too complicated for my little brain :')

We have quite a few devices in our smart home and are still planning on expanding it. In total we have 3 Google Home Minis and one Chromecast, we plan on getting smart plugs which can be controlled by voice command. For that the Google Home App is pretty mandatory, so you can look over your devices and everything.
 
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We have quite a few devices in our smart home and are still planning on expanding it. In total we have 3 Google Home Minis and one Chromecast, we plan on getting smart plugs which can be controlled by voice command. For that the Google Home App is pretty mandatory, so you can look over your devices and everything.
Do you mind telling me what type of things it can control?

Like does it control turning lights on and off?
Turning on music? Finding music songs you like? Switching radio stations?
Or giving suggestions of t.v. shows to watch.

It would be awesome if it told me when the cats have finished eating, at what time, and how much?
Also, when they have used their litter boxes. That would be fantastic. haha.
Also keeping a running grocery list...would be neat.
 

sasha.mccartney2

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If you buy certain light bulbs that are compatible you can definetly tell google to turn the light on and off, there are also thermostates that you can buy which can be controlled by the Google Home. You can also set a so called routine, f.e. when you tell google that you go to bed it automatically turns off all the lights in your house and turns down the temperature.

You can always ask the Google Home to play music, either by telling it specifically what song or just by saying you want f.e. "relaxing music". You can link a music streaming app like Youtube Music or Spotify, so you can also say "Play Playlist X". I cannot tell you about radio because I do not listen to radio but you can also listen to it on your Google Home, that's as far as I know, so I think you probably also can switch the station by telling Google so.

We mainly use the Chromecast to stream Youtube and other videos / movies we pick on our phone, but I know if you have Netflix you can also tell the Google Home "Stream Show XY on Chromecast" and it will do so. I don't think it suggests you TV shows to watch.

Sadly I don't think Google Home can tell you when your cats are or used the litter box, after all it only works with certain software which would need to be compatible with smart homes. I know Sureflap has a new version of their Surefeed Microchip feeder which is compatible with the Surefeed hub which can send data to your phone when the assigned cat ate, but I don't think it's compatible with Google Home.

But you can do set up a shopping list! That's what my boyfriend and I use all the time. You can access the list from the Google Home app and add things by saying "Hey Google, add XY to the shopping list". You can also have different lists, like one labeled grocery list, other is called pet store list etc and tell google where to add a specific item. We have a Google Home Mini in the kitchen so whenever we run out of something we just tell Google to quickly add it to the list so we don't forget it.
 
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