Finding new Play Store apps used to be frustrating, but this clever tool changes everything

It by no means fails to amaze me how dangerous Google is and continues to be at search. For a corporation that made its bones in this class, its apps lack the power to adequately assist me discover what I’m searching for, and I can’t consider a worse instance than the Google Play Store.

I’ve talked about a number of of the Play Store’s flaws in a current function, but its search performance — or lack thereof — remains to be one challenge I can’t appear to shake. Fortunately, others have seen this drawback and developed their very own pioneering options. Just lately, I found an app that makes discovering Android apps a lot simpler; it’s referred to as App Finder.

Past providing a smattering of “sponsored” apps on the high of the search outcomes web page and advertisements wherever there’s room, the Play Store’s search outcomes lack fine-tuning. You get what Google needs you to get. It’s not about looking for a particular app, but about prompting Google to recommend what it believes you need. One can perceive how this can lead to loads of annoyance.

App Finder takes a special strategy by handing again management to the person. It’s a third-party search engine that reliably sniffs out Play Store apps primarily based on user-defined standards. It’s successfully the Superior Search tool in Google Seek for the Play Store, and pulls particulars from an app’s title, bundle identify, abstract, description, and even the changelog. This makes it farther-reaching than the answer baked into Google’s personal app.

After set up, you’ll discover one evident challenge with App Finder; it’s not at all a Materials 3 Expressive-adhering app. The easiest way to describe App Finder’s UI is to say it’s aesthetically humble. Its dwelling display closely privileges perform over kind, but I quickly realized this is a constructive determination. In any case, it’s a search tool not an app magnificence pageant entrant. It’s user-customizable too, permitting me to choose which search modifiers I need available.

Discover apps simply utilizing filters, modifiers, and scales

If I need to seek for a particular app, I can sort my question into the search bar — identical to the Play Store. Nonetheless, in contrast to Google’s surface-level resolution, I don’t obtain a screenful of advertisements masquerading as outcomes. Regardless of this benefit, I don’t use App Finder this method, not less than if I’m looking for a preferred or main app. As a substitute, its actual energy is in its search modifiers, filters, and sliding scales.

Let me present an instance. If I need to discover all apps with the time period “music” of their title, I sort this into the search bar. Simple. With none filters utilized, App Finder highlights greater than 55,600 outcomes. (Hilariously, this is already extra info than the Play Store gives.) Nonetheless, if I transfer the Common person ranking to not less than 4.7, enhance the Variety of rankings slider to 100k, and toggle on the No advertisements selector, I can whittle that down to 30 outcomes. This stage of management over which apps seem in your search report is just not achievable within the Play Store.

There are a ridiculously big selection of filters and sliders in App Finder. Customers can management the entire variety of downloads and the in-app value vary, or filter by launch, up to date dates, or style, and even kind by present downloads/month. That latter element is a far smarter metric for charting app reputation than the Play Store’s trending charts. You too can view this knowledge by nation or see aggregated worldwide knowledge.

I additionally frequently use App Finder to search out apps which are on sale — it’s a nifty cheat code for locating video games. In case you crank up the ranking to the excessive 4s, you may typically discover some fairly entertaining titles lurking throughout the Play Store. It’s equally helpful for locating new titles that simply hit the Play Store’s gaming class.

Someway, if you happen to want much more management, you may benefit from App Finder’s search operators. I can embrace a + to demand that outcomes embrace a particular phrase of their title or abstract, discarding different outcomes. Then there’s the usage of quotes, which permits me to seek for actual, lengthier strings. OR permits me to seek for outcomes which will comprise a number of phrases (for example, video participant OR media participant). App Finder dedicates a whole in-app assist web page for these operators. I actually admire this little element, and I nonetheless go to this web page at times.

As a lot as I like App Finder, it does have areas in want of additional polish. Sure, the UI is useful and intuitive, but it nonetheless feels decidedly dated. The outcomes display may do a greater job of highlighting related information, and textual content spacing and weight does really feel too compressed for my liking.

Then there are the event query marks. Though App Finder remains to be totally useful, it hasn’t seen an replace since October 2024. Extra worrying, the developer has famous that it’s planning “AI-based pure language search,” which makes my pores and skin crawl and would different anti-AI customers, too. Does App Finder want such an addition? No, I don’t imagine it does. Does something with the phrase AI in it proceed to promote? Publishers and builders certain appear to suppose so.

Lastly, it’s value noting that App Finder does have a paid part. Though the majority of the app is on the market to customers without spending a dime (not less than on the time of this writing), you’ll want to improve to unlock extra filters, enhanced scale ranges, and the power to export knowledge for additional research. Given its performance, App Finder just isn’t all that costly both. The Final tier is round $10 for a lifetime unlock, and offered that Google doesn’t make any main changes to the Play Store that disrupt App Finder’s performance, this doesn’t appear too steep.

With Google regularly delivering a sub-par search expertise on the Play Store, it’s changing into extra needed somewhat than handy to use a third-party search app like App Finder to uncover attention-grabbing gross sales, trending, and hidden apps. Sure, it certain has its quirks, but I can not knock the unimaginable customizability, performance, and knowledge that App Finder gives.