Android is now over fifteen years old, and in that time, some truly great apps have come and gone. Let’s take a moment to honor a few of our fallen brothers who have served us truly well.
DashClock
Some widgets work better on your home screen. Some are better for use on the lock screen, where you can see certain information without unlocking your phone. Both types of tools have weakened a bit, but the latter in particular. Long before the recent resurgence of lock screen widgets, there was an app called DashClock that showed us just how useful these widgets could be.
Lock screen widgets have been around before DashClock, but they still have a long way to go. DashClock has introduced widgets that look great on your sleeping phone. The weather can be regulated by a small monochrome icon. The number of messages appeared in your inbox next to a small envelope. You can get detailed information about battery health. Some of these tools are available in recent versions of the Android operating system, with One UI in particular letting you enjoy the experience. But in many phones, there’s a big gap that the Dash Watch once filled.
We’ve covered DashClock ourselves in the past, but we can thank our sister site PocketNow for the next trip down memory lane.
Writer I
Android has a few distraction-free writing apps, but we writers can be a nervous bunch, and most of us have some design decisions and quirks that I still find ultimately distracting. For a while, my favorite was iA Writer. Unfortunately, the Android version did not have feature parity with the iOS version, and the app remained vulnerable for a long time without an update. Then I discovered why.
The developers asserted that Google had changed its app developer guidelines in such a way that the app could no longer function the way the developers intended, and it would have been prohibitive to continue doing so for the amount of money they were bringing in. They eventually decided to pull the plug on the Android version of iA Writer.
Nova Launcher
Nova almost needs no introduction. For years, this has been the default launcher for many of us who weren’t satisfied with the customization features our phones offered out of the box. With Nova, you can change everything about your home screen.
Unfortunately, the app was eventually bought out, and development priorities changed until work on Nova ceased altogether, as this story often says.
tweetdeck
There are many whose hearts are still aching over the loss of TweetDeck, an invaluable app for many that offers much more flexibility than the official Twitter apps. You can open multiple feeds side by side, set up detailed filters, and send Tweets on your own schedule. The app’s functionality had been built around it, the usefulness of which had been significantly reduced by Twitter’s API changes long before the site’s eventual acquisition and name change.
TweetDeck was so popular that Twitter bought the app in 2011, and it still technically exists in X Pro form. Don’t look for an Android app, because you won’t find it.
For this hit of nostalgia, we’ll turn to an old, grainy interview with the founder of TweetDeck, courtesy of TechCrunch.
pocket
Here’s a recent addition to the list, as Pocket recently shut down in the summer of 2025. The app was a place where you could save web pages to read later, and reformat them into a more readable format. As the application grows, you can save and share sources other than web pages.
Mozilla bought Pocket in 2017, just a few years into the latter’s life. The functionality became associated with Firefox, where Pocket was a built-in feature. But Mozilla never followed through on its promises to open source Pocket, limiting the service’s appeal to many of Firefox’s most die-hard fans. The nonprofit eventually shut down the servers, but at least there are alternatives to Pocket that do much the same thing.
A modest bouquet
It’s not so much about the loss of a single application as it is about the loss of an era. There was a time when Humble Bundle was the best source for DRM-free Android games. I’ve built a small collection by purchasing several Humble Indie bundles. Humble Bundle has been an alternative way to install apps for over a decade, allowing you to download any Android game from your Humble library.
While the lack of DRM means you truly own your games, it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to play them for long. With the emergence of new versions of the Android operating system, these games gradually stopped working. Since no one was publishing updates for these old Android games, players were left with APK files they couldn’t do anything with. The Humble Bundle team struggled to keep up with new versions of Android and eventually shut down the app in 2021.
Although the app no longer exists, you can still purchase a small selection of Android games from Humble Bundle Via your web browser.
All things eventually come to an end, and apps are no exception. Fortunately, there are still some apps that have managed to stand the test of time, like my favorite podcast client and one of my favorite live wallpaper apps. What do these two apps have in common? Both are open source.