At my job, we have neither signal nor wifi in certain places (bathroom in the basement). So would appreciate tips on apps to kill five minutes.
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I’ll be the old stodger voice and mention that taking 5 minutes from time to time to not be stimulated is good for mental health, and apparently creativity too.
… And then I’ll put in my vote for Simon Tatham’s puzzle collection. (In F-droid as Puzzles, app by Chris Boyle)
Just a nice collection of quick, simple puzzles. A perfect time killer. It’s a staple that I’ve got on all the devices in my old 2000s PDA collection since it was also built for Windows Mobile and PalmOS.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon
Warning: HIGHLY addictive.
I have ebooks on my phone that I read when I can’t get Internet.
I’m pretty sure reading ebooks is the most common thing I do with my phone.
What apps do you use to read your ebooks?
Koreader on FDroid.
Putting in my vote for Librera reader here. Also on f-droid
Libby for books from the library. Moon reader for other epubs.
Duolingo. You can waste time and learn something. There are countless other apps that help you learn stuff.
I find Duolingo far too parasocial. Their “come back to the lessons” mails and stuff really knocked me off.
Yeah you can just turn those off. I only get a reminder once a day, just on my phone, not via mail. And it’s a silent notification.
But my point was not to sell people on duolingo, my point was to sell people on doing something productive rather than play a silly game.
Does Duolingo work offline?
Oh sweet! I didn’t know that. My precious 500 day streak is a little better protected thanks to you.
Well you’re gonna have to pay for it
I just started Super recently, so no problem there. Still upset they axed the comments, though. They were often helpful.
This is the absolute goat of logic puzzle games. It has all of them offline, free, with multiple difficulties. Simon Tatham’s Puzzles
simon tatham’s puzzles.
I love this app. It’s got like 3 dozen different games, all of which you can scale in difficulty, and works great offline. It is my go to bathroom diversion.
If you like chess puzzles: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/jwtc.android.chess/
It’s a full-featured chess app, but what’s nice about it is that it’s also got a large amount of short chess puzzles that are available offline (unlike lichess).
I like Flow Free and their other related games for wasting time.
Flow FreeIf you like reading books, comics, etc, maybe Librera Reader?
Dunno how it is on Google Play, but it’s available FOSS and DRM free outside of it:
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.foobnix.pro.pdf.reader/Lots of good, free, out-of-copyright books on gutenberg.org
You can read them on Librera or any ereader app
There are also a bunch of books from project Gutenberg that have images and nice formatting on standardebooks.org/
Also you can pirate from Anna’s Archive.
pixel dungeon series is very pick up and put down-able. they’re all roguelikes, f/oss, with different variations for different game experiences. right now i’m playing Experienced Pixel Dungeon because it introduces a character class I really like (the duelist: rather than being a straight fighter or a caster it’s a melee weapon fighter where each type of melee weapon comes with a different special attack).
The fun in these is that for each variation the gameplay will be similar, but have different elements added. There are some that have skill trees, some that have new PC classes like I outlined above, some that are just basic nethack/rogue clones with a GUI, and a bunch that I haven’t tried yet. And they’re all offline, turn based, and let you save at any point so you can just pinch it off and get back to whatever you need to do in an instant.
Sudoku! There’s a few different apps on F-Droid, take your pick of the one that looks the best to you. The underlying game is the same, but some apps have different versions that add some complexity to keep you thinking.
There’s one that I really like called Sudokyuu. Unfortunately, it has been taken of the Play Store but the APK can be found online.
- Vampire Survivors
- Data wing
- Antimine
Antimine is great, and on fdroid.
Needs an undo button, I often get 1800 mines done and fat finger something.
I little too specific but when I have spare time I use AnkiDroid to memorize kanji.
Libby, to read books/magazines with your library card.
Endless Sky
