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.
Ugh, true.
self-promotion caveat: I'm building my sudoku game to be offline and fully accessible: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=digital.cyberpuffin.sudoku
The only thing that might constitute an "ad" is a button on the main menu that leads to a promotion page for my print-on-demand book.
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.
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.
You can disable them in the settings iirc.
Yep, I also liked having the daily reminders because that's when I'd go and do them
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.
Antimine is great, and on fdroid.
Needs an undo button, I often get 1800 mines done and fat finger something.
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).
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.
Libby, to read books/magazines with your library card.
If 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/
I little too specific but when I have spare time I use AnkiDroid to memorize kanji.
This is the absolute goat of logic puzzle games. It has all of them offline, free, with multiple difficulties. Simon Tatham's Puzzles
Anki might be worth your while if you are trying to learn something.
Load it up with a flashcard deck of something you want to remember, and it'll show you those flashcards. Lots of people use it to learn languages, but it's also good for anything that requires memorisation.
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.
2048 & Retro Stack are on fdroid, and there are other decent offline games on the playstore
The lemmy apps could probably implement something like Offline Reader for Reddit
Endless Sky
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.
Duet
Seeneva. It's a comic reading app. I've taken to reading manga like "Go Go Loser Ranger" and "Akira" during the lulls where I would scroll mindlessly.
Install Duck station emulator and run Vagrant Story.
You can complete one dungeon room in less than 5 minutes.
2048
Mindustry
5 minutes, not 5 hours, lol, love this game but deffo is a quick way to lose an hour
I've got a few games on my phone for when I'm flying. Minesweeper, Freecell, Alpha Omega...
I enjoy Idle Slayer. It’s just a fancier version of Cookie Clicker though. Very mindless.
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