Getting a new Android phone usually means spending the first hour removing apps I don’t want and setting up the ones I actually use. Over time, I stopped treating this as something I had to figure out every time. I now have a small list of replacements that I install almost automatically whenever I switch phones. They cover some of the apps I use most often, and I don’t have to pay for any of them. More importantly, I didn’t pick these replacements just to be different. Each one solves a specific problem I had with the default experience and fits better into the way I use Android.