Best Android Apps for IT Professionals

• Google Play features numerous apps that can greatly increase IT professionals’ productivity and are essential tools for a wide range of responsibilities. 
• Android device capabilities allow smartphones and tablets to operate as laptop stand-ins, offering employees more flexibility while they work. 
• The available Android apps cover a wide range of needs, such as handling cloud computing tasks and building full automations on your device. 
• This article is for IT professionals looking for business apps to maximize the capabilities of their Android tablets or smartphones. 

Android apps for IT pros have been kicking around for years. Thanks to the increased size and power of today’s devices, these apps are more valuable than ever. Coupled with some of the features of the Android operating system, such as split-screen multitasking, your smartphone or tablet can now stand in for your laptop in a wide range of circumstances and can function as an excellent business device. [Related article: Is iOS or Android Better for Business?]

Whether you need to do some remote service on the CEO’s desktop, troubleshoot the Wi-Fi connection in the conference room or grab a file from your laptop, there’s an Android solution. Many of these essential apps also have the benefit of being free or at least available for a free trial so you can see if they meet your needs. Here are some useful apps for IT professionals that you should download today. 

Microsoft apps for Android

Microsoft has multiple official apps for the Android ecosystem that allow IT professionals to easily carry out tasks like remotely accessing PCs with remote desktop software and managing Microsoft Azure cloud instances. 

Remote Desktop

Source: Google Play

As you would expect, the Microsoft Remote Desktop app allows you to securely connect to any PC and access all of its files, apps and network resources, and provides access to published Windows apps on Microsoft Azure. This app is especially useful for IT professionals who may have to remotely access their office workstations or workstations belonging to other remote employees who need technical assistance. 

Microsoft Azure

Source: Google Play

It’s the app you’ve been dreaming about: Microsoft Azure on your Android device.

With this app, you can manage your company’s cloud from anywhere. Specifically, it can help you build, deploy and manage your company’s applications. It can alert you of potential health issues, check the status of critical metrics and even let you take actions such as starting and stopping virtual machines or web apps.

Key takeaway: Dedicated Microsoft apps for Android allow an Android app to function like an extension of any Microsoft software setup. This is ideal for technicians on the move who find it difficult or inconvenient to have a laptop with them all the time.

Network tool apps for Android

For IT technicians responsible for managing networks, accurate, timely data and alerts are of the utmost importance. The following apps help technicians discover which devices are connected to a Wi-Fi network, analyze network conditions, and carry out a range of network actions, such as port scanning and DNS lookups. 

Fing – Network Tools

Source: Google Play

To keep tabs on what’s happening on your Wi-Fi network, Fing – Network Tools is one of those indispensable apps for IT technicians.

You can quickly view every device connected to your network, including their IP and MAC addresses, device name, vendor, and manufacturer. Device names can be customized with a tap, and additional notes can be added. It also offers DNS lookup, port scanning, network intruder detection and network quality measurement, but that’s just scratching the surface.

WiFi Analyzer

Source: Google Play

While versatile apps have their place in your toolbox, there’s something to be said for apps that do one thing and do it well.

WiFi Analyzer is just such an app, and ensuring that your router is on the best possible channel in the optimal location is certainly a vital task. WiFi Analyzer will show all the channels in use around you and offer a star rating on all available channels.

PingTools Pro

Source: Google Play

PingTools Pro offers a similar feature set to Fing – Network Tools, but with a few different options and a vastly different user interface. The IP Calculator feature helps you calculate network parameters when you are setting up for the first time. The visual traceroute feature shows how data packages travel on a map. It also includes a full suite of network tools, such as ping, port scanning, whois, UPnP scanning, Wi-Fi scanning, DNS and reverse DNS lookup, and wake-on-LAN.

At $2.99, this app is one of the most useful apps for IT professionals who handle networking in the office. It offers a great feature set and consistent updates.

Tip: Restaurants benefit from mobile POS systems because they are easy to use, allow for quick checkout, and enhance customer service.

Productivity apps for Android

IT professionals have to juggle a number of competing priorities and responsibilities, especially as businesses continue to adjust to telecommuting policies. The following tools help with automating tasks, taking notes that can be shared with the team and securely connecting to cloud hosting providers. [You can also check out these nine Android apps for planning your workday.]

PagerDuty

Source: Google Play

PagerDuty is one of the best apps for IT, as it helps drive customer satisfaction by notifying you and your team of any application issues the moment they happen with custom alerts. This means faster response times and resolutions.

The app will save you from overlapping work by allowing you to acknowledge and assign issues as well as manage on-call schedules. It will even let you solve some problems directly from your phone with custom actions like restarting servers and running diagnostics. PagerDuty requires an account, but you can try it out for free for 14 days.

Tasker

Source: Google Play

Listing all of the potential uses for Tasker could take days. The app can automate virtually any task on your device. You can set triggers for all sorts of things, such as connecting to a specific Bluetooth device or arriving at a location.

The app offers more than 200 built-in actions, with even more options available via plugins. For instance, you could change your device settings when you arrive at work, have texts read out loud while you drive or create your own voice commands with the AutoVoice plugin. For $3.49, it’s a worthwhile investment and one of the best Android apps for IT pros.

Evernote

Source: Google Play

Evernote is billed as the place to store and organize any information that you need to keep, but many people don’t take full advantage of the app’s power.

Basic notes can be handwritten, but they can also contain typed text, photos, attachments and more. There is a lot of flexibility with Evernote. A web-clipping tool for Chrome allows you to capture any page that catches your interest. This data is sorted into notebooks that can be searched. Advanced features include the ability to snap a picture of a document and have it become automatically searchable. Personal and Professional subscribers can annotate PDFs and images with text, handwriting and arrows.

Evernote Personal and Professional cost $7.99 per month and $9.99 per month, respectively. Additionally, Evernote has a Teams subscription, allowing for easy collaboration, starting at $14.99 per user per month. 

Solid Explorer

Source: Google Play

Solid Explorer has long been considered one of the best file explorers on Android.

The basic app is free, and it includes vast customization options and an impressive feature set that includes dual-pane file management with the ability to drag and drop files between panes, support for managing all major cloud storage solutions, and archive file creation and extraction.

Additional plugins in Google Play can extend the functionality to connect to a Windows PC or remote server via FTP, SFTP or WebDav to manage files remotely; add Chromecast support; and access to Amazon cloud services, such as S3 and Cloud Drive.

Termius

Source: Google Play

Termius is the best secure socket shell client available on Android today. The app allows you to manage UNIX and Linux systems locally or remotely, including Docker Container, VM, Raspberry Pi or an AWS instance. The app supports password, key and two-factor authentication for security. Hardware keyboard support can help you get more done, even when you have just your smartphone. When you aren’t on mobile, you can shift over to the desktop app available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

The free version will be enough for a lot of people, but for $8.33 per month when paid annually, you can unlock the premium plan with cross-device sync, SSH key agent forwarding, SFTP client, AWS EC2, and Digital Ocean host import.

Dynatrace

Source: Google Play

Dynatrace is an excellent app for IT technicians who need to stay on top of their application performance. It will notify you the moment there are problems in your application environment. It provides real-time root-cause analysis, allowing you to solve issues as quickly as possible.

Dynatrace uses AI to identify root causes of performance problems and establish baselines for application performance to help quickly identify performance issues. The Dynatrace mobile app requires a Dynatrace account, but it comes with a free trial so you can see if it will meet your needs.

Indeed Job Search

Source: Google Play

Indeed is among the largest job search sites and can help you find a new, better position when you’ve outgrown the one you’re in.

You can search by job title, location, company or a phrase within the posting. You can even create a job alert to tell you when a position you want gets posted.

Jeremy Bender and Sean Riley contributed to the writing and research in this article.