Which Android app is worth a spot on your new smartphone or tablet? Trying to find the very best of the best is a challenging process, because there are millions of apps to pick from on the Google Play Store. Even if you just scan Google’s “top free” or “top paid” list on a daily basis, you’ll miss out on a lot of digital gems. Allow us to help you out with our freshly updated Lifehacker Pack for Android.

iOS/Android: Spotify works great for music sharing and third-party plugins. Apple Music works great for offline play. So I juggle both. It feels a bit like shared custody, but it’s a lot easier thanks to the mobile apps SongShift and Stamp, which efficiently move playlists from one service to the other.

Spotting a fake app is usually pretty easy, but that hasn't stopped hackers and scammers from trying to trick us. The latest example is a pair of fake Telegram apps that look and work just like the real thing, but bombard you with ads to make extra money.

When something seems too good to be true, it usually is.

There's a lot to love about the new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones, from a powerful new camera to a squeezable frame that launches Google Assistant, but one feature that hasn't received much attention is the phone's calendar widget. Google's new Pixel launcher (the extra software that comes on top of Android 8.0 Oreo) puts reminders for upcoming events right on your homescreen, which is pretty great if you're the type of person who constantly forgets about scheduled plans and meetings.

Last week, Google announced a slew of new products, from a pair of Google Home voice assistant variants to the new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones. Those new voice assistants, such as the $79 Google Home Mini and the $US399 ($514) Google Home Max, make music playback throughout the home simple -- so you're going to want to hook up to a music streaming service. Google Play wants to be the streaming service of choice for all Google devices. With added features designed to entice Google Home, Chromecast and Android users, here's why it's worth your consideration over other services such as Spotify.

If you're one of those rare souls who refuses to pirate Game Of Thrones, the wait is finally over. Following yesterday's season-seven finale on Foxtel, the series is now available to purchase in its entirety on Google Play and iTunes. Here are the purchase links and prices!

Both Google Play and the App Store are now saturated to the point that picking the right app for the job comes down to trial and error. Given two apps of equal functionality and price, you're going to want the faster, more stable one. Reviews can help make the decision, but Google is going a step further by tweaking its search algorithms to favour "higher quality" products.

Android: Google is rolling out a small but significant update to the Play Store, adding in a refreshed My Apps screen that makes it much easier to manage everything you have installed.

A study by researchers from Data61/CSIRO, UC Berkeley, UNSW Sydney and UCSI finds that several popular VPN services on Android open up a variety of security holes, including injecting JavaScript for ads and tracking services and traffic redirection to commerce sites.

Google Play Music is an underrated music service that combines a Spotify-like subscription with Pandora-style radio stations and your own music library. Even if you've used it from day one, here are some excellent features you might have overlooked.

There have been a lot of great films released since the year 2000, but some of them stood above the rest and elevated the medium to a whole new level of storytelling. These are the 25 best films of the 21st century according to film critics around the globe, and where you can watch them for yourself.

As long as there's money to be made in apps, there will be companies trying to inflate an app's rating by faking statistics. Now, Google's taking aim at developers who try to artificially push their app up in the Play Store rankings.

Chrome: The Chrome OS version that packs in the Google Play Store has left beta and is now officially on Chromebooks. The new feature allows you to load up any Android app you want on your Chromebook.

Android: Today Google Play Books gets a new tab called Discover, which aims to help you find your next book.

Earlier this year, a California court ruled that Facebook had to refund parents for their kids' accidental in-app purchases. If you've been there, or you've accidentally purchased an app you didn't want yourself, the good news is most digital stores offer some kind of refund policy. Here's how to get your money back.

Google's launching a new family feature for Google Play today called Family Library. With it, you can share your purchased movies, books, TV shows, music and apps across multiple devices.

Android: Google Play Books is already our favourite ereader, but it's quickly becoming our favourite comic book reader as well. Google has just announced a new feature that highlights text bubbles as you read comics in Play Books.

In May, Google launched YouTube Music in Australia to a few cheers, a few groans and a lot of, "Don't they already have a music service?" In fact, they have several: Google Play Music and YouTube Red, for starters. But don't be fooled -- they seem separate, but they actually compliment one another.