[App Review] Quixey, the search engine for finding the best Android apps

Google's Play Store may have faults, but the number of apps available is not one of them. At last count, the Play Store has over 1 million apps, so if you need an app to do something, chances are, you can find it in Google's selection.

With that many apps, you run into a different problem when searching for apps. Looking up “music” in the Play Store lists tons and tons of different apps that all play your music. It's nice to have choice, but if you want to be a little more selective, it can be tough to wade through the apps to separate the good from the bad and find the features that you really want in a music player. That's where Quixey comes in.

Quixey calls itself the “search engine for apps” and offers an easy way to find apps in the Play Store that do specific things. Instead of searching for “music” in the play store, you would search specifically for apps that “share music,” if that's the feature you're looking for in a new app.

Quixey will pull up a list of all apps that specifically are capable of sharing music, like Spotify, SoundClound, and Google Play Music, as opposed to apps that only play music with no sharing features. Looking up an app that “plays music” pulls up similar results, like Spotify and Play Music, but also brings up Pandora and doubleTwist, while dropping SoundClound from the list.

Of course, music playing apps aren't the only thing that Quixey can help you find, and Quixey's casual searching makes it extremely easy to narrow down apps to find just a few apps that fit what you're looking for. Quixey provides samples of what it can do, ranging from apps that improve battery life, accept credit cards, identify songs, share photos, get sports news, you name it. Anything you can think of, Quixey can help you find. And once you've found an app, it links you straight to the Play Store, so there's no fiddling with third party stores and app selections.

If you aren't quite sure what you want, Quixey also offers several methods to browse apps. The main page of the app has links to three separate sections outside of the search bar, including a link to trending apps, a link to browse apps based on smaller categories, and a link to some sample search suggestions.

The trending apps link is simple enough; you can browse through top picks for different types of users, including shoppers, athletes, kids, readers, movie buffs, etc. It's an easy way to find apps that are frequently downloaded by people with similar interests. The Shopping category frequently list apps like Amazon, Groupon, and shopping list applications, while the Sports section tend to be more along the lines of calorie counters and heart rate monitors. If you aren't looking for any specific type of app, you can also browse top game picks and top general app picks, which is just a grab bag of the most popular apps currently.

The browse apps section of Quixey is unique. It asks you to narrow down categories about what you're looking for, starting with four categories: play, work, learn, and live.

Each of those four categories then breaks down into smaller categories, like business and finance for the work category and music and entertainment in the play category. Once you've made your second category selection, you'll be treated to a list of apps fitting what you've chosen, which you can narrow down even further if you can't find exactly what you're looking for. Finance apps can be sorted into apps that calculate a mortgage or manage personal finances, and so on.

The last link on the home page takes you to sample queries that Quixey can search for. If you just need to get some ideas on what to search for, this would be the place to go. There are also options to narrow these down into the four categories from the browse section: play, work, live, and learn.

Another excellent new feature that Quixey has added recently is tablet support. Finding great Android tablet apps is a little tougher than finding phone apps, despite Google's latest efforts to put the spotlight on well-designed tablet apps. Quixey solves this problem if you're using it on a tablet, as it only shows apps that are well-designed for tablets. So if you're looking through the Play Store to find an app that won't look distorted on your 10-inch tablet, you may want to give Quixey a spin instead. It can help you find any app you need for a specific purpose, and find one that looks good while you're at it.

Although Quixie does many things well, it does have a few odd things that could be improved on. When you're searching for an app that “shares music,” for instance, you're pretty limited on filtering those apps any further. You can filter between paid and free apps, but there's no way to filter things based on ratings, downloads, etc. It's pretty much just an infinite list to scroll through, which just feels odd considering how far you can narrow things down in other parts of the app.

Another small gripe with the app is the lack of landscape orientation. On a phone, I generally stick to portrait orientation for most things, but on my tablet I prefer landscape orientation, especially on a 10-inch screen. Forcing you into only using portrait mode seems a little counter-intuitive to helping you find better tablet apps, but it's not a deal breaker.

Overall, if you're an app junkie, having an extra tool to help you find out new apps to test and play with is never a bad thing, especially with how specific Quixey can get. It's free, lightweight, and definitely worth testing out, despite the few design flaws it has.

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