If you’re in the market for a new smartphone, you could choose one of the best folding phones—like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 or the Google Pixel Fold—rather than opting for a traditional single-screen model. The foldable form factor is getting more popular, even though it comes at a price premium. However, you get two screens rather than one, and (with a book-style foldable) the larger display opens out to something approaching tablet size.
Are there apps that take advantage of that extra space though? Apps that aren’t afraid to expand to take up the extra room? Sure, but they’re mostly big names you know already. These are our favorite ones so far—and they’re all on Android of course, while we wait for a folding iPhone that may never come.
Notion
Notion gives you room to spread out.
Notion via David Nield
One of the most appealing aspects of Notion is the way it presents you with a blank canvas that you can then use however you like. That approach is replicated when you have the app open on a foldable phone screen—and if you’re using a stylus to make selections and scribble text directly onto the display, even better.
The pop-out navigation bar that Notion puts on the left when you’re in landscape or portrait mode is perfect for finding your way around your pages and the other elements of the app, and when you’re on the actual pages themselves, there’s plenty of room to work. It means you can actually get stuff done in Notion on the move.
Gmail
Gmail adopts a two-pane design.
Google via David Nield
It’s perhaps no surprise that Google is leading the way in showing other developers how to use the foldable form factor. Gmail is a perfect example: It’ll recognize that you’re using it on a folding display, and split the screen so that you see a list of conversations on the left, and the actual email messages themselves on the right.
It’s a major improvement when you’re trying to sift through emails on the go—you feel like you might accomplish something with the extra space. The same layout is retained when you’re searching through your messages, and also automatically enables itself when you set up video calls through the Google Meet component in the app.
Feedly
Keep up with the web with Feedly.
Feedly via David Nield
Very few apps that we’ve come across make as good use of a larger screen as Feedly does: if you’re not yet familiar with the app, it’s a supercharged RSS reader that comes with a ton of functionality to help you cut through the noise and keep up with everything that’s happening on the web, including saving and bookmarking articles for you.
When it comes to Feedly on a foldable phone, it makes full use of the space: There’s a pop-out navigation pane on the left, and reading articles (in a streamlined, distraction-free format) is a delight on a larger screen. If you’re struggling to keep up with everything you need to read on the web, this could be the answer.
Outlook
See your emails and your conversation lists in Outlook.
Microsoft via David Nield
Like Gmail, Microsoft’s Outlook adapts to fill the available space on a foldable phone by switching to a two-pane view for your emails, which means you can read an individual message without losing track of exactly where you are in your conversation list. Whatever you want to do with your messages, from archiving to starring, it’s easier this way.
You can still swap between your Focused and Other inboxes with a tap, and you can still quickly jump between the various components of the app when you need to. Sadly the calendar part of the Outlook app hasn’t yet been optimized in the same way, but it’ll still expand to fill the available space, meaning a better view of your appointments.
OneDrive
You can easily navigate around OneDrive in the mobile app.
Microsoft via David Nield
Our second Microsoft entry in the list, OneDrive solves the problem of trying to manage and manipulate files when you’re on the go. By putting a navigation bar and the files themselves on the screen, the app lets you actually get work done, whether it’s marking files for deletion or sorting them into the appropriate folders.
This is going to be much more suitable for people who are already invested in OneDrive and the Microsoft ecosystem in general, but you get access to all of your cloud storage in the same interface. You can quickly jump to files that have recently been opened, to files and folders you’ve shared with other people, and to photos and videos.
YouTube
YouTube makes clever use of the two halves of the screen.
YouTube via David Nield
No doubt YouTube isn’t a new app to anyone, but it really shines on a foldable screen, because it uses the two halves of the display separately: In landscape mode with the display slightly folded, you get the video playing on the top half and the playback controls on the bottom half, making it much easier to control your video queue with fewer taps.
It’s likely having your own little portable video player you can prop up anywhere you want. Even if the screen is fully flat (which automatically hides the playback controls again), the YouTube app intelligently adapts to show a carousel of recommended videos down the right-hand side, which you can scroll through separately.
