Google Drive on Android can replace 4 different apps you might be paying for

Published Aug 18, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT Sydney Butler is a technology writer with over 20 years of experience as a freelance PC technician and system builder and over a decade as a professional writer. He's worked for more than a decade in user education. On How-To Geek, he writes commerce content, guides, opinions, and specializes in editing hardware and cutting edge technology articles. Sydney started working as a freelance computer technician around the age of 13, before which he was in charge of running the computer center for his school. (He also ran LAN gaming tournaments when the teachers weren't looking!) His interests include VR, PC, Mac, gaming, 3D printing, consumer electronics, the web, and privacy. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Research Psychology with a minor in media and technology studies. His masters dissertation examined the potential for social media to spread misinformation. Outside of How-To Geek, he hosts the Online Tech Tips YouTube Channel, and writes for Online Tech Tips, Switching to Mac, and Helpdesk Geek. Sydney also writes for Expert Reviews UK. He also has bylines at 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, Tom's Hardware, MakeTechEasier, and Laptop Mag. Even if you don't pay a single cent to Google in the form of subscription money, your Android phone has access to the Google Drive app with a few gigabytes of free storage. You might not know that this one app sits at the center of an ecosystem that can actually replace several other simple apps that you might be using. Replace your document scanner app (or just your actual scanner) It really is a snap to use Thanks to the Google Drive app, you don't really need a document scanner anymore. Instead, you can create a scan using the Google Drive app as if you were creating any new document. The traditional way this works is: Create a new document in Google Drive. Choose "Scan" as the document type. Manually position the page in the camera viewfinder. Press the capture button. Confirm you're happy with the capture, or press the back button to try again. Tweak the auto-adjustments if necessary. Add another page using the "add page" icon, or select "next" if you're done. Save the document to your drive. I say this is the "traditional" method because this is still how it looks and works on my old Android tablet, but on my Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, Google Drive now automates almost the entire process. Once you select "scan", it automatically identifies and captures the first page, then waits for you to turn to the next page and captures that, and so on. So I could page through an entire book, and the app would just happily keep adding pages until I told it to stop. Which experience you get likely depends on your handset, Android, and app versions. Replace a basic PDF annotation app It's the highlight of your day There was a time when the only way you could annotate PDFs was by paying for a PDF reader to unlock its annotation tools. These days, there are plenty of free PDF annotation apps, if you're willing to put up with some ads. However, Google Drive already has a pretty decent PDF annotation feature built right in, and, ironically for the biggest ad-delivery company in the world, there are no ads here to get in the way of your work. Just open a PDF you've saved in Google Drive, tap the text once to bring up the tools, and select the little pen icon. Then you can choose between a pen or a highlighter, change their colors, and mark up the PDF with ease. Since I have a built-in S-Pen in my Galaxy phone, this works a treat. However, you can use two fingers to pinch and zoom the PDF to make it easier to annotate with your finger. You'll also notice there's a comment button at the top of the document, which allows you to add written comments to any part of the PDF. Replace some of your offline productivity apps There's no need to pay for the basics Credit: Nathaniel Pangaro / How-To Geek | Google | Samsung If you're paying for office productivity apps on your Android phone, you might be spending money for no reason. Google Drive is paired with several apps like Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, which are all capable of working with documents offline. So, for example, if you're about to get on a plane and won't have internet access, you can mark Google Drive files for offline access. Then you can open, edit, and generally do whatever you like while offline. The next time you have an internet connection, Google Drive will simply sync the changes you've made to the cloud. The only real downside here is that Google's productivity apps are stripped down in functionality compared to, for example, Microsoft's apps. However, unless I have to do some very specific formatting, this has almost never been a problem. Google's apps have enough tools and features for 99% of people, and so avoid feeling complex and bloated. Document signing apps On the dotted line please Printing out documents, signing them, and then scanning them back into digital form is rather wasteful, don't you think? These days, you'll likely be asked to sign your documents electronically. In some cases, you'll be sent a link to a specialized document signing website or have to download an app. This is mostly true when you're being sent a document to sign by a company that pays for eSignature services. However, if it's just your landlord sending you a PDF with your new rental contract, then you can literally just use the same PDF annotation tool I mentioned above to sign the document. If it's an editable Word Processor file, you can convert it to Google Docs format and add your signature by using the "add image" feature. Or, again, just convert the file to a PDF and use the annotation pen tool.