I tried 2 popular Flighty alternatives for Android, but there’s only one I’d pick

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The idea that developers often prioritize Apple’s ecosystem is something we hear all the time, and one of the best examples is Flighty. If you haven’t heard of it, Flighty is widely regarded as one of the best flight-tracking apps on iPhone. Despite years of requests from Android users, myself included, it still isn’t available on Android.

Sure, there are plenty of flight-tracking apps on the Google Play Store, but I’ve never found one that delivers the same polished experience as Flighty. Thankfully, that finally seems to be changing.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying two Flighty-like apps on Android — Aviate and byAir — and both have genuinely impressed me. In fact, if you’re an Android-only user, I think one of them is probably the closest thing to Flighty yet. Personally, though, there’s still one reason I keep coming back to the other.

Let’s start with Aviate, because it’s the newer of the two apps and arguably the one that feels most at home on Android.

Unlike most flight-tracking apps that feel like they were designed for iOS first, Aviate is built specifically with Android in mind. It uses Google’s Material 3 Expressive design language throughout, which immediately makes it feel at home on a Pixel or Galaxy phone.

More importantly, though, it gets the basics right. The app is completely ad-free, the company claims it doesn’t include trackers (ironic for a flight tracking app, huh) or sell your data, and it includes many of the core features you’d expect for free.

Plus, it includes all the standard features you’d expect, like flight tracking, real-time gate changes, notifications, and even calendar syncing for free. This isn’t something I can say for byAir, which payswalls both notifications and calendar syncing.