Why You Should Download Everything.me for Android ASAP

After just a few seconds with Everything.me, I was in love.

I’m no pushover, either. I see, and evaluate, lots of apps. Few of them make me want to call up friends to rave about the software. Everything.me is that kind of app.

Everything.me, currently in beta, is a free Android app that, similar to Facebook Home, takes over your Android’s home screen. (Don’t worry, you’ll be glad it’s there.) Everything.me puts a large “What’s on your mind?” search box at the top of your display, with a microphone icon for easy voice input.

Then you just tell it something you’re interested in, such as The Great Gatsby film, the San Francisco Giants or the weather in Boston. Everything.me then temporarily shows an associated image on your home wallpaper—Leonardo DiCaprio in a tux for The Great Gatsby, for instance. More importantly, it performs a search across your installed apps to dig up relevant info.

In a Great Gatsby search, Everything.me pulled up IMDb, which, when tapped, showed me search results within that app for The Great Gatsby. Everything.me also used my YouTube app to show videos of current and past film versions; Flixster, for critical reviews and movie showtimes; Fandango, to purchase tickets; Amazon, to buy the book, the movie soundtrack and other Gatsby stuff; and so on.

The idea by Everything.me is to help get more out of the apps on your Android that you never really use; everything.me puts apps to work on your behalf. It’s genius. But don’t take my word for it. Everything.me already has a Google Play rating of 4.5 stars out of 1,363 reviews, which is impressive for an app that’s still in beta.

There are a few downsides, though. Everything.me is only available in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. You can’t move the search bar from its position at the top of the home screen. And after installation, Everything.me takes over your home screen, so you have to manually re-add app icons and widgets that were there before.

The app also is not available for iOS. Everything.me reportedly worked on an iPhone version but ditched the idea due to Apple’s “walled garden” approach, which limits developer access to the iOS home screen. So iPhone users are out of luck, and Everything.me is a fantastic example of how Android’s open-source nature can benefit users.

I could go on praising the virtues of Everything.me. But honestly, I want to get back to using it.