India bans 59 Chinese apps: Top alternatives to TikTok, ES File Explorer and CamScanner

The Ministry of Information Technology has issued a release, banning as many as 59 Chinese apps from India. These include some important ones like TikTok, ES File Explorer and CamScanner. While these three have already garnered millions of downloads from both Google Play Store and Apple App Store, users might not be able to use these in the coming days. So, here are some alternatives for these three apps, which you can get on both Android and iOS.

TikTok

TikTok has been in the news for the past few months but this time is making headlines for a different reason. The app has been banned by the government of India but you can still get some alternatives. Two desi options you can get right now are Mitron and Chingari, which recently shot up to fame and have been downloaded millions of times.

Also read: TikTok’s desi rival Chingari hails govt’s decision to ban 59 Chinese apps

CamScanner

In case you have CamScanner installed on your smartphone, you can download it and instead install apps like Adobe Scan: PDF Scanner with OCR, PDF Creator or Microsoft Office Lens - PDF Scanner. You can find these two on the Apple App Store as well. While Adobe Scan weighs 28MB, Microsoft Office Lens weighs almost double at 43MB but has more features. CamScanner weighs 35MB.

Also read: We welcome govt's move to ban Chinese apps: Khabri

ES File Explorer

ES File Explorer is also one of the widely used apps that manages the files and lets you easily access or move files from one folder to another. Most smartphones also have this installed by default. Fortunately, there are some decent alternatives to this including Files by Google: Clean up space on your phone and File Commander - File Manager & Free Cloud. These carry the same function and don’t take up much space in your handset.