Perform physics experiments with your phone. (by the RWTH Aachen University)
phyphox turns your Android device into a portable physics lab by giving direct access to built-in sensors and a library of ready-to-play experiments. It lets you export data in common formats and control experiments from a PC via a web interface, while enabling you to define new experiments at phyphox.org. Total downloads: 1,000,000+; downloads in the last 30 days: 36K.
Pros & Cons
Direct access to on-device sensors enables hands-on physics experiments
Ready-to-run experiments let users start immediately with minimal setup
Flexible data exports to CSV, TSV, and Excel support easy analysis
Remote control and a web-based editor at phyphox.org enable collaborative work
No new downloads in the last 30 days, indicating limited recent growth
Demands multiple sensitive permissions (location, camera, microphone, storage, Bluetooth, etc.), which may raise privacy considerations
Some features rely on online resources (phyphox.org editor and online experiments), which may affect offline usage
About phyphox
phyphox is an education app developed by RWTH Aachen University.
Download Statistics
phyphox has been downloaded 3.7 million times. In the last 30 days, the app was downloaded 36 thousand times. It is ranked #115 in education.
User Ratings
phyphox is rated 4.75 out of 5 stars. The rating is based on 8.1 thousand ratings.
App Information
phyphox is FREE to download. The APK download size is 10.93 MB. The latest version available is 1.2.0. The last update was on July 2, 2025.
Technical Requirements
phyphox requires Android 4.0+ or higher. The app has a content rating of Everyone. The app has been available on Google Play September 2016.
Description
Did you know that you are carrying a 3D magnetometer? That you can use your phone as a pendulum to measure earth's local gravitational acceleration? That you can turn your phone into a sonar?
phyphox gives you access to the sensors of your phone either directly or through ready-to-play experiments which analyze your data and let you export raw data along with the results for further analysis. You can even define your own experiments on phyphox.org and share them with colleagues, students and friends.
Selected Features: - A selection of pre-defined experiments. Just press play to start. - Export your data to a range of widely used formats - Remote-control your experiment through a web interface from any PC on the same network as your phone. No need to install anything on those PCs - all you need is a modern web browser. - Define your own experiments by selecting sensor inputs, defining analysis steps and creating views as an interface using our web-editor (http://phyphox.org/editor). The analysis can consists of just adding two values or using advanced methods like Fourier transforms and crosscorrelation. We offer a whole toolbox of analysis functions.
Sensors supported: - Accelerometer - Magnetometer - Gyroscope - Light intensity - Pressure - Microphone - Proximity - GPS *some sensors are not present on every phone.
Export formats - CSV (Comma separated values) - CSV (Tab-separated values) - Excel (if you need other formats, please let us know)
This app has been developed at the 2nd Institute of Physics A at the RWTH Aachen University.
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Explanation for the permissions requested
If you have Android 6.0 or newer, some permissions will only be asked for when needed.
Internet: This grants phyphox network access, which is required to load experiments from online resources or when using the remote access. Both are only done when requested by the user and no other data is transmitted. Bluetooth: Used to access external sensors. Read external storage: This is may be necessary when opening an experiment stored on the device. Record audio: Required to use the microphone in experiments. Location: Used to access GPS for location-based experiments. Camera: Used to scan QR codes for external experiment configurations.
Recent changes: New camera-based sensors to measure luma, luminance, hue, saturation and value New camera-related experiments: Brightness stopwatch, color stopwatch, brightness spectrum New UI elements: Slider, Dropdown and Toggle Redesign of export/save dialogs to offer an additional download to filesystem button The deprecated Apache-based webserver has been replaced with jlhttp (big thanks to Amicha R.)
Full list of changes at https://phyphox.org/wiki/index.php/Version_history#1.2.0
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Excellent tool for doing easy physics experiments like measuring the acceleration of an elevator or plane!!! I like physics, hope you like it too!
★★★★★NoNameIdk1· May 21, 2026
This is what a utility app should be like. There's absolutely no ads or (from my experience) intrusive popups, it's completely free (although if your phone has some sensors missing you'd need to buy a new one, but that's not something the app can fix) and it has all the utilities and data exportation you could like.
★★★★★Billy Thornton· Jun 4, 2026
Chris Boden sent me, ended up loving the app and that's pretty cool.
★☆☆☆☆Alex Lammert· Jun 29, 2026
DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS APP. The reason why is because since this app requires all the permissions on your phone it will lead to a viruse. When I had this installed it put a Trojan horse viruse on my phone and 5 months later it attacked. Killing 2 servers of my family member, it infected 3 tablets 2 phones, 2 very import ain servers, and a printer. it's not worth the gag to have to factory reset everything and having to lose everything with no redemption. Plz be safe
★☆☆☆☆Paul Skinner· Feb 12, 2026
Download data, nothing. Waste of several experiments. Don't waste your time; data should be SAFE.
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phyphox is requesting 19 permissions and is using 29 libraries.
Show details
Trust & Safety: Phyphox requests a broad set of permissions (including location, camera, microphone, storage, internet, and Bluetooth) to enable sensor-based experiments and remote access. The app provides a permissions explanation and is designed for educational use, prioritizing transparency and user awareness of feature usage.
Each subscription will automatically renew 3 days before the expiration date for
the same time period. Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time before the renewal.
