Apple App Store Apps: 2017 Edition
April 6, 2017 8:19 PM   Subscribe

Which Apple App Store apps come recommended by you MeFites?

I recently got my second ever Apple toy (an iPhone--my first was a Commodore 64). I love my new toy and highly regret having taken so long to get a smartphone; having a smartphone has honestly made my life easier. However, not all is well: seemingly whenever someone sees my phone, they're surprised that I don't use some great app that makes their life so much easier. I do know of most of the super popular apps that are used by 500+ million people (WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.), but people are making me worried that I'm missing out on gems.

Thanks. I value your opinions and am almost certain that through this thread I'll discover great gems.
posted by GlassHeart to Computers & Internet (21 answers total) 48 users marked this as a favorite
 
If you like walking or wandering around cities and do not always have data available, maps.me is the best thing ever. Good detail, can drop pins with ease, no need for data once you have the map downloaded, and includes places that Google Maps might not have access to (e.g., Chinese cities). It's not as good for finding public transport routes, but for walking, it's exactly what I've needed.
posted by gemutlichkeit at 8:54 PM on April 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


I am so excited!

Life Apps:
Habitica - It's an RPG style gamifying productivity app, but as someone who struggles with anxiety, depression, and undiagnosed ADHD, this is the only productivity app that's actually been flexible and reinforcing enough for me to use, while also being playful. I actively write everything, like I have a "Acknowledge Fear" habit that I tap whenever I want to condition myself to be more emotionally intelligent about my fear, halting my avoidance coping cycles that cause me a huge mess. It's so great.

MyNoise - A very sophisticated sound generator by this really amazing French sound engineer. It has some really beautifully tuned soundscapes and music that I find really helpful and soothing, and is so worthwhile to support.

OurHome - An extremely awesome, cute, and easy to use household task app. Veeeery useful.

Fresh Air - A weirdly beautiful weather app. It's so fun to see minute to minute updates!
posted by yueliang at 9:19 PM on April 6, 2017 [5 favorites]


My favorite app is Castro, a podcast player. It's a really thoughtfully designed app meant for people who listen to tons of podcasts and have trouble keeping up. New podcast episodes appear in an inbox, where you triage them: you can either archive them, leave them, or add them to your queue to listen. Oh, and you can do all of this from your notifications.
posted by acidic at 10:00 PM on April 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh, I also forget...Swiftkey is amazing. Its statistics said that I type 7% faster with it, and it has such seamless autocorrect. My friends keep asking me how I type at lightning speed, but Swiftkey basically memorizes my messy as hell finger placement and knows exactly what I want to say. It's quite wonderful. Plus the Shooting Stars keyboard is just so graceful and elegant.
posted by yueliang at 10:35 PM on April 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


Seconding SwiftKey!

TuneIn Radio is great for discovering great stations around the world.
Camera+ is a really good substitute for the built-in camera app.
Citymapper is tremendously great, and Waze if you drive.
posted by old_growler at 10:45 PM on April 6, 2017


Do you share a household with anyone? AnyList is fabulous for managing the synced grocery (or whatever) list. We use this all the time.

Love Evernote for it's scrapbooky sort of features, like cataloging and adding notes to favorite recipes, keeping favorite art snapshots for inspiration, logging favorite campgrounds and sites, etc.
ImageResizer, for when I post photos to Evernote and want to reduce the size (there are limitations to the free version of EN)

Schralp Tide, if you live near water and care about when you can access the beach.
Yelp, for finding places to eat/sleep/play and reviews.
Snapseed, for quick photo editing.
Gas Cubby, if you want to track gas mileage, maintenance, etc.
CPlus for Craigslist
Overdrive, if you use an ebook.

Have so much fun!
posted by AnOrigamiLife at 11:34 PM on April 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


One's I use regularly:

-Pocket
-Duolingo
-Cookie Jam
-Spotify
-Downcast
-Shazam

And that's really about it. Everybody thinks having fifteen pages of apps is cool. I'd rather have a handful of apps that I actually enjoy using. Don't be ashamed if you're the same way.
posted by kevinbelt at 4:12 AM on April 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


I use RetailMeNot to check for store coupons when I'm out shopping. It has saved me hundreds of dollars.
posted by belladonna at 5:20 AM on April 7, 2017


The app that has most recently changed my life is the Dunkin Donuts app that allows ordering on the go. Click a few buttons while you are on the way and your beverage is ready when you get there. I think more and more coffee shops & restaurants have these kind of apps, and there is a "generic" one called Tapingo, but Dunkies is really the only place I go often enough that it is worth ordering in advance.
posted by Rock Steady at 5:32 AM on April 7, 2017


Some of what's cool is built into an iPhone. I like to ask Siri how old celebrities are, and what's flying overhead. If your new phone gives you access to Apple Pay and you want to use it, tap the main button twice and it will pop up. (I strongly suspect Apple Pay performance anxiety is a thing, and it can be overcome.)

Nthing Duolingo, Waze, Shazam, Yelp, Dunkin' Donuts. Many places like Dunkin' now offer apps that let you pay with your phone, order in advance, and/or give perks for regular ordering. All of my discount/loyalty cards are either now apps or on KeyRing.

Put anything you can on two factor authentication.

Scanner Pro (turn photo into PDF) has come in unexpectedly handy.

If you're near a city, check the store for local mass transit schedule/ticket apps and parking finding/reservation apps.

There are so many great games out there -- previous AskMes will help a lot. If you're into Tetris type, life-owning stuff? Shakira, of all people, has the answer.

(Also: You can re-download anything you get from the app store. So I always download the weekly free Editors' Choice apps, have a look, and delete them if they're not my thing right then and there.)
posted by gnomeloaf at 5:48 AM on April 7, 2017


My most-used, non-Apple-stock apps are...
For podcasts: Overcast
For music: Spotify
For weather: Dark Sky
For organizing recipes and grocery shopping: Paprika
For finding restaurants, bars, and businesses: Yelp
For being extra lazy and ordering food delivery: GrubHub
For productivity, Dropbox; plus all of the Googles: Inbox, Calendar, Keep, Sheets, Docs, Drive, Hangouts
For mapping: Google Maps (more reliable than Apple Maps, IMO)
For web browsing + search: Google Chrome
For mobile payments to friends & small businesses: PayPal, Venmo, and Cash.
posted by D.Billy at 6:13 AM on April 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


I like Paprika for recipes, although I use that primarily on my ipad.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 6:25 AM on April 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


Seconding that if you drive in high traffic areas Waze has become indispensable to me.
posted by spitbull at 6:49 AM on April 7, 2017


Waze and Weather Bug are my two most commonly used app. And Siri. Use Siri.
posted by kathrynm at 8:27 AM on April 7, 2017


(just FYI, a Commodore 64 wasn't an Apple product, it was from a competitor (called, appropriately, Commodore Business Machines) so congrats on your first Apple product!)
posted by brainmouse at 8:45 AM on April 7, 2017 [5 favorites]


Peak Finder is kinda neat. I don't fully grasp how to use it, but I enjoy it anyway.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:13 AM on April 7, 2017


AllTrails is a good way of remembering which hikes one has been on.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:14 AM on April 7, 2017


Metronome + is a perfectly good metronome app; useful for both music, and for doing Stair Climb Tests.

The Red Cross has a bunch of First Aid apps. I've used the First Aid one to make sure I remembered all the steps when I was treating myself, because I was alone and a bit shaken.

Knots 3D is a great knot-tying app; you can rotate the knot, slow it down, etc.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:18 AM on April 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


Workflow was recently bought by Apple (perhaps foretelling the inclusion of automation features directly into iOS) but as a result it's free on the App Store now. You can build tons of little utilities to do pretty much anything, and there's loads of downloadable ones available online. It's basically IFTTT for your phone.
posted by Happy Dave at 2:29 PM on April 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


I use Clear for making very simple lists.

If you already shop at Target, their Cartwheel app saves you a lot of money. Protip: use the barcode scanner when you put an item in your cart & it'll tell you if there's a coupon or if similar items have a coupon.

AdBlock does away with almost all the ads on browsers and within other apps.

The app for whatever password manager you use on your desktop (you DO use one, right?). I use 1Password.
posted by AFABulous at 1:38 PM on April 10, 2017


Sorry for a long list, these are some of the ones that are sticking out right now for me as I scan my folders. Agree with the above apps too.

Before getting into this list, don't forget that you can make an app on your home screen (with nice looking proper icons) from any website through safari; in Safari, when on a site you want to turn into an app, press the share button [the square with the up arrow], and choose 'Add to Home Screen', I have for example an app that takes me to "The Intercept", and another for Metafilter.

Numerical²: The Calculator Without Equal—a great calculator with history, tested a number of calculators including built in one, this one is so much better

Google Photos – free photo and video storage— backs up your photos and even makes great creations, like stitching connected photos into panoramas

XE Currency—accurate and useful for travellers

ProTube for YouTube—great youtube app, lets you 'minimize' videos and put them in the background

Air Video HD - multitasking and PiP support—this app lets you stream videos you "have" from a hard drive on a computer, it also lets you airplay to other things like one of the old apple tvs

Health Mate - Steps tracker, Life coach by Withings) pretty nice app if you want to look at health things

Pillow: Sleep tracking & analysis alarm clock—I use this to track sleeping, it is pretty accurate

Sleep Cycle alarm clock—I alternate between Sleep Cycle and Pillow; both are good
Almost a tossup between this and 'Pillow', but get one of these apps, they monitor your movements, using [magic?] and then they are able to give you an alarm within a 10-30 minute window, so it somehow wakes you up at the point when you are already most awake, it (helped) turn me from having trouble waking up, to a morning person.

Moves—super cool app that lets you track what you do (walking, running, biking, transporting), the data it pulls in can be exported to a neat web application that lets you make a beautiful map with all the places you've been, like a butterfly tracker, I keep it on all the time, and allow background tracking, yet it only uses about 1-2% of my battery over a week

Life Cycle - Track Your Time Automatically—just started trying this out in January, it gives a nice roundup of what/where you do/go

GarageBand—newly made free for all users, really great multi-track recording app, with some great virtual instruments (if you are a musician at all, you might enjoy 'music notes' by Apple, which is for recording small music bits, and it is able to automatically give you drums/bass tracks). Also newly free are all the apple apps (Keynote is actually nice and pretty good) numbers, pages, iMovie.

Google News—really powerful news reading app, particularly if you sign in, and customize what you want to see, and what sources you trust, in the app you can get news on specific topics (that you write yourself, as well as good old general 'top news' Google translate is pretty great for any translation needs.

Overcast: Podcast Player—really nice, customizable podcast player; for those of us who "don't have time for that" it has a natural sounding "shorten silences" algorithm, which cuts out silences in a great way, it also lets you speed up the podcasts, I listen at 2x, also check out The West Wing Weekly

WolframAlpha—having this app apparently gives siri some new/extra powers, it is also a great general science/data application

Copied – Copy and Paste Everywhere—like those pasteboard apps for desktop computers, gives you a copy history

Block ads, trackers & more with 1Blocker—this content blocker (ad blocker) is probably the best one out there, tons of preconfigured rules, tons of customizable settings

tv show tracker 3 —you choose tv shows you like, it tells you when new shows are airing

AppZapp Notify - Personal Alerts for Apps on Sale & New Apps

PhotoScan – Scanner by Google—captures and fixes physical photos

Motion Stills – Create with Live Photos by Google—this app lets 'live photos' be more useful, and lets you export them/use them

Carbo - Handwriting in the Digital Age—really neat/interesting app that lets you turn photos into movable things, check out a demo video of it words don't really describe it

Prisma: Photo Editor, Art Filters Pic Effects—make really pretty arty/painterly creations

Ferrite Recording Studio—really nice recording studio, free to use for normal length recordings, pay to unlock effects and longer recordings

Vellum - Artistic Wallpapers and Backgrounds—this app gives tons of nice backgrounds

QuizUp™ — absolutely love this game, Vexillology, flag quizzes, general knowledge, movies, games, history, quizzes on every topic imaginable

ChineseSkill -Learn Mandarin Chinese Language Free—from my testing this is the best app for learning Mandarin, like a free Rosetta Stone

Exoplanet—Love Love Love this app... it maps all the known exoplanets, lets you look them up in a database, so much fun and so beautiful

Documents 5 - File manager, PDF reader and browser—one of the best ways to manage files, import/export files to other apps, and also to manage files in iCloud

Telegram Messenger—great multi-platform messages system
posted by infinite intimation at 12:59 AM on April 20, 2017


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