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The 101 best iPhone apps in 2024
Contributions from last updated about 7 hours ago
The best apps for every iPhone
An iPhone is nothing without apps. Sure, a lot of fuss was made about the
first iPhone’s standout design and, quite rightly, how it made the
touchscreen so popular among the public. But apps gave the iPhone legs.
More than 1.7 million apps live on the App Store. Useful as Apple’s app
discovery tools may be, a pointer in the right direction can help anyone
looking for inspiration, or those new to the iPhone ecosystem.
We will run through all types of iPhone app in the list below, and we’re not
just talking about apps for work versus play. There are completely free
apps, ones you buy outright and, the favourite method of the moment, apps
that ask you to subscribe to get full access and pay a fee each month.
Only here for the freebies? We maintain a separate
<https://www.imore.com/best-free-iphone-apps> best free iPhone apps list, as
well as a dedicated <https://www.imore.com/best-apps-new-ipad> best iPad
apps list. Let’s get started.
https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/kRCmj4h5
Best iPhone apps: Books, Comics and Reading
Amazon Kindle
(Image credit: Apple)
We’re going to assume most of you have heard of Amazon Kindle. It’s not just
a series of ebook readers. It’s also the entire Amazon bookstore, which is
fully accessible from your phone. It’s great as a discovery tool,
particularly as Amazon lets you try out samples of books, to get a taste of
the
writing style before you commit to buying. You don’t actually buy books
through this app, but on the Amazon app. Once purchased, the books then
appear in this Kindle app.
YACReader
(Image credit: Apple)
This no-nonsense comic book reader app lets you add comics and graphics
novels through a whole load of methods, indulging cloud services like
Dropbox, the Files app and the YACReader app for PC and Mac. There’s no
comics store here, but as long as you have a digital comics library, that
means you get a cleaner, less clutter-filled experience. The panel view is
the special feature of this particular reader app, letting you read graphics
novels panel-by-panel. It’s not free, at $4.99, but is worth the investment
if you like reading comics on your phone.
Pocket
(Image credit: Apple)
You know when you mean to read an article you saw online, but you end up
forgetting where it was by the time you find the time to do so? Pocket is
out to fix that. It’s an app you send links to, just as you might share a
story with a friend over WhatsApp. Pocket then works it up into a
super-readable format for later reading. And you can change the font size,
and the font. There’s also a glitzy front end to the app, which lets you
discover stories other folks are reading on Pocket. You can use this app for
free, but to get rid of ads, unlock text searching and loads of fonts, you
will need to subscribe. It costs $4.99 a month or $44.99 a year.
Libby
(Image credit: Apple)
Did you know there’s a good chance you can borrow digital books and
audiobooks for free through your local library? There are two key apps these
services use in our experience: Libby (aka Overdrive) and Borrowbox. At one
point we got so into borrowing audiobooks we went around the local area
signing up to as many libraries as possible, just to get the widest possible
array of titles. Who needs Audible? OK, Audible will get you a much broader
catalogue, but Libby is well worth checking out, following a trip to your
local library, folks. Use it or lose it.
Best iPhone apps: Cloud Storage
Dropbox
(Image credit: Apple)
Sometimes it’s a good idea to have a cloud storage provider not run by the
folks who handle your emails, as they end up sharing your storage
allocation. Dropbox offers 2.75GB storage for free. We use it all the time
to share files, for work or just among friends. The app lets you create
folders, and you can then share just specific folders. Or even specific
files, so people don’t get access to your entire Dropbox library. It’s not a
mega-exciting app, but useful? Absolutely. You can then access your stored
files from anywhere, including the Dropbox web interface.
Google Drive
(Image credit: Apple)
Cloud storage apps are not the most interesting of things. But they are a
way to get a tranche of free server space without signing up for a paid
subscription. You’ll need a Google account, of course, but each of those
comes with 15GB of space. That’s a lot better than the 5GB Apple offers. Our
favourite use for this space is to store photos. And you can do so by
downloading Google Photos. However, using the Drive app you can fling any
old files up on there.
Best iPhone apps: Dating
Hinge
(Image credit: Apple)
App dating has a bad rep, largely a deserved one. But many of the daters we
talk to have less scorn to pour on Hinge than most. It’s an app where you
are asked a series of questions, with which you can show off your wit. Yes,
even among the better-regarded dating apps there is still potential for
mountains of embarrassment. Hinge also makes you pose questions to be asked
of your potential matches. When perusing profiles you can “like” certain
parts, to make a match-up seem more specific, and hopefully get you off the
cycle of swiping.
Bumble
(Image credit: Apple)
The Bumble quirk is women message first, giving this dating app quite a
different vibe to the competition. It’s not just for heterosexual folks, but
the USP does rather rely on having people of the opposite sex getting
involved. Bumble has also opened up beyond pure dating. You can list your
account as being out for friendship or business connections too.
Responsiveness is part of the equation, as matches expire after 24 hours if
no contact is made.
Best iPhone apps: Drawing and Painting
Procreate Pocket
(Image credit: Apple)
The ultimate version of Procreate lives on iPad, but we’re not throwing
shade at Procreate Pocket’s creators. iPhones have smaller screens and do
not support the brilliant Apple Pencil stylus, two elements that pair so
beautifully with a digital painting app. However, aside from that, and the
lack of support for 3D model painting (seen in the iPad version), this does
feel just like the full version for iPad. Lots of professional artists swear
by Procreate.
Pixelmator
(Image credit: Apple)
This sleek and stylish design and drawing app can be used as a photo editor
or a full-on drawing and painting suite. It’s packed with brushes, effects
and advanced manipulation features like warp and pinch. Pixelmator reminds
us of a mobile version of Photoshop. Crucially, it supports layers, making
it suitable for fairly serious work. We’re impressed by how much has been
packed in here, without making the app seem remotely unwieldy or unfriendly.
Tayasui Sketches
(Image credit: Apple)
While Tayasui Sketches is a technically impressive app, it’s the vibe of the
thing that proves so appealing to us. Developer Tayasui has managed to get
away from the the slightly cold feel of some digital drawing/painting apps.
It relies more on graphical depictions of pens and brushes when you pick
your tool. And the way they interact feels fairly natural. You can get by
for free with this app, but a Pro upgrade ($7.99) unlocks different brush
patterns and styles. The free version still has layers, though, so you can
create pretty advanced art, gratis.
Best iPhone apps: Education and Learning
DuoLingo
(Image credit: Apple)
How do you foster good habits? Make doing the healthy stuff fun. DuoLingo
does that for language learning, with a veneer of gamification. The idea is
you practice a language for a few minutes a day, in order to maintain your
DuoLingo streak. Even if you don’t end up remotely fluent, a daily dose of
this must be good for your grey matter. It’s free to use, while the
SuperDuolingo subscription gets rid of ads and stops mistakes from blocking
your daily progress. More than 30 languages are supported, from Japanese to
Swahili, and even the High Valerian, a language constructed for Game of
Thrones.
Khan Academy
(Image credit: Apple)
Learning shouldn’t top when your leave school. Khan Academy brings a massive
treasure trove of video sessions in math, science, economics, arts &
humanities and computing. Each subject is broken down into digestible
chunks, and you earn mastery points to let you keep track of how much of
each area you have covered. You’ll find everything from the Realism art of
Manet to the molecular structure of ionic solids in here. And as it’s mapped
against the US school system, in terms of being middle school, high school
or college grade (or above), you have an idea of what to expect. It’s all
free too. This is a real treasure trove of an app.
Teach your Monster to Read
(Image credit: Apple)
This utterly charming app developed in collaboration with the UK’s
University of Roehampton teaches your kids phonics and reading. But it’s no
dry purely education-driven experience. It’s inspired by kids’ cartoons,
games and, in particular, the character customisation in those video games
many kids love. The experience of reading becomes part story-book, part
interactive adventure. And Teach Your Monster to Read splits the learning
process into three chapters: First Steps, Fun with Words and Champion
Reader. Free to download, $8.99 to unlock the full app. Once your child is
up to speed, don’t miss the follow-up, Reach Monster: Reading for Fun, which
includes 70 free story books, which cycle around day after day (three
available per day).
Mimo
(Image credit: Apple)
Every wanted to learn to code? Us too, but it doesn’t half take a lot of
time and brain power. Our latest (maybe last?) hope is Mimo. This is the
coding equivalent of DuoLingo. It breaks down the process of learning coding
of all types into teeny-tiny tasks you can digest in sessions of just a few
minutes on your phone. There are modules on Python, SQL, Swift, Javascript
and HTML. You can try out the first handful of lessons in each discipline
for free, but will then have to pay up for a subscription. It costs $99.99 a
year. If that’s too steep, check out Encode, which is similar but perhaps
slightly less glossy, and costs $6.49 a year.
Skillshare
(Image credit: Apple)
This may sound odd, but SkillShare is basically Netflix but for learning
creative skills. You sign up for $31.99 a month or $169.99 a year, and get
access to thousands of video courses across fields like creative writing,
illustration, painting, film-making and photography. While there’s a lot of
great tuition available for free over on YouTube, the smarter presenters
clue up to their value and make courses people can sign up for. As they
should. However, these are often quite pricey, while Skillshare lets you
dabble in a bunch of fields to see what takes your interest.
Best iPhone apps: Fitness
Strava
(Image credit: Apple)
If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen. It’s a popular saying. This app has
become so ubiquitous, it is basically the default pick for exercise logging,
particularly among cyclists. It can be paired up with many wearable
platforms to log your run, ride and gym (and more) data. Or you can log
outdoors sessions using the phone app itself, thanks to your phone’s GPS.
This is effectively a giant social network for active folks, and is at its
best when you add friends or find a group to join within Strava. It’s free
to use but a paid subscription unlocks stats like your weekly intensity.
$11.99 a month, or $79.99 a year.
Zwift
(Image credit: Apple)
OK, so this one requires some extra equipment. Zwift is an awesome cycling
platform, or game if you like. It lets you ride around a virtual world
called Watopia, and other game worlds inspired by Japan, France, New York
and London, among other places. You compete with other real cyclists if
that’s your bag, potter around or take part in structured workouts. You need
a bike and a smart turbo trainer to get the most out of Zwift, but there’s a
runner’s mode too. This is a must-try if you are into indoor bike riding.
There’s a free trial, after which you’ll pay $14.99 a month.
Nike Run Club
(Image credit: Apple)
Nike doesn’t just care about selling expensive trainers. It also produces
this rather neat runner’s app. Sure, Nike Run Club doesn’t generally have
the clout of Strava among the athlete classes. But it is ideal if you are
just starting out and have no idea what you‘re doing. It features “guided
runs” and training plans including a classic “couch to 5K” style program for
beginners. While we tend to see people migrate on from Nike Run Club in
time, it does even have a marathon training program. That ain’t for
beginners. Well, aside from the very boldest of ‘em.
ZRX
(Image credit: Apple)
Also known as Zombies, Run!, we’ve been recommending ZRX for what feels like
forever. It turns your runs into audiobooks of a sort, with the action
mapping onto the structure of the workout itself. It started off with just
the zombie theme, but now there’s a Marvel module inside ZRX called Marvel
Move. And Venture, which is home to hundreds of genre stories, including
horror and sci-fi ones. If you find running terminally boring, this is one
way to spice up those sessions. To unlock all episodes you’ll need to
subscribe ($5.99/month). There’s a separate subscription one for the Marvel
stuff ($7.99/month).
AllTrails
(Image credit: Apple)
This was Apple’s iPhone app of the year 2023, despite being a core part of
the app landscape for outdoorsy types for many years. It’s a brilliant
hiking, running and cycling app that helps you find routes worth taking,
mostly on cross-country trails. It feels a vibrant place too, as routes will
have comments, reviews and photos taken by other AllTrails users. You’re
also given a difficulty rating for each route, and roughly how long it
thinks the walking time is. You can use AllTrails for free, but will need to
pay $35.99 if you want to access features like 3D mapped previews and, much
more important, offline downloaded maps.
Apple Fitness+
(Image credit: Apple)
When Apple Fitness+ launched in 2020 you needed an Apple Watch to even use
it. That policy was dropped in 2022, but we highly recommend it for use with
Apple’s wearable. Fitness+ provides a massive library of video workouts
across a bunch of disciplines including yoga, weights, treadmill, kickboxing
and mindfulness. And it puts your vital statistics on-screen, relayed
wirelessly form your Apple Watch. We also recommend using AirPlay to get the
video from your iPhone to a bigger screen if possible. So, yeah, some extra
equipment required for the best experience. But Fitness+’s $9.99 a month
subscription is still affordable compared to the average city gym.
Best iPhone apps: Finance and Money
Cash App
(Image credit: Future)
You’ve probably already heard of or used Cash App, at least if you live in
the US. It’s the app that lets you send money to other people, handy if you
go out for dinner and need to split the bill, or if you owe someone cash for
concert tickets. It can also be used like a digital debit card. We don’t
recommend this next bit to many, but you also also use Cash App to trade in
Bitcoin.
YNAB
(Image credit: Apple)
You Need a Budget. That’s what YNAB stands for. It’s a no-nonsense outgoings
calculator that works out how much you are spending in each category, from
nights out to clothes to hobbies. The idea is you’ll be able to see what
your spending is really like, rather than just fooling yourself. Its maker
claims folks save "$600 in their first two months, and more than $6000 their
first year.” Savings don’t appear out of nowhere, but if it helps you avoid
debt, maybe the $14.99 a month ($99.99 a year) is worth it. UK readers might
want to try out MoneyHub, which is much cheaper at £14.99 a year.
Best iPhone apps: Gaming
PS Remote Play
(Image credit: Apple)
If you’re a PlayStation 5 gamer, you may have encountered Sony’s PlayStation
portal, a handheld designed to stream games from your console. You can do
this with your iPhone and the PS Remote Play app. Full disclosure: you need
a great internet connection for this to work well. And your PlayStation 5
should ideally be plugged directly into your home internet router. Any
opportunity to reduce latency and lag should be taken. Xbox fan? You can
also use Xbox Game Pass Cloud gaming on your iPhone, but you do so through
your phone’s internet browser. Fun fact: did you know Remote Play began more
than 15 years ago with the Sony PSP and PS3?
Twitch
(Image credit: Apple)
If you enjoy games and haven’t tried Twitch, where have you been? Twitch is
a bit like YouTube if it were made almost solely for live video game
streaming. Find a creator you like and their streams will quickly start to
feel like hangouts with a good friend, often one who is funny and charming
to boot. You can easily lose hours to Twitch streams, so careful how you go.
But if you have a work commute that could do with a cheer up, this app can
help. It’s free to use, but Twitch relies on audiences supporting their
favourite creators through subscriptions.
Moonlight Game Streaming
(Image credit: Apple)
This open source app lets you stream games from your PC to your iPhone. It
works brilliantly as it uses your home network rather than your actual home
broadband. If your PC has an Nvidia graphics card, you can use Nvidia’s own
software to make this work on the PC side. Have an AMD Radeon PC? You’ll
also need to download a client on your computer called Sunshine, by
LizardByte. A tiny amount of tech know-how is required, then, but once up
and running you can play advanced games on your iPhone with either a gamepad
or even using touchscreen controls.
Discord
(Image credit: Apple)
Discord is where the weird, wonderful and nerdy communities of the internet
come to congregate. Anyone can make a server, which in this context becomes
a chat room, in which you can setup different areas for specific topics. We
don’t tend to establish our own servers, though, and instead find existing
discord channels for content makers we like. Lots of podcasts, streamers and
content creators have their own discord servers.
Best iPhone apps: Health
Flo Period & Pregnancy Tracker
(Image credit: Apple)
The most popular period tracking app at the time of writing, Flo Period &
Pregnancy Tracker monitors your ovulation cycle and estimates what your
chances of pregnancy are on any particular day. You input your symptoms, sex
drive, and even exercise and water intake, if you choose to go all-in. Its
estimates are generally well regarded. And you can use Flo for free and get
the core experience. A paid subscription ($11.49 a month or $39.99 a year)
unlocks more data analysis, community features, a daily advice feature and
more.
The Wonder Weeks
(Image credit: Apple)
The first few weeks (and perhaps years) of parenthood are a potentially
scary, intimidating place to be. The Wonder Weeks app ($5.99) attempts to
insert a bit of predictable structure into your potentially sleepless life
by mapping out the “leaps” in development of a young baby. You log all of
your child’s own milestones in their virtual “diary”. You can also use one
of the developer’s add-on apps to turn a spare phone or iPad into a baby
monitor. That’s a $3.99 upgrade, or you can get a $1.99 subscription for
access to that and an ebook.
MyFitnessPal
(Image credit: Apple)
>From a look at its icon and name you might guess MyFitnessPal is an exercise
logging app. While it can be used for that, steps and exercise are largely
used to more correctly calculate your calorie deficit or excess. The idea is
you’ll use the app to log all your food, and make sure your calorie
consumption is on point, and that you are getting all your required macros
in. Yep, it’s not the most fun job and it’s not the most healthy thing to do
for some folks. But it is a pretty foolproof way to make progress in your
weight and health goals. It’s free to use, but if you want to get rid of the
ads and be able to barcode-scan foods, you need a sub. It costs $19.99 a
month, but go for a year if you can, as it costs $79.99.
Noom
(Image credit: Apple)
This big-money weight loss program gets rave reviews from its users, and
does legitimately seem to be a cut above most other diet apps. Yep, there’s
the usual food-logging and calorie counting involved, but Noom is more about
changing your behavior and thinking, rather than a quick fix. That’s the
idea anyway. You get paired with a “coach” when you sign up, who can be
messaged for advice or reassurance. Noom has had a rough time of it of late,
with rounds of coach lay-offs. But, as far as we can tell, these are still
real people. Noom is a pricey subscription, though, the cheapest solution
being $209 for a year, rising all the way to $70 for a one month rolling
subscription.
Best iPhone apps: Home and Garden
PictureThis
(Image credit: Apple)
Are you a little bit green-fingered? PictureThis is a must-download. It is a
plant identification app. You point the phone camera at a plant and, in all
likelihood, this app will be able to successfully identify it. It’s
super-useful if you come across something you’d want to grow yourself, but
have no idea what it’s called. Tens of thousands of species are in its
database. PictureThis will also show you collections of plants you should be
able to see growing in your local area. It’s a charming app that can even
attempt to diagnose the health of plants. Free to use, but an ad-free,
unlocked membership is $29.99 a year.
IFTTT
(Image credit: Apple)
IFTTT stands for “if this then that”, and has been around since 2010. It
seems kinda dorky on the surface, as it’s form of programming. But it also
opens up countless neat possibilities. IFTTT lets you program your own
automations based on all sorts of events, from you reaching a certain
location to someone tagging you in a Facebook post. So many smart home
systems are hooked up to IFTTT, you can run pretty much all your smart home
gear through this app. You can create three automations, dubbed applets, for
free. After that you have to pay for a Pro ($2.75) or Pro+ ($5.50)
subscription, which lift that limit to 20 applets, or remove the limit
altogether.
Zillow
(Image credit: Apple)
The real estate app you should download depends on where you live, but
Zillow is the clear pick in the US. It collates listings from all over the
US, letting you snoop on home for sale even if you have no real intention of
buying. It’s fast to scoot across the map to explore homes, some listings
have 360-degere photos, and the layouts are coherent and clean-looking. Even
if some of the homes aren’t. In the UK? Use Rightmove. Australia? Try
RealEstate.com.au.
Pinterest
(Image credit: Apple)
We think of Pinterest as the place to go for home interiors inspiration.
That may help explain why it ballooned in popularity so much over the
pandemic, when many of us were stuck at home. The place to start is with a
mood board, which is like a digital scrap book of ideas or styles you come
across posted by other accounts on Pinterest. These aren’t just pictures
either. They can link through to interior design DIY guides, for example, or
YouTube videos. We used it recently when working out the color scheme for a
kitchen, and it easily beats loitering around Google Images.
Best iPhone apps: Learning musical instruments
Fender Play
(Image credit: Apple)
One of the most famous producers of guitars also makes one of the best apps
for learning guitar. Fender Play is a video-led learning platform, one
particularly well-suited to beginners. The app will teach you the basics
(and plenty more) through learning songs from recent years, and those
decades old. Each song (of which there are more than 1000) also includes
clearly laid-out tablature, and a MIDI-syle rendition of each guitar line.
This means you don’t have to head back to the instructor-led video whenever
you want a reminder of how it’s meant to sound. There are also “play along”
modes for full songs, as well as “riff” lessons when you want something
quicker to learn. Access costs $9.99 a month, $89.99 a year. Guitar is the
main attraction, but Fender Play has ukulele and bass guitar lessons too.
Flowkey
(Image credit: Apple)
If you want to learn to play piano, Flowkey is one of the very best
app-based places to start. There are two rough sides to the experience here.
There are courses, that show you how to play the piano, right from first
approaching the keys. The other side is a huge library of songs to learn. We
love the way Flowkey breaks many of these songs down into three difficulty
levels. We’re not there yet, but we imagine being able to return to a song
and “level up” your performance is hugely satisfying. Learning the songs
comes in the form of both a video and scored music. The app can listen out
for your own played notes, to check you’re getting it right. Flowkey costs
$19.99 a month (or $119.88 a year) for a single account, or $29.99 a month
for a 5-profile Family account (or $179.88 a year).
Songsterr
(Image credit: Apple)
Learning guitar? Once you feel confident with the basics you might want to
try out an app like Songsterr. It offers hundreds of thousands of guitar
tabs. The experience here is light years away from rifling through websites
for tabs cobbled together by who-knows-who. You can listen to a digital
recreation of each track, and as different parts of the arrangement are
separated out (with tabs for each), the part you’re currently learning can
be given prominence in the mix. More advanced guitarists can probably get by
with Songsterr’s free service. But the $9.99 a month paid version is,
granted, a lot better. You can listen along to the actual live track as well
as the MIDI-style recreation, alter the tempo and even the pitch. This
transposes songs to different keys, should you need to play alongside a
singer whose vocal range is different to that of the original.
Tenuto
(Image credit: Apple)
There are pitfalls to using apps to learn to play instruments. They often
give you a crutch, to make the process feel more seamless. And you end up
relying on that crutch. Tenuto ($4.99) is a sort-of antidote to that kind of
thinking. It is a music theory app that helps you brush up on your
fingerings, intervals, chord constructions and more, for guitarists and
pianists. There are 24 exercises in total. And if you need to learn the
basics in the first, there’s also a companion Theory Lessons app. You can
actually access all of this on the developer’s website for free, at music
theory.net, but this sort of endeavour is worth supporting if you ask us.
Best iPhones apps: Meditation and Relaxation
Headspace
(Image credit: Apple)
This app made meditation truly mainstream, at least among people we knew at
the time, back in 2017-2018 when it started to pick up a lot of attention.
It’s a guided breathing app that looks at meditation from a mindfulness
perspective. That means less of the spiritual, more focus on what’s going on
in your body, or around you. If you’ve ever tried Headspace, you’ll know the
voice of Andy Puddicombe. He co-created the app, and is the iconic voice
behind the app’s guided meditations (you can choose another voice too). A
few sessions are available for free. A full membership is $12.99 a month
($69.99 a year).
Calm
(Image credit: Apple)
This is the key rival to Headspace. It’s a slightly less focused experience
where your relaxation and meditation tools are split into a whole bunch of
categories. As well as fairly classic guided meditations, there are sleep
stories, calming music tracks, soundscapes and “tools” to help you regulate
your breathing using visual and audio cues. This app has a particular focus
on improving your sleep, although it’s good for general relaxation, and even
concentration during work. A few taster bits in each category are available
for free, and a subscription is required for full access. It costs $12.99 a
month, $69.99 a year. Or you can pay $399.99 for “lifetime" access. Trying
both Calm and Headspace to see which you prefer is a good idea.
Dark Noise
(Image credit: Apple)
A simple app, but one that can really help some people relax or get to
sleep. Dark Noise is home to 50 soundscapes, from basics like white noise to
the rather unusual “spaceship engine’. This app used to be a simple paid-for
download. But like so many of its rivals, Dark Noise is now a subscription
that costs $19.99 a year. However, you do get eight of the drones for free,
no subscription required, including rain, beach and campfire.
5 Minute Journal
(Image credit: Apple)
A gratitude journal? While this may sound like flowery mumbo jumbo if you
are looking for concrete ways to improve your mental health, the concept
behind 5 Minute Journal is sound. Making journaling into a regular hobby
takes you out of the rush and stress of the work day, makes you reflect a
bit and focus on the present. And, sure, forcing yourself to not think
everything is terrible the whole time might help some folks too. You can
append photos to entries, and can lock them all behind biometric security so
others can’t read into your feelings. Phew.
Best iPhone apps: Messaging
WhatsApp
(Image credit: Apple)
The latest figures suggest WhatsApp has upwards of 2.7 billion users. We’re
guessing most of you know about this app already. Migrating chats is the
first thing we sort out when switching phones. And it’s a big part of why
changing phones is no longer that much of a chore. It saves your messages
and image history in the cloud, so all your memories are transferred through
a simple download. It’s also a brilliant bridge between iPhone and Android
users, getting rid of those pesky “green bubble” messaging issues.
Telegram
(Image credit: Apple)
This messaging app was released in 2013 and fast became known as a more
security and privacy-concerned version of WhatsApp. As such, it is a
favourite among journalists looking to protect their sources. Curiously, you
actually need to select “secret chats” to enable end-to-end encryption,
which is on by default in the more mainstream WhatsApp. Surprising, right?
Telegram also supports absolutely massive groups, with up to 200,000
members. We typically use Telegram for these public-style groups, because
most of our friends are still on WhatsApp instead.
Best iPhone apps: Music
Spotify
(Image credit: Apple)
With more than 200 million paid-up users, Spotify is the most popular music
streaming service. Its main strength was getting in there early, arriving a
whopping seven years before Apple Music. We like Spotify for its music
discovery services, and sound quality is good when maxed out, if not “high
res” like Apple Music and TIDAL. There’s more than music too. Spotify went
big on podcasts in 2020, and even bundles 15 hours of audiobook listening
per month with a subscription.
Shazam
(Image credit: Apple)
This was one of the original demos we’d used to persuade smartphone skeptics
that apps were neat. You know the Shazam deal, right? You open the app,
start it listening when a song is playing and, after just a few seconds, it
will tell you what the song is. Simple as that. The app has become a lot
richer since those early days in 2008, though. You can see song lyrics, buy
that song or look for concert tickets. Fun fact: Apple owns Shazam, and has
done since 2018 when its $400 million acquisition was finalized. Big bucks.
And as it’s now Apple tech you can also just ask Siri to identify a song
instead of using Shazam if you like.
Best iPhone apps: Music Creation
Garageband
(Image credit: Apple)
How many music careers began with GarageBand? Where industry standard music
DAWs, digital audio workstations, often cost hundreds of dollars and are
almost impenetrable to new users, GarageBand is free and easy. Within
minutes you can be laying down tracks, and downloadable (still free) modules
offers lots of extra virtual instruments. It’s an amazing toybox, and also a
pretty serious creative tool for those who want to work faster, and simpler,
than Apple’s pro alternative Logic Pro allows.
Korg Gadget 2
(Image credit: Apple)
Korg’s mobile digital audio workstation (DAW) often gets ignored in favor of
FL Studio, but this one is powerful in its own right. It features digital
odes to real Korg synths, ones made to be fairly easy to operate on a phone
screen, as well as other “gadgets” that work as samplers or recorders. They
sound excellent. Much like the popular desktop electronic/dance DAWs, Gadget
2 breaks your creations into “scenes”, the building blocks of a song.
Best iPhone apps: Movies and TV
Netflix
(Image credit: Apple)
Is recommending Netflix a cop-out? Sure, but you can think of it as a
stand-in for Prime Video, Apple TV+, Hulu, Disney Plus, Paramount Plus and
so on if you like. Netflix represents all the mainstream movie and TV
streaming services we tend to dart between, making use of their no-contract
approach to do what serves us best month-on-month. Netflix does have a great
library, though, much as it catches seem flack these days for cancelling
shows left, right and centre.
MUBI
(Image credit: Apple)
MUBI is our pick of the second tier of streaming services — but it’s still a
number one service in our hearts. This is your cineaste’s take on a Netflix
alternative. It’s packed with world cinema and arthouse movies. You’ll pay
$12.99 a month or $99.99 a year at the time of writing. Or for $17.99 you
can sign up for MUBI Go, which includes a cinema ticket a week too. Check if
you're local to a supported cinema, though, as it’s only available in a
handful of big US/UK cities, and far from all cinemas inside them. We also
have to give a shout-out to Shudder here, a horror-only streamer genre fans
shouldn’t miss.
Letterboxd
(Image credit: Apple)
Writing a journal can help you appreciate where you are, where you’ve been
and where you’re going. Letterboxd offers that, but for movies. OK, perhaps
that’s a bit highfalutin, but it does let you keep track of films you’ve
seen, give them a star ranking and, if you really want to get into it, write
a review. These can also be shared among the Letterboxd community,
broadcasting your opinions to the masses. We’re in it purely as a little
personal project, though, one that helps you get a view on what your year in
cinema has really been like.
YouTube
(Image credit: Apple)
If you’re one of the few people who still think YouTube is just full of
short junk videos, it’s time for a rethink. It’s an incredible platform
where more than a billion hours of video are watched each day. There’s
short-form comedy, long-form video essays and everything in-between. The
trick is in finding the right content among the morass, and guiding the
YouTube algorithm to show you stuff you actually want to watch. One way is
to search for recommendations for content creators or channels, and you can
be sure someone will have asked already. Probably on Reddit.
Best iPhone apps: Navigation and Driving
Waze
(Image credit: Apple)
This is the best car navigation alternative to Apple Maps and Google Maps,
and it’s actually owned by Google. The Waze special sauce is it makes very
concerted use of active data from other Waze users, to judge where traffic
is, or is forming, and where an accident may have taken place. The
experience of using it is much like that of a classic in-car GPS system. You
put in your destination, Waze works out the route and you get turn-by-turn
nav. We recommend trying it out alongside Google Maps and Apple Maps to see
which you like the best.
Roadtrippers
(Image credit: Apple)
Planning a route is one thing. Planning a road trip is something else. We
need sights, we need memories. It has to be a good time. That’s what
Roadtrippers is all about, working out a route along which some fun can be
had. The only issue is Roadtrippers only really works in the home of the
epic road trip, the US of A. If you want to work out a basic route, it’ll do
that, but you won’t see the many possible attractions on the way elsewhere,
like the UK’s Fleet motorway service station.
CityMapper
(Image credit: Apple)
Scores of city dwellers we know swear by CityMapper. It’s our top app for
navigating the public transport systems of the world’s biggest, most
intimidating cities, across the west, Asia and Australia. It also collates
multiple forms of getting around, and not just trains, buses, trams and tube
systems. If there’s a bike or scooter rental system in a city, there’s a
good chance CityMapper integrates its availability info. And we also rate
its on-foot directions. Sure, there are some ads, but not ones that get in
your way too much.
What3Words
(Image credit: Apple)
Here’s an alternative to sharing a screenshot of your location on Apple Maps
or Google Maps when trying to meet up with someone. What3Words lets you
locate any place in the world using, you guessed it, a string of three
words. A local cinema? Why that’s film.hogs.feeds, suitably enough. You just
give the string of words to the other person, and they can then use
What3Words on their end to find where to meet. Each block, which you select
on a map view is 3 meters by 3 meters. We have read it’s not a great idea to
use this system in an emergency, perhaps due to the prevalence of
homophones. But we’re talking about meeting up with friends here, not
calling an ambulance.
Best iPhone apps: News
Flipboard
(Image credit: Apple)
The idea behind this long-standing app (released in 2010) is it makes a
magazine-like interface out of stories taken from the internet. You pick
your topics, which are displayed as hashtags. Flicking through your daily
stream of stories feels more like turning the pages of a, yep, flipboard,
than scrolling through the average social network feed. It takes some
fiddling to make Flipboard feel your own — you’ll want to “follow” your
favourite publications — but we like it a lot for one-handed use while on
public transport.
Apple News
(Image credit: Apple)
Apple’s own news aggregator app works best if you’re willing to splash out
for Apple News+. If you don’t, your beautifully formatted news feed may well
end up peppered with stories only available to premium subscribers. News+
grants you access to loads of magazines and paywalled sites like The Wall
Street Journal and The Sunday Times from the UK. You can save more by
spending more, as News+ is available as part of the top Apple One
subscription, which bundles Apple services together. On its own, News+ costs
$12.99 a month.
Best iPhone apps: Photography and Camera
Halide Mark II
(Image credit: Apple)
Some folks overestimate the usefulness of third-party pro-style camera apps
for iPhone. They talk as if the JPEGs an iPhone spits out are the equivalent
of a toddler’s crayon rendition of what the camera actually sees. They
aren’t, but Halide Mark II does offer a different take on the camera app. It
offers more direct control over whether or not to shoot RAW images,
minimally processed files that can offer greater control over detail and
noise. The app has “zero shutter lag” in certain modes because it buffers
image data. And it includes widgets for the home screen that take you
directly to ultra-wide, standard and zoomed camera views. It’s a paid app,
though. $11.99 a year.
Snapseed
(Image credit: Apple)
This app is as old as the hills, having been released in 2011. However, it’s
still one of the best for fast, effective image editing. It has rotation,
cropping, some good-looking filters, solid picture tuning. And each step of
the process comes with loads of control. There are typically multiple
sliders to control the style and intensity of every change you make. This is
quite old-school image editing, not the kind of AI-driven that generates so
much attention today. But there are some more advanced effects like lens
blur an a (admittedly not amazing) heal tool. Google owns Snapseed, and has
done since 2012.
Photomator
(Image credit: Apple)
This is one of the best photo editing apps out there. At first it looks
pretty familiar. You can auto-enhance images using the “machine learning”
tool, apply filters an use the “heal” brush to remove blemishes. However,
look closer and you’ll realise there’s some more special stuff going on
here. For example, as well as having Photoshop-grade control over image tone
and colour, Photomator can automatically separate out images’ subject,
background and sky. This lets you make specific adjustments to each, with no
fuss. You can also save editing styles to work out a signature look for
photos. It’s multi-platform too, but isn’t free. It costs $29.99 a year, or
$99.99 for a lifetime sub.
Faceapp
(Image credit: Apple)
Next to our other photography editing apps, Faceapp is pretty fluffy and
insubstantial. But it is a blast, particularly when you play with photos of
friends. With their permission, of course. You may have come across this one
when it went viral in 2019. You use it edit photos of people, changing their
gender, making them older or younger, and changing their makeup and hair.
Most of the filters are locked behind a subscription paywall, but a handful
of the good stuff, including gender swap, is available for free.
Best iPhone apps: Podcasts and Radio
Pocket Casts
(Image credit: Apple)
If you are bored of Apple Podcasts and fancy trying something else, you have
at least two key options. They are Pocket Casts and Overcast. We’ve picked
Pocket Casts this time as it has a slightly glossier interface. Slick as
anything, this one. But at its core it is an intuitive and direct way to
access your favourite pods. It also has some useful extra features like
speed control and a sleep timer, if you want to fall asleep to the voices of
podcasters.
Spotify for Podcasters
(Image credit: Apple)
This app isn’t for listening to podcasts. It’s for people who make them.
Spotify for Podcasters is a bit “on the nose” as names go, but it was once
called Anchor, a company acquired by Spotify in 2019. The app lets you
record and edit audio files, upload them to the most popular podcast
platforms and see metrics on how many people have played your podcast, and
your total audience size. It’s a neat way for beginners to try out the
medium, there’s a library of royalty free background sounds and music, and
you can get free hosting for your episodes.
TuneIn
(Image credit: Apple)
The number of radio stations current broadcasting around the world as you
read this is mind-boggling. There were 44,000 in 2016 according to the
latest UN figures we could dig up. TuneIn lets you listen to a good chunk of
them over the internet. As well as just searching for your favourites, you
can scan around a world map to discover stations for across the globe. UK
user? You’ll find stations outside the UK blocked due to licensing
restrictions. These can be unlocked using a VPN, or you can try another
(admittedly less fun) app like Simple Radio.
Best iPhone apps: Productivity
Brain.FM
(Image credit: Apple)
This app could have featured in the Music section of this round-up, or even
the meditation and relaxation one. However, we use it as a productivity
tool. It plays generated music, made up of semi-composed elements. You
choose Focus, Relax, Sleep or Meditate, which are the four categories. Past
that, though, you can customize the track by picking a “genre” or music
style, from classical to post rock and electronic. Or go for a
nature-inspired soundscape. We tend to go for these, as Thunder and
Rainforest can really help you get in the work zone. It’s great if you end
up working in a noisier environment, but find “real” music too distracting.
The only bad bit: <http://brain.fm/> brain.fm is quite pricey at $9.99 a
month or $69.99 a year.
ChatGPT
(Image credit: Apple)
This app isn’t much more than a portal to the popular AI chatbot. But if you
have’t at least dabbled with ChatGPT, you’re missing out. It is one of the
most talked-about developments in tech in years. You ask ChatGPT a question,
and it answers. At the time of writing, ChatGPT uses GPT 3.5, and has
knowledge of the world up to January 2022. As with any chatbot, you should
treat anything it produces with a level of suspicion, due to AI’s tendency
to “hallucinate” facts. But it’s less egregious than it was in ChatGPT’s
early days. Given how impactful AI Is expected to be, it’s a good idea to
get acquainted with this most famous of AI implementations.
Things 3
(Image credit: Apple)
Once upon a time, we headed to Todoist when recommending organization iPhone
apps. But our head has been turned by Things 3. If you want it to be a
simple to-do list app, it can do that. However, dig deeper and this becomes
a surprisingly capable little project management tool. You can arrange lists
within lists, breaking down big tasks into smaller jobs without leaving them
as disparate tick box exercises. There’s good clarity to how Things 3
arranges your various future lists too, giving you a sense you’re in
control. Even if, whisper it, you’re not actually in control at all.
Microsoft 365
(Image credit: Apple)
Microsoft brought its Office apps to iPhone way back in 2014. The suite of
apps is now called Microsoft 365 and, unfortunately, comes with a
subscription attached. You’ll pay $69.99 a year for access to the lot, or
$99.99 for a family pass. This also snags you a load of cloud storage,
enough to keep all your files safe. You can also use the app without a
subscription, as we’re basically getting the mobile version of Microsoft’s
Office web interface here. The iPhone versions of the apps — Word, Excel,
PowerPoint — all live within the one app. And they are naturally pretty
stepped-back compared to the classic PC versions. But they crucially feel
right at home on iPhone. Try these if you don’t get on with Apple’s iWork,
which comprises Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
Apple iWork
If you're throwing out everything you knew about anything non-Apple, iWork
is your replacement productivity bundle. It's the company's answer to
Microsoft Office. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote will get the same results with
a different interface. And, if your working companions are on Microsoft,
it's no problem. You can export your documents to their counterparts. With
iCloud, you can store all of your work in the cloud for easy access from any
iOS device or on the web, whether you use a Mac or PC.
Forest
(Image credit: Apple)
Heard of the pomodoro technique? It’s where you work in timed bursts,
usually 25 minutes, and only let your concentration break in-between. That
means no social media checks in that time, folks. Forest is a pomodoro timer
with a difference. By following the program, you end up developing and
growing a virtual forest, unlocking new trees along the way. That’s right,
Forest gamifies concentration. There’s just a $3.99 entry fee to use the
app, but there are elixir and crystal in-game currencies to boost the
production of your forest. You can ignore all that if you’re just here to
boost your work willpower.
Otter.ai
(Image credit: Apple)
If you ever have to conduct interviews as part of your work, or need to take
minutes for a meeting, get Otter.ai. It’s a transcription app that works out
what people are saying, and can separate out different voice in the
conversation. A more recent AI addition also offers quick written summaries
of what was covered in the interview/meeting. Handy. You can use Otter.ai
for free, but you’re limited on the number of minutes per month, and can
only import three audio files total (not per month). $10 a month bumps you
up to 1200 minutes a month, and 10 imported audio or video files. More than
enough for most, and you may be fine with the free tier.
Best iPhone apps: Recipes & Food
Tasty
(Image credit: Apple)
Tasty was one of the organizations that helped define what social media
cooking videos should look like. Top down view. Snappy and glossy-looking.
Tasty is part of Buzzfeed, but quickly gained a whole life of its own. At
the top of each recipe you’ll see one of Tasty’s classic sped-up video
process guides. There’s a list of ingredients and a classic step-by-step
written guide too, should these videos all be a bit “Gen Z” for your tastes.
We like the formatting. We like the recipes. We’re kinda hungry now.
Paprika
(Image credit: Apple)
Paprika is not just a recipe app. It lets you “download” recipes from across
the internet, and automatically processes them to extract the ingredient
list and instructions. All that guff about how the writer discovered this
recipe while on holiday in Sardinia? Excised. And as you do end up visiting
the origin websites in the first place on hunting down the recipe, we don’t
even feel bad about it. Paprika will automatically work up shopping lists,
and you can arrange meal plans into a calendar. You can be super-organized
if you like, or just treat the app like a recipe encyclopaedia you build
yourself.
HappyCow
(Image credit: Apple)
The closest the app sphere has to a vegan and vegetarian restaurant bible,
HappyCow is a must-have for veggies on holiday, or just in a new area. It’s
a way to find near restaurants with good vegetarian food, based on user
reviews from the HappyCow community. You’ll find plenty of “normal”
restaurants on there that simply have vegetarian and vegan options. But the
map does have an icon based system to clearly delineate the pure vegetarian
and vegan spots. There’s a small outlay for the app, $3.99, but it’s a
quicker solution than endless Googling. And you can be sure the user-posted
pics inside are actually of veggie food — bonus. You don’t get that on
TripAdvisor.
Best iPhone apps: Ridesharing
Uber
(Image credit: Apple)
Is the golden age of Uber over? Uber rides seem to routinely cost more than
they used to. But that’s what you get when a service was based on swallowing
up the entire market through oodles of VC funding, rather than a sustainable
business model. That said, Uber can still generally be relied upon to have
more active cars in an area than most other competing services. In the UK
you can even use Uber to buy train tickets these days.
Lyft
(Image credit: Apple)
It’s worth checking out taxi service Lyft if there’s surge pricing on Uber,
as its price jumps can be less extreme than Uber’s. Lyft has also attracted
fewer negative headlines than Uber over the last few years, at least
regarding the corporate culture within the company. The basic deal is the
same, though. You plan a route and are given an estimated cost for the
journey. We find Lyft cars tend to be a little less readily available than
Ubers. But this is likely to vary based on location.
Best iPhone apps: Shopping
Vinted
(Image credit: Apple)
Used clothing giant Vinted has been around since 2008, but it took about a
decade for it to truly take off, and the last couple of years have seen its
momentum stronger than ever. It’s basically a less corporate-feeling
alternative to eBay or Facebook Marketplace. There’s no bidding on Vinted,
you simply buy at the asking price, or make an offer. It’s not just clothes
on sale here either. We once bought a Nintendo 3DS XL on the Vinted app. No
joke.
Etsy
(Image credit: Apple)
If you took a local craft fair, blew it up to global proportions and stuck
it online, you’d get something like Etsy. It’s packed with the work of
craftspeople and artists, from jewellery makers to painters and furniture
restorers. Of course, now Etsy is massive, you also get your fair share of
drop-shipped nonsense and mass produced junk posing as the real deal. But
that just means there’s a bit of work to do to find the good stuff, of which
there is plenty.
TEMU
(Image credit: Apple)
TEMU became a bit of a viral retailer in 2023. That’s a strange phrase by
itself, right? A viral
retailer? Nevertheless, it went big online thanks to
the massive array of items (some would say tat) at incredibly low prices. It
does this by shipping direct from China, where the stuff is manufactured.
Much like the grandaddy of this kind of shopping, Aliexpress, you can get
great stuff on TEMU. But it’s likely to be a little more hit-and-miss than
the average local retailer.
eBay
(Image credit: Apple)
You know it. You love it? Maybe you hate it. eBay has more than 130 million
active members. Some think of it as a pit of scum and villainy — from both
the buyer and seller side — but it can still work for you with a bit of
know-how. If you are buying from one of the big retailers, you might want to
wait until a voucher appears. These are common. And if you are selling, you
can wait for a discounted seller fees weekend to avoid those steep fees.
They typically come around every two weeks.
Best iPhone apps: Social Networking
Narwhal 2
(Image credit: Apple)
Reddit's owners blew up the market for third-party apps for the platform, by
charging folks to use its API — the backend tech that lets an app developer
access the social network’s content. Loads have closed down, but not all.
Narwhal 2 is a nice UI upgrade to the so-so official Reddit app, letting you
leap around your favourite subreddits much more gracefully. Unfortunately,
there is a fee attached as anyone using the app racks-up costs for the
developer. It’s $3.99 a month.
Instagram
(Image credit: Apple)
Once the social network of images and photos, now a video-first platform,
Instagram bridges the generations better than many. It’s not too
oldie-loaded like Facebook. It’s not quite as youth-focused as TikTok. Is it
just right? It’s a social network, of course it’s not. But if you’re after
short-form cute animal video or makeup tutorials, the Instagram algorithm is
only too happy to serve you them.
Best iPhone apps: Sport
Fotmob
(Image credit: Apple)
Stat-addicted soccer/football fans should download Fotmob. It’s a
no-nonsense guide to all the upcoming and recent fixtures. But dig into
those and you’ll find a whole world of data inside. There are stats on each
player, including “traits" like how many goal chances they create. You can
see the bookies’ odds for upcoming games and, of course, lots of info about
matches already played. There are possession graphs, a live-blog-style guide
to each match, and player ratings. It’s a football obsessive’s dream.
(Image credit: Apple)
If you’re a multi-discipline sports fan who loves boxing, golf, basketball,
football and soccer, Sports Alerts is an essential download. It collates all
the fixtures and results from 23 leagues, including NASCAR and Formula 1. We
like its fast, clear and no-fuss delivery of info, and that you can tailor
the app so it only displays the sports in which you’re interested. The way
the tab-based layout lets you flick from one sport to another gives us the
sense this app was designed by big sports fans, for big sports fans. One bad
bit: it’s quite US-centric so there’s no cricket.
Best iPhone apps: Video Editing and Content Creation
LumaFusion
(Image credit: Apple)
Find iMovie too dumbed-down? LumaFusion is probably what you’re after. It
feels like (and basically is) a full desktop-style editing suite crammed
onto your iPhone screen. You get multiple video tracks for non-destructive
editing, easy-to-apply transitions, titles and fistfuls of effects and
filters. Want screen green? No problem. There’s even multi-cam support
through a paid upgrade, to let you easily sync multiple sources into one
“track”. Does the sheer depth of features here suit an iPad screen better?
It sure does. Did we still manage to knock up a video in a few minutes? We
sure did.
YouTube Studio
(Image credit: Apple)
This is an essential download for anyone who wants to make it on YouTube.
It’s the official app for creators, and lets you get a grip on your videos’
statistics, how people are finding your content and who those people are.
Where do they live? How old are they? And what kind of other YouTube content
do they watch? It’s insider intel on how other people see you as a content
creator. Should that completely determine what you make? Probably not. But
it tells you a lot about who YouTube thinks you are.
iMovie
(Image credit: Apple)
Like Garageband, iMovie is another bundled app that shows Apple goes (or at
least went) the extra mile for budding creatives. It’s a highly usable,
quick, and easy video editing app. You trim and string together video clips,
perhaps taken with your iPhone. And you can add titles, filters, sound
effects, music and voice overs. It lets you speed up and slow down video
too. Sure, this isn’t a pro-level video editing tool, but it’s a great way
to introduce yourself to the basics of the practice.
Canva
(Image credit: Apple)
If you’re wondering how the people you follow on social network get those
funky-looking graphics peppered throughout their videos, they may use Canva.
It’s offers loads of templates to act as title cards for your videos. But it
also works as a pretty powerful editing tool, with fun and easy animations
that let you drag elements around your video canvas. If you want to get into
content creation and want to add a little pizzazz to your videos, try it
out. You can use it for free, or the paid-for sub ($99.99 a year) adds
access to a lot more visual assets.
Captions
(Image credit: Apple)
Want that poppy look of TikTok and Instagram videos where the captions
appear on-screen, pretty much in time with what someone its saying? You get
that effect with the Captions app. It works out what people are saying in
video clips using machine learning transcription, then puts it up on-screen
in punchy fashion using bold stylised text. You can use Captions’s suggested
style if you like, or customize it hugely.
Best iPhone apps: Travel
TripAdvisor
(Image credit: Apple)
TripAdvisor is the classic travel app for phones, originally released for
iPhone all the way back in 2010. It’s still one of the best ways too find
local attractions and decent restaurants when travelling around in cities.
It did, in our opinion, used to be a bunch better years ago. Back in the day
you could download entire cities' worth of data, should you not have free
data roaming. This was shelved, for obvious reasons — how is the app meant
to make any revenue if you’re offline? Still, we tend to use TripAdvisor
during every single holiday.
Skyscanner
(Image credit: Apple)
This is the best-known app, and website, for hunting down the best cheapest
deals on flights. However, it has become an integral part of trip planning
for us. Why? You don’t actually have to search for a specific destination,
meaning Skyscanner can also be used to quickly home in on the destinations
that are viable. That might be down to cost, or flight times that work,
particularly for those quick weekend breaks away. Flights are the main
appeal here, but it does the same for hotels too, hunting down the best deal
from all of the most popular aggregator sites out there.
Packing Pro
(Image credit: Apple)
Sure, you can use a free note-taking app to make a packing list for work
trips and holidays. But Packing Pro is software made for the purpose. It’s a
simple concept, an app that breaks down your list into categories, with a
selectable list of items for each. This helps because you don’t need to
think of everything that needs to go in your suitcase. Packing Pro makes the
suggestion, you choose what you need, and then tick them off when they’re in
your luggage. The same developer also makes a similar companion app, but for
grocery shopping.
Viator
(Image credit: Apple)
There are a few apps that collate the things you can book nearby, like trips
and advance tickets to museums. We find Viator to be the most comprehensive
and easy-to-search, probably helped by the fact it is owned by travel app
giant TripAdvisor. We use it on the reg to scout out day trips while on
holiday. However, don’t forget you can use the app to find out what’s on,
and then book direct rather than through Viator. This can avoid some
customer service headaches down the line, and you may even find a special
offer not available through an aggregator platform like Viator.
Google Translate
(Image credit: Apple)
Translate is such a plain-looking app, but it is so remarkably powerful.
It’s a speech and text translator that supports 133 languages, and can be
used in multiple ways. You can type away and get a translation, or use the
microphone. The conversation mode offers two-way translation, letting both
people see what the other is saying. You can use the camera, which we use
all the time when on holiday. And you can download entire languages for
internet-free text translation. As you use Google Translate you can also
build up a phrasebook of translations you’ve saved. All of that, and it’s
totally free to use.
Best iPhone apps: VPN and security
ExpressVPN
(Image credit: Apple)
The key advice when shopping for a VPN is not to trust free ones too
readily, and to make sure a VPN provider has servers in the areas you need.
While you’ll often want a VPN to spoof your location — something we use all
the time to see what websites look like in different countries — for best
performance you’ll want to pick a nearby server. In all honesty, we could
probably have recommend standard favourites like NordVPN or SurfShark here
too. However, ExpressVPN is the provider we’ve used for the last year, so
find it easiest to vouch for this long-standard VPN master.
1Password
(Image credit: Apple)
If you run an all-Apple household, we think Apple’s baked-in Keychain
password manager software is sufficient. But if you want to be able to use
one password manager across multiple platforms, try out 1Password. This
highly regarded app keeps all your logins in one place. And more. It’s
designed to be a secure vault for all your important details, from your
passport and bank account details to your router’s Wi-Fi password. You then
only need to remember your one master password. 1Password also lets you
login using an iPhone’s Face ID or Touch ID biometrics.
Best iPhone apps: Weather
Carrot Weather
(Image credit: Apple)
One of our favourite ever weather apps, Dark Sky, has been discontinued. It
was bought by Apple, its features largely subsumed into the standard Weather
app. But if you don’t like that too much, try Carrot Weather. It’s a weather
app with a bit of personality, a touch of barbed sarcasm to its delivery.
And if you don’t like that, you can tone it down. That’s right, this is a
weather app with multiple personality modes. It is also super feature-rich.
RainToday
(Image credit: Apple)
You know when you see a percentage chance of rain, it actually means it’ll
be raining in that much of your local area at that time? Well, a rain radar
is perhaps our favourite way of getting a visual look at whether it’s likely
to rain in, say, the next hour. It’s where you can see the current rainfall
on a map, and go back in time to see where those rain clouds are travelling.
RainToday offers an intuitive view of such a rainfall map. Using a slider
you can go back in time, and see an hour into the future based on currently
predictions. A great way to avoid getting soaked.
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