The 53 best iPhone and iPad apps for everything
These are the iPhone and iPad apps you need to take better photos, paint like a pro, shut out the world and everything in between
There are so many apps these days that if you printed out their icons and stacked them up, they’d reach Mars. Probably. Regardless, there are far too many to sift through yourself and so chances are you don’t bother. An awful lot of people download a handful of social media and telly apps and call it a day.
That’s a huge pity, because the very best apps for iPhone and iPad are fantastic. Moreover, they let you do more with your device. And if you’ve ever awoken from a marathon Facebook or Twitter session to realise it’s half-past Sunday, that should be a compelling reason to dig deeper into the App Store.
Here, then, are what we consider the very best apps for Apple devices. Each of them can transform your metal and glass sidekick into something to make the most of your time, rather than just eating into it.
1/53Obscura 2
Best for: Taking great photos
Digital cameras are often identikit and soulless, but Obscura 2 has character and feels surprisingly tactile, given that you’re thumbing glass. Mostly, this is down to its dial-based interface that recalls classic cameras and affords great control over snaps, from selecting tools to subtly adjusting focus and exposure settings. Got a thing for filters? A bunch of tasteful ones are built-in to evoke the feel of old-school film.
£4.99. Download Obscura 2.
2/53Fantastical
Best for: Not missing important events
Your iPhone or iPad has Apple’s Calendar app, and that works fine, but Fantastical is like a calendar designed for actual humans, with its scrolling events ticker and integrated reminders. Beyond that, it understands natural language when you’re adding events and deftly deals with timezones. There are also embedded weather reports, “interesting calendars” for sports/telly/holidays and, brilliantly, the means to offer multiple times for an event, with Fantastical dealing with scheduling depending on responses from invitees.
£4.99 per month. Download Fantastical.
3/53Affinity Photo
Best for: Creating art and design masterpieces
Photoshop now exists for iPad, but isn’t yet fully baked, and also demands a monthly subscription. Yet Affinity Photo has been letting talented designer types crank out visually stunning fare for years.
This desktop-grade (yet very affordable) app is packed with features for everything from tinkering with images to creating full-blown multi-layered digital art. It also integrates seamlessly with vector-based sibling Affinity Designer and the Mac/Windows versions of both Affinity apps.
£19.99. Download Affinity Photo.
4/53MindNode
Best for: Mapping out ideas
Want to get an amazing idea out of your head and properly explore it? You could scribble notes down on the back of an envelope you’ll inevitably lose. MindNode is a smarter bet. This tactile, flexible app has you start with a bullet-point list, which with a tap transforms into a beautifully crafted mind map. Your main idea sits centrally and thoughts branch off in every direction. You can add icons, pics, stickers and notes and export the lot in a range of formats.
£2.49 per month. Download MindNode.
5/53Ferrite Recording Studio
Best for: Making a podcast
At first, Ferrite doesn’t seem much different from Apple’s Voice Memos. Using your device’s mic, you can record your thoughts and then bask in your amazingness during playback. But tap the edit button and Ferrite instantly transforms into a powerful multitrack recorder. You get everything you need for pro-grade, on-the-go podcast creation, from automation and effects tools to unlimited tracks. Less lofty ambitions? Stick with the free version, which even for basic requirements is one of the best voice recorders and audio editors around.
Free or £29 for premium. Download Ferrite Recording Studio.
6/53Streaks
Best for: Forming good habits
New Year’s resolutions a distant memory? Mid-year equivalents going the same way? Streaks can help. You define up to 12 habits, which appear as large buttons to prod when they’re done. A stats screen keeps track of how you’re doing. Streaks excels because it’s approachable, focused and adaptable. Habits can link with the Health app, include timers, have flexible scheduling and even be negatives to break (like smoking). By limiting yourself to 12 (or, ideally, six) tasks, everything feels manageable rather than overwhelming.
£4.99. Download Streaks.
7/53Widgetsmith
Best for: Making Home screens your own
Finally, you can plonk widgets on your iPhone’s Home screens. Although many apps have their own widgets, Widgetsmith lets you concoct custom creations, giving you a level of control over their function and appearance.
Of course, it isn’t a free-for-all, but widgets are available for a range of subjects, including weather, time, astronomy, health and photos. And you can mess about with themes and lurid colours until your Home screens beg for mercy.
£1.99 per month. Download Widgetsmith.
8/53Portal
Best for: Losing yourself in (virtual) worlds
We love White Noise+ for playing sounds that help you focus the mind or relax, and Portal takes this to another level, bringing along your eyes for the journey with dozens of loops that combine audio and video.
You get over 40 varied scenes, so you can sit in a field of barley, gawp at a sped-up starscape above Nepal’s Ama Dablam or meditate before Lake Kawaguchi in Japan. On iPhone, the app’s impact is a little lost, but it’s wonderful on an iPad’s larger display.
£free + IAP. Download Portal.
9/53Linea Sketch
Best for: Pretending you can draw
Art tools can overwhelm with their deluge of palettes and menus. Not Linea Sketch. This app stashes everything you’ll need at the side of the screen: colours; a handful of layers; basic tools for scribbling.
The app works nicely with a finger or an Apple Pencil, has a range of grids and templates to work with, syncs across iCloud, and was the birthplace of the concept holding the screen for a second to transform a squiggly shape into a perfect polygon, which Apple duly pilfered for iPadOS 14.
99p per month. Download Linea Sketch.
10/53Mission to Mars AR
Best for: Exploring the Red Planet
Excited about the rovers trundling about Mars? Wish you could have a go on one? This app lets you do all that and more. Via the magic of AR, you can step through a portal on to the Red Planet, watch a rocket launch, or have scale versions of Mars rovers roam around your house or drive down your street. In theory, this is aimed at kids; but if you fail to grin at a dinky Curiosity exploring your desk, you’re emptier inside than a cosmic void.
11/53Buddywatch
Best for: Face swapping (on your Apple Watch)
Now that apps can use as many Apple Watch complications as they please, you can construct richer and more useful watch faces. Alternatively, you can be lazy and see if someone else has done the hard work for you. Buddywatch is a huge collection of custom watch faces that you can download and install with a tap. Sign up and you can save a personal collection too – or even upload your own creations via the Buddywatch website.
£free. Download Buddywatch.
12/53Longplay
Best for: Getting back into albums
Want to return to the halcyon days of listening to entire albums? Longplay is for you. It lists your albums by various criteria, including ‘orderliness’, or ‘negligence’ to unearth forgotten faves. Tap a cover and the album starts playing.
The app’s relaxed since its brutalist debut, which only let you skip entire albums, not tracks. Now you can avoid songs you dislike, but the app’s still geared towards you playing albums right through, rather than treating your music collection like a gigantic jukebox.
£2.99. Download Longplay.
13/53Infuse 6
Best for: Streaming videos to your phone
Buy an Apple device and you can’t later upgrade its internal storage – a snag if you fancy stuffing it full of TV shows and movies that’d be better off sat on a NAS. Infuse is the solution: it’ll connect to local drives and convert almost any video on the fly. If files are named appropriately, you’ll get cover art too. Pay to unlock pro-grade audio, cloud storage access and library sync, so you can pick up on your Apple TV where you left off on your iPad.
Free, 99p per month, £55 for lifetime or £26 for Infuse Pro 6. Download Infuse 6.
14/53Ulysses Mobile
Best for: Penning a bestseller
The days have long gone when authors sat hunched over typewriters in dark rooms. Today, Ulysses gives you a fighting chance of penning a novel on a phone. In fact, it’s designed to store everything you write, enabling you to rework and restructure text, and stitch notes together into anything from blog posts to your debut novel. Cross-device sync also means you’re sorted whenever – and wherever – inspiration hits.
£4.49 per month. Download Ulysses Mobile.
15/53Carrot Weather
Best for: Controlling the weather
Many activities hinge on the weather playing ball. Apple’s Weather can help you plan – but is rigid and dull. Carrot is neither. It’s helmed by a deranged AI that’s a mash up of weather forecaster and HAL 9000, providing snark and barbed comments alongside accurate forecasting. But grab a subscription and you gain access to unmatched customisation tools to build dynamic interfaces designed around your personal requirements. Carrot therefore achieves the improbable – this is a weather app that’s capable, flexible and fun.
Free or £4.99 per month/£19.99 per year. Download Carrot Weather
16/53Retrospecs
Best for: Revisiting retro gaming classics
Many photo-filter apps transform your mug into a mash-up of instant snap and modern art. Yawn. Retrospecs is far more interesting, converting images into how they might look on classic gaming systems. Dozens are included: Game Boy; C64; ZX Spectrum; PC; Mega Drive; and many more (even ASCII). Perhaps the best bit is that although the app is accessible and user-friendly (load a pic; choose a filter; export), you can also fully unleash your inner nerd, through concocting custom consoles, delving into retro-infused video and making your own character fonts.
Free or £3.99 for premium. Download Retrospecs.
17/531Blocker
Best for: Taming the internet
Trackers follow you around the internet, cookie notices spring up ad-nauseam, and social widgets eat into screen space – and your data. 1Blocker can rid your browsing experience of them all. Once installed, the app immediately blocks all such bothersome website content – but you can also create custom whitelist rules for sites you like, so they don’t lose out on ad revenue. 1Blocker’s not cheap, but it can vastly speed up web browsing on iPhone and iPad, and your iOS subscription also unlocks the app on Mac.
Free and in-app purchases. Download 1Blocker.
18/53Lake Coloring Books
Best for: Chilling while colouring
Smart people long ago figured out colouring isn’t just for kids and is in fact a great way for adults to unwind. Lake brings such fare to iPhone and iPad, with a smart, stress-free interface and plenty of emphasis on the artists creating the artwork. For free, pics are limited in number, but there’s still plenty to keep you scribbling into the wee small hours. And if you fancy starting from scratch, there’s a blank canvas option for unleashing your inner Picasso.
Free and in-app purchases. Download Lake Coloring Books.
19/53Toca Nature
Best for: Keeping nippers entertained
A chunk of land floats in space. Select the water button and you scythe through ground by dragging a finger, fashioning rivers and lakes. Tap the mountain and snow-capped hills form beneath your digits. A few more taps and you can pepper the landscape with trees.
Use the magnifying glass and you can explore your tiny domain, collecting fruit to feed roaming animals. It’s Populous meets Attenborough by way of a petting zoo; and although clearly aimed at kids, it’s suitable chill-out fare for adults, too.
£3.99. Download Toca Nature.
20/53Halide
Best for: Pretending your iPhone’s a DSLR
This app’s full name is ‘Halide Mark II – Pro Camera’ and it’s not mucking about on the ‘pro’ bit. Halide provides manual controls for shutter speed, ISO and white balance, and powerful focus and exposure assistants. It revolutionises RAW, making it a cinch to simultaneously shoot to RAW and JPEG, or instantly develop RAW DNGs using the app’s machine-learning smarts. All this comes in a user-friendly interface you can use one-handed, giving you a fighting chance of becoming the next Annie Leibovitz or Ansel Adams.
Free + IAP. Download Halide
21/53Television Time
Best for: Tracking telly shows
Streaming was meant to make telly easier. Instead, what you watch is spread over dozens of services and keeping up with favourites is a full-time job. Hence: Television Time. The app takes your selection of shows and packages them into handy lists: one contains episodes you’ve yet to watch; the other details upcoming broadcasts for shows that quaintly still air on a weekly basis. There’s also Trakt support, no ads whatsoever and a mildly terrifying stats page that details how long you’ve spent staring at the gogglebox.£2.99. Download Television Time.
22/53Night Sky
Best for: Exploring the heavens
When it comes to class and taste, Sky Guide has the edge in iOS astronomy apps, but Night Sky pips it as an overall package when you want to fully delve into the planets, moons and stars. You can wave your device in front of your face, or drag a finger to explore the sky. Alternatively, a quick search box gets you to any celestial body, which you can then pluck from the screen and twiddle about in AR.
Free. Download Night Sky.
23/53Bloom: 10 Worlds
Best for: Pretending you’re Brian Eno
In 2008, Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers unleashed Bloom. With each tap of your iPhone’s screen, a note played and a disc of colour emerged from beneath your fingertip. Gradually, you built an ambient soundtrack that endlessly evolved. If Bloom was a single, 10 Worlds is an album – a much wider palette of generative audio and arty visuals that’ll make you feel so much like Brian Eno, you’ll demand to be part of the next Roxy Music tour.
£7.99. Download Bloom: 10 Worlds.
24/53Cheatsheet
Best for: Getting at vital info
The snag with most notepad apps is you actually have to open them to see what you’ve previously written down. Cheatsheet acts more like scribbles you make on the back of your hand in pen. Brief notes are twinned with icons, all of which can be displayed on your Lock screen or Apple Watch. It’s just the ticket for door codes and phone numbers. Probably avoid using it for PIN numbers, mind.
Free or £2.99 for premium. Download Cheatsheet.
25/53Morpho Converter
Best for: Avoiding conversion chaos
It’s hard to get excited about a conversion app. But what about one that does things really well? Still unconvinced? Trust us. Morpho lets you define up to eight permanent conversions in the free app – or an unlimited number if you pay – all of which update when you tap numbers into the calculator pad. Calculation types are colour-coded so you can spot them with ease, and a dual-pane view on iPad displays a slew of related conversions on tapping any stored one.
From free. Download Morpho Converter
26/53Fugue Machine
Best for: Putting your Bach out
On hearing about an app inspired by composition techniques used in Baroque music and Serialism, you might wonder if your old music teacher’s lurking with an incomplete exam paper. But Fugue Machine doesn’t require you swallow a music history book. Instead, this music creator is all about crafting dizzyingly beautiful loops, by tapping out notes, and then having multiple playheads dance back and forth across them at varying speeds and in different directions. To further inspire you, dozens of examples are built in.
£9.99. Download Fugue Machine.
27/53Pixelmator Photo
Best for: Fixing snaps with one tap
It turns out AI isn’t bipedal robots clanking about (yet), but training software on loads of files and saying “do it like that”. And so it follows with Pixelmator Photo.
Load a photo, prod the AI button, and the app uses knowledge of 20 million pro-grade photos to spruce up your snap. Sometimes, it messes up – sunsets are a problem, unless you want them turned into daytime; but mostly it’s magic. And if you want to fiddle, a bevy of sliders lurks within.
£4.99. Download Pixelmator Photo.
28/53White Noise+
Best for: Tuning out the world
Sometimes you need to shut everything out, not least when 9-to-5 office hubbub is drilling deep into your brain. White Noise+ is an ambient noise generator – but it’s smarter than most. You create personalised mixes by dragging sounds to a grid – those at the top play more loudly, and those to the right use more complex loops. Mixes can be saved, and there’s an alarm for waking you from slumber – accidental or otherwise.
Free or £2.99 for premium. Download White Noise+.
29/53Streaks Workout
Best for: Working up a sweat
It’s all too easy to make excuses when armed with exercise apps. I need a chair? I have to go outside? That’s not the case with Streaks Workout. It has you prod user-friendly buttons to select exercises you fancy doing, and then randomises them during a workout. Be warned: although the “Quick” six-minute workout is easy to slot into any day, the 30-minute “Extreme” option was given that name for a good reason.
£3.99. Download Streaks Workout.
30/53MusicHarbor
Best for: Tracking your favourite bands
Apple Music’s fine for playing music and discovering new tunes to listen to, but it’s far from top of the pops in helping you keep tabs on favourite artists. Fortunately, MusicHarbor exists for that. Each artist page provides fast access to their back catalogue and a pre-populated Google News page. Alternatively, you can browse aggregated lists of new releases, upcoming releases, music videos or concerts. For singles and albums, you can play track previews in-app and add the release to your library with a tap.
Free or £5.99. Download MusicHarbor
31/53Oak
Best for: Taking a breather
Most mindfulness apps for iPhone aim to help you relax, but only after first giving you a minor heart attack on revealing monstrous subscription charges. Not Oak – for no outlay whatsoever, you get a bunch of straightforward and effective breathing and meditation exercises. There’s no fluff or cruft here either – the interface is elegant and simple, and shortcuts to exercises you’ve recently tried are handily readily available at the top of the screen.
Free. Download Oak.
32/53Chunky Comic Reader
Best for: Feasting your eyes on comics
Whether you’re into the spandex brigade, samurai bunnies, or gritty 60-minutes-into-the-future fare from 2000 AD and Image, there’s loads to love about modern comics. Well, except digital apps mostly being gummed up by DRM.
Chunky is different. Load up your DRM-free files bought from Humble Bundle and the like, and Chunky will automatically sort them, and also upscale and de-tint low-res issues so they look fab. Buy the IAP and you can load comics from your NAS as well.
Free and in-app purchases. Download Chunky Comic Reader.
33/53Bear Focus Timer
Best for: Getting some focus
If getting things done means not using your phone, this timer does the business. You set focus and break durations and optional white noise sounds. The app then invites you to put your phone face down. This works wonders – a simple action that makes you feel like you’re putting your device out of reach. And if you try to take a sneaky peek, the titular bear growls at you – a stern reminder of your lack of resolve.
£0.99. Download Bear Focus Timer.
34/53Korg Gadget
Best for: Becoming the new Kraftwerk
Music studios keep shrinking. Once, they were the size of a house. Then you could fit them inside a largish PC in a smallish room. Now, Korg Gadget’s in your iPhone (or iPad), with an intoxicating mix of old and new. The old: an ever-growing set of classic synths and drum machines with virtual knobs to twiddle and sliders to push. The new: an excellent sequencer/songwriter, for crafting your next chart hit.
£38.99. Download Korg Gadget.
35/53Procreate
Best for: Unleashing your inner artist
People have been finger-painting on iPhones since the App Store first appeared, but Procreate’s good enough to even convince traditional artists to chuck their easels, canvases and tubes of paint in the bin. The interface can be stripped back to leave you just with your art, but you can also delve into brush creation, layers and effects. Whether you’re a newcomer or modern-day Cézanne, this app’s the best around on mobile.
£9.99. Download Procreate for iPad. £4.99. Download Procreate Pocket for iPhone.
36/53Snapseed
Best for: Fine-tuning favourite snaps
Not every photo you shoot will come out well, but Snapseed can nudge top snaps towards perfection. There are single-tap filters for quick fixes, but also a huge range of tools, from cropping and adjustments to artsy filters and text overlays. The gestural interface is intuitive, edits are non-destructive and chains of edits can be saved as custom filters. It’s free, too, so you’ve no excuse not to get stuck in.
Free. Download Snapseed.
37/53David Bowie Is
Best for: Arting up your iPhone
The problem with art is it’s mostly shoved inside of galleries, or inside of books as boring static photos. Augmented reality offers an alternative: bringing galleries to you. Nowhere is this more apparent than in David Bowie Is, which democratises the acclaimed touring exhibition by beaming it on to your desk. It’s all here, too: dozens of costumes; lyrics and sketches; songs and videos; paintings. Top stuff for anyone with an interest in a true cultural icon.
£9.99. Download David Bowie Is.
38/53NetNewsWire
Best for: Keeping up with the news
Modern news apps typically serve up stories they think you’ll like. NetNewsWire is old school, instead having you subscribe to website feeds – either using the app’s own engine or a service such as Feedly. With NetNewsWire you need never miss a story again from publications you love. Stories are stripped back to text and images and the app itself is fast and efficient in a manner its rivals just aren’t. The lack of a price tag seems almost criminal.
Free. Download NetNewsWire.
39/53GoodLinks
Best for: Saving web pages for later
If you spend the day racking up open tabs in Safari, you need a read-later app. You share links to the app, which extracts text and images. When you later fancy reading, you can focus on just the content rather than web page cruft. GoodLinks is a premium take on this concept. There are no accounts – everything syncs via iCloud – and you can fine tune everything from typography to gestures. For more demanding users, extensive shortcuts support enables the app to be part of a powerful custom multi-app processing/archiving system for web pages.
£4.99. Download GoodLinks.
40/53Photoshop Camera
Best for: Making photography fun
Actual Photoshop exists for iPad; it’s solid, but we prefer Affinity Photo. Photoshop Camera is something else entirely. As its name suggests, it’s a camera, but this app wants you to get creative rather than snapping boring reality. You get a bunch of lenses that work live or that you can apply to existing pics. Some are subtle, for boosting portraits and enhancing landscapes. Mostly, they’re fun and bonkers, transforming snaps into pop art, slathering photos with glitches or peppering your shots with gigantic lollipops.
Free. Download Photoshop Camera.
41/53Overcast
Best for: Listening to talky podcasts
With a podcast app, the most important things are managing favourite shows and being able to listen to them more easily. Which is why it’s so odd few podcast apps focus on those things. Overcast has long innovated on audio and podcast management and remains the best player for iOS. For talk-oriented shows, you get superb options to boost speech, remove silences and increase playback speed. And if you subscribe to many podcasts, custom playlists with smart filters help you prioritise favourites and rearrange upcoming shows with ease.
Free. Download Overcast.
42/53Cs: Classic Music Player
Best for: Going retro with Apple Music
Apple’s Music app doubled down on the online component, turning your collection into an afterthought. Cs harks back to a simpler time, but without ignoring the realities of modern music streaming. It dispenses with much of Apple Music’s service to focus squarely on your music. You can switch between downloaded tracks or your entire iCloud Music library and tap tabs to quickly switch between song, artist and album lists, which can be filtered in various ways. Simple? You bet. It’s like a classic tune you once loved, now joyfully rediscovered.
43/53LumaFusion
Best for: Editing video like a pro
Apple’s iMovie is a pretty great mobile video editor, but what if you want to move to the big leagues? Then it’s time to invest in LumaFusion, which provides desktop-grade video editing on an iPad – and even on iPhone. The app scythes through 4K footage, while freeing you from the limitations of simpler fare. You get a half-dozen video tracks, six additional audio tracks, a slew of transitions, wonderful layer effects and audio filters. It’s like a Hollywood editing suite in the palm of your hand.
£28.99. Download LumaFusion.
44/53Solar Watch
Best for: Tracking the sun
Whether you’re a photographer, vampire or merely an interested party, you might want to track sunrise and sunset times. Plenty of weather apps do this, but Solar Watch is dedicated fare. Its gigantic visualisation leaves no room for error as you gawp at hours of light and dark and the all-important golden hour that’s ideal for super snaps. Multiple locations can be saved, there’s a superb Home screen widget and you can also browse a yearly daylight overview for any location.
Free or £9.99. Download Solar Watch.
45/53The Wallpaper & Background App
Best for: Generating arty backgrounds
You might question paying for a wallpaper app when so many are free. But this suitably named option is easily worth two quid. It eschews nicking art from the internet and instead provides about 20 designs to swipe between. To add a dash of uniqueness, each can be regenerated in semi-randomised fashion with a tap. Find something you like and it can be saved or exported to fit a range of screen sizes, from Apple Watch to 5K iMac.
46/53Dice by PCalc
Best for: Throwing a six
Got a sneaking suspicion your friends cheat during tabletop games? Desperate to play Snakes & Ladders but discovered the dice is mysteriously absent? You need Dice by PCalc. Offering physics-based simulation of real-world dice, you can lob everything from a six-sided one to all kinds of polyhedral types – and the app tots everything up as it goes. Not geeky enough? Then craft your own custom dice that apply text, emoji or images to each face and share them with friends.
£1.99. Download Dice by PCalc.
47/53LookUp: English Dictionary
Best for: Expanding your vocabulary
There are conventional dictionaries for iPhone – Chambers Dictionary is the best of them – but LookUp takes a different approach. It infuses fun and colour into rummaging through lists of words. Typography is bold and photos are integrated. There are word quizzes and a Word Of The Day to improve your wordy knowledge (so you no longer have to use phrases like “wordy knowledge”). The lack of an offline mode is a pity, but top marks otherwise for LookUp trying something new – and succeeding.
48/53Capo
Best for: Learning favourite songs
Some people barely need to hear a whiff of a riff before they can knock the entire thing out on their guitar. If your ears aren’t as finely tuned, have Capo do the hard graft instead. Load a song and it’ll attempt to figure out the chords. If it gets things wrong, you can make edits, and then slow the entire thing down so you can master the tricky bits. You’ll need to subscribe to save your edits, mind.
£8.99 per year. Download Capo.
49/53FileBrowser
Best for: Getting at all your stuff
Apple’s Files is baked into your iPhone and iPad and it’s fine for getting at documents stored locally or those on iCloud Drive. For everything else, there’s FileBrowser. The app makes it easy to connect to local network drives, Macs and PCs and remote storage, be that FTP or a non-Apple cloud service. The standalone app includes multi-tab browsing, players and previews, but you can also opt to have it extend Files by setting FileBrowser as a Location.
£5.99. Download FileBrowser.
50/53Cloud Battery
Best for: Never running out of juice
Apple gadgets are mere dead slabs of glass, metal and plastic when they run out of charge. Stop that from happening by installing Cloud Battery on them all. You can then keep tabs on those that desperately need plugging in, even defining low-charge alerts on a per-device basis. Usefully, Cloud Battery even works for tracking Mac input accessories, thereby making sure your keyboard won’t suddenly stop working when you’re halfway through a sen
Free/£2.49. Download Cloud Battery.
51/53Photo Flashback!
Best for: Doing your own ‘on this day’
If you ever wondered what you were doing on today’s date one or more years ago, Facebook will attempt to remind you and apps like Timehop can serve up “curated” selections of pics and social media postings. But if you want rid of cruft, Photo Flashback! is better, laying out in streamlined form relevant snaps it finds in iCloud Photo Library. Using the calendar, you can browse alternate days and you can set a daily alert to rifle through your past.
Free. Download Photo Flashback!.
52/53Book Track
Best for: Keeping you honest with reading
Books are great – until they threaten to take over your home, lurking menacingly in piles and making you feel guilty you’re not reading them. Book Track keeps you honest and organised, letting you scan paper tomes and add digital titles via a browser. These are then presented as thumbnails in a top-notch interface that’s a collection manager, reading statistics tracker and wish list. Just, you know, actually then read something rather than spending all your time faffing in Book Track.
£4.49. Download Book Track.
53/53Serial Reader
Best for: Making time for the classics
Jane Eyre. The Great Gatsby. War And Peace. They might strain your bookshelves, but you might never get around to reading them – after all, who has the time? Serial Reader thinks you do and seeks to prove it by serving up classics in bite-sized daily chunks. These “issues” take minutes to read and enable you to blaze through titles you might otherwise ignore forever. Go premium (£2.49) for cloud sync and the option to read ahead to future issues.
Free/£2.49. Download Serial Reader.
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