10 Apps I Currently Love
Feedly
If you’re obsessed with reading blogs like I am, you should be on Feedly. There’s probably a great debate between Bloglovin’ and Feedly (and all other feed readers, really). I think Bloglovin’ and Feedly both have their pros and cons but tend to learn more toward Feedly due to its cleaner design.
When I’m not at my computer, the app is a great way to continue to read my favorite blogs and sort them. The user interface has a little bit of a learning curve in my opinion, but once you learn the basics, it’s a great tool to have on the go.
Directr
Have any of you heard of this app before? I spotted in the App Store the other week and have been having a blast seeing what people come up with. Directr lets you create movies—without time limits—by piecing videos and pictures together, and then adding text and background music. I personally haven’t made any movies yet but if you take the time to look through the feed of random videos, you’re sure to find some you love.
Temple Run 2
Temple Run is probably now considered a “staple app,” meaning everyone knows about it, has the app, and has probably used it at least once. Temple Run 2 came out this past summer and offers a new adventure. I go through spurts where I play it nonstop, and I just got off one of those a few weeks ago. I prefer to play it on my iPad, but that’s just because the screen is bigger. The game is great on both your iPhone and your iPad.
OpenTable
When I’m in a hurry and forget to book a reservation for a restaurant (especially if it’s a hot spot), OpenTable always comes to the rescue. One of the features I love about it is that it will recommend other times for a reservation if the one you chose isn’t available. You can also enable notifications, so in case you make a reservation a couple of months in advance, you won’t forget about it.
AutoTrader
I’ve been looking for a car recently and AutoTrader seems to be the go-to destination to finding a car in a certain area. Before I found AutoTrader, I was researching individual dealership websites, which became time consuming and exhausting. I actually prefer the iPhone app over the desktop site. Don’t try out the iPad app, though. It’s terrible.
Google Drive
I recently started doing more with Google Docs, and Google Drive is where Google automatically stores all of those docs. It’s great to have because I can edit from pretty much any of my devices—iPhone, iPad, laptop, etc.—and since it’s stored in the cloud, everything syncs automatically. I love it for keeping random notes about blog topics, to-do lists, and for collaborating on documents with other people.
Confide
This is a brand-new app and I think it’s really cool. Confide is the “Snapchat for the office,” as it’s being called. Essentially, you type in a message, send it to the person you want, and then the person has to slide their finger across the message for it to appear, and then disappears once the message is closed out of. It’s next to impossible to take a screenshot of the message, too, since your finger has to be touching the message in order for it to be seen.
A friend recently introduced me to Pocket and I don’t know what I was doing before I got it. Well, actually, I do remember what I was doing, and it was going crazy. Pocket lets you save websites to read later, even offline. Pocket saves itself as an email contact and then you send an email to Pocket with the URL you want to save, and it syncs with the app. Once you open the app, your stories sync.
You know, Pinterest has really upped its mobile apps over the past six months or so. I still remember Pinterest’s first iOS app and it was so clunky and buggy. But now, I love how intuitive everything is and how much easier it is to get around and share content. My only complaint is that the menu bar disappears when you start scrolling down, and it only appears when you scroll back up. If I had it my way, that menu bar wouldn’t ever disappear.
Studio Design
Studio Design is a photo editing app that lets you collaborate with friends on edits. It includes all the standard photo app features: filters, text, cropping, etc. What’s cool about it is that you add to your image in layers, similar to Photoshop. So it’s easy to go back and make a change (read: it’s not permanent until you push Save).
So that’s my list. What’s on your “I’m totally love these apps” list these days? Give me some suggestions in the comments below!