Preferably lesser known but game-changing apps that are able to be bought one-time and put all others to shame.
To help clarify your thinking, which apps have produced such an outrageous level of value (regardless of one-time cost) to the extent you believe it should be #1 in its category, not necessarily #1 app ever.
We’ll do a seperate thread for Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, etc but let’s stick to iOS for this one. Thanks Lemmings!
Apollo 🥲
Oh well.
Seek by iNaturalist
The app uses AI to identify the species of plants, animals, insects and fungi. In video mode you scan around something you want to ID as the AI narrows it down to the species. Then you can take a pic. The app keeps track of each unique species you’ve found (along with your photo of it). There’s also badges and achievements for identifying different numbers of species, if you want to gamify your nature sightseeing.
It’s basically real life Pokémon. Oh and it’s completely free.
Whoa! This sounds rad.
Paprika. It downloads saves and organizes recipes from just about any website, bypassing annoying ad floaters and, magically, paywalls. I use it constantly. It’s a one time purchase for all your devices. Does shopping lists too, if that’s your thing.
Another recipe app I recommend is Mela.
Sounds like a recipe for a genius and useful app
Ooh I dug through recipe apps a while back, I ended up using Pestle. It’s pricier than Paprika but I prefer the Pestle UI. Both good apps with similar feature sets, just providing another option.
Paprika - $5 Pestle - $20/yr or $40 lifetime
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Just wanted to give a shout-out to QuickScan as its better than Abbyy FineReader/Scanner, private, and technically free although I support it by tipping
I like Genius Scan.
Me too. It just works.
Wow, incredible! Thanks!
As a student of life I have to mention Anki. At its core it’s a flashcard app out of the box but it’s almost infinitely more powerful than that if you dig deep.
I paid 35 CAD for it in 2019 and I’ve used it every single day since. The amount of knowledge I’ve committed to memory is truly priceless, and I’ve even gifted this app to several friends.
NB: AnkiMobile, not the free knockoff AnkiApp. It’s open-source and actually free for computers and android devices, and iOS/iPadOS app purchases are the only way the developer makes money.
Gotta use this more, I just hate having to do the grinding of whipping up an entire specialized deck.
So I’m using a FOSS spaced repetition app alternative to Anki called Memoet. Self hosted and it does everything I want. Might I recommend using chat gpt to help make cards? You can easily generate tables that can be copy pasted into a csv which (I’m assuming anki) can be imported as cards
I use to use Java and Hashmaps with arrays and such.
My wife and I have subscribed for years now because it literally never fails to sync and is easy to use. We have a ton of lists including grocery, hardware, trips, camping, and so on. It’s also our meal planner and recipe library.
Gotta subscribe though, don’t you?
One person needs to subscribe (I thought it was like 3 bucks a year) for all the premium sharing features.
No idea. I don’t remember what you get without their sub.
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As someone who watches a fairly wide variety of tv shows, “next episode” has been the most useful app on my phone for me. It helps so much for knowing what to subscribe to and when. Only sub when my favorite shows come out and catch up on the rest then. I’ve also discovered some new shows through their upcoming and trending lists (which is more of just a bonus and not why I got the app to begin with). It’s probably the only app I would give my full recommendation for anyway.
Do you have an app link? Searching for “episodes” shows a ton of romantic apps.
Oh I’m silly. It’s “next episode” not episodes! Sorry, I’ll have to edit my comment.
So this one then.
Look at ShowPal before you commit to that one. It looks better and the privacy deets are better.
ShowPal’s actually sick too, has all the seasons and where to actually stream it!
Oh shit, the might be what I need to finally unsubscribe from the last few streaming services I pay for and fully hit the high seas.
eta: downloaded it and spent the last 30 minutes perusing and bought the app. Looks great.
Quite an august post for you then, June 🏛️
Does it work for Australian shows, or is this an American Only method? Can’t find the answer on their page, so I am guessing it is not for us.
I have seen some Australian and British shows listed, but I can’t tell you if they have a lot of them (I kind of doubt it). I only know that it’s very on top of US shows at least.
VoiceDream and SpeechCentral are amazing text to speech apps that turn your documents (PDF, txt, ePub, Mobi, AZW3 into audiobooks that let you read by highlighting and adjusting the speed etc.
I don’t know if VoiceDream can still be bought on iOS but I know SpeechCentral is almost as good and it can be bought one-time.
Glazba. It’s a music player that allows for playing files in various formats, including FLAC. Song files can be uploaded to the phone through the app via web browser over Wi-Fi, or it can play music files stored on any of several cloud-storage services. Considering that I’ve ripped my entire 1000+ CD collection to FLAC, and considering that it contains a number of albums not available through streaming services, this app has been quite useful.
If you’ve set up a Plex library, PlexAmp can also play FLAC files but it can also stream them so they don’t actually have to be downloaded to the phone. It does have that option, though, if you want to play them offline.
YNAB - it’s subscription based but is the best budgeting app I’ve found. Keeps me honest with my money, and when I was married was amazing for keeping us synced on our shared spending budgets.
Also check out MoneyStats, its like a one-time payment complete forecasting app like Kualto/Dollarbird but way better. No subscription and it syncs using your iCloud but you can also manually export all the data.
Memmy
Glazba. It’s a music player that allows for playing files in various formats, including FLAC. Song files can be uploaded to the phone through the app via web browser over Wi-Fi, or it can play music files stored on any of several cloud-storage services. Considering that I’ve ripped my entire 1000+ CD collection to FLAC, and considering that it contains a number of albums not available through streaming services, this app has been quite useful.
We’ll do a seperate thread for Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, etc but let’s stick to iOS for this one. Thanks Lemmings!
Edit: to help clarify your thinking, which apps have produced such an outrageous level of value (regardless of one-time cost) to the extent you believe it should be #1 in its category, not necessarily #1 app ever.
Edit: please upvote this if you can, I have a feeling this thread is going to turn into an Apple slurry real quick if there’s not an extension to the thread body that frames things helpfully
Dice by PCalc - For when you need to roll some dice
Blackbox - It got some hype when it released but if anyone still hasn’t tried it, it is highly recommended. You will need to learn everything your iPhone can do and think outside the box to solve these puzzles.
Its kinda funny, whenever I need a diceroll I just type up a quick JS Math.random script.
On your phone?
Is there any other way ;)
All these comments recommending paid subscription software… weird world. Not that this is not a healthy model for the Devs, but how can you trust them?
