The Verge
Vox Media, Inc.
(1,000+)
FREE – On Google Play
Apple
Every company likes to brag about the number of apps available for their devices. 700,000 Android apps! 120,000 Windows Phone apps! 70,000 BlackBerry 10 apps! Having lots of apps is good, but here's the thing: most apps suck. And not only does that make bad apps hard to avoid, it makes the good ones hard to find. So we'll be highlighting our favorite apps on every platform, whether it's for your phone, your tablet, your laptop, or any other device.
But these aren't just cool new apps — these are the best new apps. The ones you absolutely must download, right now. The ones that will instantly make you saner, happier, drier (if and when we ever find a great weather app), and more productive. So trust us: you want these apps.
12 updates and 543 comments below.
May 01 3:35p
Drafts is the starting place for anything you might tap out on your iPhone or iPad, integrated with a large and growing number of other apps. This is a notebook that works like an Alfred-style launcher, and as with launchers, the more time you spend with Drafts, the more uses you'll find for it. Launch Drafts and type something — then tweet it, post it to Facebook, send it as an email, or add it to your calendar or Reminders app all from the same place. It can be saved to Dropbox or...
Apr 09 2:30p
The best movies convince you that you know exactly what's about to happen, only to spin off in a direction you never saw coming. Badland is that feeling, unceasing, incarnate in an impressively long and involved iOS game. A sort of demented, Tim Burton-ized version of Jetpack Joyride or Super Meat Boy, Badland has but one control — you tap the screen to make your amorphous, squishy black blob lurch upward, and when you let go it floats back to earth. But the dystopian rainforest through...
Mar 22 11:00a
What is so satisfying about upgrading gear and unlocking levels? Why does acquiring the chainsaw lure keep me up at night? Super Crate Box developer Vlambeer has mastered addictive gameplay, and its latest title is a testament to that. In Ridiculous Fishing, you are a fisherman searching for redemption, mindlessly casting your line deeper to catch eels, catfish, and footstaches — and then using a variety of high-caliber weaponry to shoot them out of the air above your boat.
The game is...
Mar 13 1:00p
DashClock Widget is a new widget for Android 4.2 devices that can be placed on a user’s home screen or lock screen. Developed by a Google employee, DashClock provides quick, glance-able information on your device without requiring you to even unlock it. You can see current weather, numbers of unread emails and text messages, upcoming appointments, and more. And since DashClock supports extensions, third-party app developers can tap into it to show you things like battery status, social...
Mar 07 4:05p
Traktor DJ is one of those apps that sells the entire idea of the iPad itself — it takes the fundamentals of complicated, expensive PC-based DJ programs like Traktor Pro and Serato Scratch Live and reduces them to a handful of simple touch gestures that are ridiculously easy to understand. Instead of a virtual turntable or other strained metaphor, you just tap, swipe, and drum on the waveforms of your tracks directly — Traktor is smart enough to slice up the beats, sync things up, and...
Feb 27 2:00p
I'd been waiting for a great Android podcast app for a long time, and one has finally arrived. With RSS readers and Twitter clients that match the thoughtful design of their iOS counterparts, the Play Store has started to host quality as well as its undeniable quantity of software — but until now, there's never been a podcast app that wasn't ugly, a pain to use, or both. Pocket Casts is the unlikely savior: it used to be pretty terrible itself, with an awkward interface ported straight...
Feb 21 3:09p
If it's not in my calendar, I have exactly zero chance of remembering to do something or be somewhere. The biggest problem with that is "my calendar" lives in so many different places now. I have a work calendar, and a personal calendar; sometimes I only get invited to things on Facebook. Not only does Sunrise bring all that data into one great-looking app, it adds everything else I might need for the day, like the weather and whose birthday it is. The app also lets you do stuff with all...
Feb 15 11:05a
Weather apps are a dime a dozen these days — who needs another one, right? Well, if you enjoy slick design and pretty animations to go along with your weather forecasts, Haze might be the weather app for you. Haze offers simple weather reports in a clean and attractive interface that relies on gestures to control — something we don't see too often in weather apps. Its use of animated backgrounds to tell you the forecast may not be the most efficient method of reporting the weather —...
Feb 04 3:05p
Facebook Messenger began as a simple way to send messages to Facebook friends, but quickly evolved into a fully fledged texting replacement. Today, you can send pictures, your location, voice messages, and even make calls through the app — all without using any of your monthly minutes or texts. Facebook Messages sync instantly to the social network’s website, which means it’s easy to carry on conversations on your computer, then walk away and take your conversation to go. You might...
3:04p
We expect only the basics from mobile apps, but Snapseed proves that it doesn’t take multi-level menus and toolbars to make a powerful image editor. The app’s secret lies in a series of simple, smart tools that intuit what you want them to do, rather than mimicking the common options of a standard editor. Once you pick a tool, there are only two choices, more or less, and it makes seeing the effect on your photo both charming and obvious, even if it is unclear what a tool named...
3:03p
Cobook doesn’t fix what ain’t broke. It’s essentially Apple’s Contacts app on steroids, with the ability to pull contact information from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn on demand. Cobook can link contact cards with information like a friend’s job title from LinkedIn, location from Facebook, and Twitter handle from Twitter, all without harming your contact files. It might not be the "always synced contact app of the 21st century," but it’s your best option.
Free on iOS
3:00p
Here's the thing: most apps suck. And not only does that make bad apps hard to avoid, it makes the good ones hard to find when there are hundreds of thousands of apps out there. So in this new series, we'll be highlighting our favorite apps on every platform, whether it's for your phone, your tablet, your laptop, or any other device.
But these aren't just cool new apps — these are the best new apps. The ones you absolutely must download, right now. The ones that will instantly make you...
May 23 1:30p
Best New Apps: Google Hangouts
I've tried WhatsApp, GroupMe, Kik, Google Voice, LINE, Trillian, and basically every other messaging app you can think of — I've even tried using Skype as an IM service, because at least my parents know what Skype is. I'd given up on finding an app that had all three things I need: cross-platform, useful online and off, and accessible enough that I could convince everyone I know to use it. But Google's new Hangouts app is all that and more.
There are Hangouts apps for iOS and Android,...
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