There are a lot of free/paid iPhone apps nowadays and it can actually be quite hard to cut through the clutter and find the best ones. I especially like apps that make my life easier so I wanted to take some time and share those with you today.
With so many apps available for iPhone and iPod touch, how can you know which ones are worth your time? This list is your guide. These free iPhone apps give you the latest local weather information, a great way to discover and identify music, a tool to learn new languages, as well as a simple parental control app for iPhone users.
1 Duolingo
Duolingo is a free language-learning platform that turns the process of learning a new language into a game. It uses an effective method based on “cognitive science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence to teach you a language.”
The app uses a spaced repetition algorithm to remember what you have learned and give you opportunities to use it. Its virtual coach adapts to your skills and constantly challenges you with sentences that become increasingly more difficult as you progress. It currently offers Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Irish (Gaelic), Dutch and English (for Spanish speakers).
Given its effectiveness and efficiency, I think this is a great app for anyone who wants to learn a new language. You can take the placement test when you start the app and it will assign you appropriate levels for each of the languages it teaches. You can also choose to skip levels if you want. It has different courses for different purposes: travel, business or school.
2 Shazam
Shazam is a free app that can help you discover new music, movies and TV shows. You simply open the app and let it listen to whatever is playing—it will tell you what the song is, or identify the show or movie.
Shazam works in a variety of ways depending on what kind of media you’re looking for. If an audio file is already in its database, it can identify it instantly; otherwise, it will match your recording to its library of over nine million songs, and return results in seconds. The app can also identify television shows by their audio even if you don’t have access to the show’s episode. For movies, Shazam will provide information about both the soundtrack and film reviews.
Shazam doesn’t just provide information—it lets you directly purchase items through iTunes and Amazon—great for impulse shopping! It can also share whatever it’s found with your Facebook friends.
3 AirDroid
AirDroid, free on Android and iPhone, takes your device’s capabilities to the next level. It allows you to access files, apps, notifications, and settings from any computer or mobile device.
AirDroid makes it easy to send files between devices, making it useful for photographers who want to take a picture with their phone and then upload it straight to their computer without having to download it first.
4 Dark Sky Weather
The iPhone is a great tool for many things. It’s even a good device for weather, specifically for keeping up with the weather for the day and for planning a week or month ahead. There are plenty of weather apps that are available, like Yahoo Weather, but there is only one app that I have found to be truly useful: Dark Sky Weather.
This app provides accurate and precise weather forecasting, based on your current location and all the other standard data that comes along with that. It also provides detailed information about precipitation in the next hour, so you can find out if it’s going to rain in an hour and if you should take an umbrella.
5 Google Family Link
Google Family Link is a free, easy way to create an account for your child that you can use to manage screen time and apps. The app itself is simple—it allows you to set up a profile for your child and then control their apps by selecting categories or individual apps, blocking them for a set amount of time or until you turn the blocking off, or setting limits on how much time they can spend in an app each day.
This app is ideal if you’re concerned about your kid getting into content you don’t want them seeing. It’s also great if they just need some firm limits on their screen time— Minecraft and other similar games.
While this app doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that other parental control apps do, it does what it does very well. It can also track your kid’s iPhone but I would recommend these iPhone trackers for full fledged geo-location features. It’s clean, simple, easy to use, and intuitive.
If your kids break the rules, you can remotely lock their devices for a specified period of time—or forever.
Family Link is super easy to set up—it only takes a few minutes to download and install it on all the devices you want to be connected to your Google account—and it’s totally free ! That means there’s no immediate downside if you want to try it out but then decide not to keep using it after all.
6 AllTrails
AllTrails is an app that falls into the “Best Apps on the iPhone” category because it makes a lot of what’s great about a smartphone even better.
It’s basically like having a pre-made hiking guide in your pocket. AllTrails is pretty much set up like any other hiking app: you plug in your destination and the app takes you along a trail, down to where you’re standing now, and points out all kinds of interesting things you might encounter as you hike. It’ll also give you an estimate on how long it will take to get from one point to another.
What’s great about this app is that there are trails all over the world, and they’re not just limited to hiking paths.
This app does a lot more than just record where you’ve been, though. It’s got tons of information about trails, parks and other landmarks near you, including photos, reviews and tips from other users. AllTrails even offers trail maps with the ability to download them to your phone beforehand. In addition to its social media features that let you share your adventures with friends on Facebook and Twitter, AllTrails also records your activities in a personal log so you can track it all.
7 Khan Academy
Khan Academy is an organisation that provides free education for anyone, anywhere. With thousands of videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, its library of learning materials is more than any one person could ever hope to watch in a lifetime. And now it’s available in the palm of your hand!
The Khan Academy iPhone app contains hundreds of video lectures covering various topics, including maths, history and economics, science, art and music, test preparation and even some computer programming. The best part is that you can download the app completely for free—no subscription required!
As with the website on which it’s based, the Khan Academy app was created with accessibility in mind. The video player is fully equipped with subtitles and captions as well as custom playback speeds (a feature crucial to those learning English). In addition, the app allows you to download videos for offline viewing—great for long flights or commutes.
It’s a great way to brush up on topics you thought you knew well, prepare for a test or just learn a new skill from scratch.
8 1Pass
There are plenty of password managers on the App Store, but I’ve found 1Pass to be the most intuitive, with features that make it a great choice for your everyday life.
With 1Pass, you can create new passwords before logging into websites and generate secure passwords whenever you need them while on the go. The app also lets you copy, paste and store passwords on your device so that you don’t have to enter them if they’re already stored in your database. You can use the app to generate random passwords or use its fill-in-the-blanks function to help create specific ones.
9 Star Walk
For most people, the universe is a bewildering place—full of stars, planets, and other objects that we can’t even begin to understand. The more we learn about space, the more mind-boggling it becomes. Fortunately, there’s an app for that: Star Walk turns your iPhone into a window on the universe.
Some people might think telescopes are fairly complicated to use, but now with this app, you can use your smartphone as an interactive telescope! As long as you have some idea of where to look in the sky, Star Walk will guide you to the exact location of stars and planets. You can also search for different celestial bodies and add them to your favorite list.
The app will then alert you when one of your favorite celestial bodies is going to be visible in the sky at night! This means you no longer have to waste time searching for a nice viewing spot!
10 Acorns
Acorns is an app that rounds up the spare change from your daily spending and invests it. You can choose how much of a percentage you want to round up, and how often you want to invest.
For example, if you spend $7.79 at a restaurant, Acorns will round up to $8 and add the remaining fifty cents to your investment account. This rounding system prevents small purchases from becoming fractions of cents lost in your checking account. Acorns also automatically invests your funds in low-fee index funds based on your risk tolerance and investment goals. There are three different levels of risk (conservative, moderate, or aggressive) that determine which funds Acorns invests your money in and how many of them.
The app is extremely user-friendly; as soon as you download it, it’s ready to go! I love Acorn because it’s very easy to use and also because it makes sound financial decisions for us. This is a great option if you’re looking to invest and don’t know where to start.
If you are looking to add useful applications to your iPhone without breaking the bank and without downloading a ton of junk, then find the ten best apps here and enhance the way you do things.
