Apple gets more than 1,000 app submissions every hour, meaning it’s tougher than ever to find something that’s worth your time. But it also means that if you look hard enough, there are more brilliant gems in the rough than ever.
So I went panning for gold, putting a call out to small-time solo developers with something to share. I wanted to turn the spotlight on some under-the-radar apps that maybe haven’t had the attention they deserve just yet. Indie apps cam often be rough around the edges, but beyond their DIY charm you’ll often find something thoughtful that tackles things the bigger studios missed. Below I’ll share some of my favorites, along with an overall winner from the bunch. The prize is, uh, being able to quote this article in their next press release?
Remember that every app here was built by a real person, usually in their spare time, and I deliberately hunted for apps with only a handful of reviews. So if something catches your eye, show them some love with a rating or a review on the App Store.
Winner: Benkyo Box
Benkyo Box from Juan Arzola is my pick of the bunch, a lovely flashcard app for drilling concepts or facts you need to get straight.
What won me over was what it leaves out. There’s no Duolingo-style streak to chase, which is refreshing when so many apps cram in gamification where it’s not needed. There’s even an option to print your cards into a physical, foldable zine for offline study, which neatly backs up Juan’s point that “opening the app is often not the goal.”
The app is really well considered and I’m amazed it isn’t better known. It’s easy to build your own cards for free, with a $3/month upgrade unlocking the ability to auto-create study aids from a webpage – much more affordable than some of the bigger flashcard apps out there. And because this is a small indie creation, if you find it’s lacking something you need, you could always message the dev a feature request directly!
Vinyl Fetish
Possibly my favorite way indies differentiate themselves is by injecting personality into their creations. Where many mid-level apps share that cookie-cutter shades-of-beige design language, other devs go bold – like Vinyl Fetish from Germán Buela, which turns to full skeuomorphism to transform your Apple Music library into a lovely tactile record collection.
It reminded me of Apple’s iPod days, where you could flip through album covers with the click wheel. The one downside here is no support for other streaming services (Germán says Spotify is not a friendly platform for small players), but if you’re in the Apple ecosystem, it’s a great alternative to the Music app and could make you fall in love with LPs again.
Widget Cast
This app from Neil of Crab Polygons turns video clips into animated widgets for your Home Screen. It’s a perfect example of an indie filling a gap in iOS – you might assume there’s a built-in way to make video widgets, but without Widget Cast there isn’t. Its solution may be hacky, transforming your videos into a series of images – but it works. I was skeptical about this slowed-down flipbook style at first, but I’ve had a “video” of my daughter on a waterslide looping over my Home Screen for a week now, and I concede it’s much more charming than a static image.
The risk with this type of app is that one update from Apple could make it redundant overnight, but like the previous app, Neil’s hedged against that with personality, wrapping it in a charming tape-style UI with optional retro effects. Nice one.
Waylist
Some devs aren’t simply content with filling gaps in iOS, but attempt to do things Apple already does… better. You might call that hubris, but Apple’s designers often water down features in the name of simplicity.
On that note, Waylist from Charanjit Chana is an attempt to do travel guides better than Apple’s effort in Maps. After getting annoyed with how searching and ordering lists work in Apple Maps, he took matters into his own hands ahead of a summer holiday. The result is a more focused app, built off the existing power of Maps but centered around itineraries and scrapbooks in a way the first-party option doesn’t care to. It might not be as good for discovering new locations as Apple’s version, but with ads heading to Apple Maps, an indie alternative with a small upfront cost ($2/£2) just got even more appealing.
calmshows
Another way indie apps can catch the eye is by undercutting the competition. By trusting something built by a single person instead of a huge studio, you can often find free (or inexpensive) versions of popular paid apps. Some of them are even good.
Developer Iain McLaren says he only builds apps when what he wants doesn’t exist yet. In fact, he’s released a full suite of ‘calm’ apps, including calmshows for discovering and tracking movies, all of which look very smart and are completely free. It’s nice to see a benevolent dev who isn’t trying to get rich quick, and although his apps don’t massively break new ground, there is a consistency and quality across the suite that’s remarkable, especially for free.
Lemon Squeezy
You got me – the real (secret) reason for putting this showcase together was to sneak in my own app. Lemon Squeezy is a kids camera I built to solve a real problem in my own house, with features and setting inspired by testing from my kids and their friends. I’ve tried to design something that uses screen time for good, without gamification or gimmicks getting in the way of children’s natural instinct to be creative.
(Now might be a good time to remind you all how helpful it is to leave an App Store rating.) 😉
More to come
This list is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to interesting indie apps, and checking out the dozens that were sent to me over the past couple of weeks has been great fun. So I’m sure I’ll be back with more indie gems to showcase before long, and if you’ve built something you’d like to share, feel free to email it over.