Look, everyone knows about WhatsApp and Spotify. And we’ve covered the likes of Streaks and CARROT Weather countless times. Those apps are well known by now, especially if you’ve been reading our roundups for some time. But there’s a wealth of quality bubbling just under the surface of the App Store, too. Apps that offer something valuable that you didn’t even realize you wanted. So, here are five apps you should know about that you may never have even heard of.
Longplay [$4/£4]
Many music fans bemoan the marginalization of the album format that has coincided with the rise of all-you-can-eat streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. Longplay is a music playing app that focuses on the classic album format, surfacing the complete albums in your collection rather than the many odd tracks you might have assembled. It also features some smart sorting options, such as Negligence, which pushes to the fore those albums you’ve rated highly but haven’t listened to in some time.
Reeder 5 [$5/£5]
RSS reader apps are nothing new, and have somewhat fallen out of fashion of late. But with the realisation that Facebook is not the reliable news hub it purports to be, there’s a lot to be said for an app that gives you full oversight over your news sources. Now in its fourth iteration, Reeder is one of the best apps of its kind, with flexible sorting options, a handy speed-reading mode, a read later function, and one of the cleanest UIs in town.
Wolfram Alpha [$3/£3]
We’re all used to Googling or asking Siri for information now, but they don’t always get you to the really deep stat–driven stuff. One of the most powerful information–gathering tools over recent years has been Wolfram Alpha, which Siri itself will turn to from time to time. Using powerful computational intelligence, this app will put together full reports with graphs and insights. It’s the perfect assistant for homework or research assignments, as well as those bits of esoteric trivia that Google can’t always touch.
Deliveries [$5/£5 yearly]
One thing’s for sure, we’re all doing a lot more online shopping these days. And while most of us can guarantee that we’ll be home to take the deliveries, that doesn’t stop the anxiety of tracking them all. Thank goodness for Deliveries, then. It’s arguably the go-to parcel tracking app out there, covering all the major couriers and shopping services across more than 20 countries. Deliveries will count down the days to your package arrivals, and show you exactly where they all are on a map.
SatSquatch [$5/£5]
There are weather apps, and then there are weather apps like SatSquatch. This hardcore effort is aimed at “weather professionals and enthusiasts”, and provides such avid meteorologists with detailed imagery from the GOES weather satellites. These include advanced formats like true-color and visible/infrared composite layers. A monthly SatSquatch Pro subscription will overlay information such as temperature, dewpoint, or derived quantities such as convective available potential energy. Like we said: it’s hardcore. And also kind of beautiful.
