My 2022 favorite iPhone apps
After scrolling an infinite amount of lists of top apps, I thought I would share my list of favorite apps too. For most of the people this will be a pointless read, for some it might be of inspiration.
No, the ones above are is not the list of my favorite apps. It’s what Apple tells me I’ve used the most this week. Quite interestingly, not even my home screen is a perfect representation of my favorite apps, even though there are many. They're just so many apps I actually like. So I thought about grouping them by looking at the value the app it delivers to me (useful apps) as well as how much I like using it (beautiful apps). And yes, you’ll see I like a lot of apps.
Here’s the list of my favorites as of 2022
Useful & beautiful apps
🎵 Spotify — I’ve been a Spotify user for ages. Recently I gave Apple Music a try, but immediately went back to Spotify. There are different reasons for me to prefer Spotify, among them Apple deleting your favored albums and songs, and the playlists you create if you stop paying the subscriptions.
🎙 Shazam — it solved a specific problem and killed the question “what’s song is this?”
🐦 Twitter — next to newspaper sites is a great source to stay informed. Caveat: I recommend carefully selecting which sources to trust and even leveraging Twitter lists if you are up for it (I used to be a Flipboard user).
📡 Slack — my preferred app to communicate at work and so much better than emails (and chatting on Microsoft Teams).
📌 Pinterest — I probably hate this app even though I love it. There’s so much beauty on this World that Pinterest lets you discover and get inspired by. The downside is the boost to consumerism it generates.
🚖 Uber — after so many years (and despite Super Pumped) it’s still my favorite ride hailing app when travelling to cities.
🍔 Uber Eats — there are tons of alternatives, but this is my favorite food-ordering app, even though I cook more nowadays.
🏃 Nike Running — for keeping me fit. I used to be big on Nike Fuel with the Nike+ FuelBand. Since I got myself Apple Watch, I’m using Apple Workout more. Too bad there’s no way to interact with Apple Workout on iPhone. For both Apple Workout and Nike Running I’d like to have a web experience to look at stats and plan runs — you might be thinking start using Strava as several good friends of my are telling me.
🏋️ Nike Training — when I’ll get back training more seriously and frequently I’ll go back using this one. I don’t use Apple Fitness+ as it’s just videos and not free.
⛷ Slopes — best way to track and relive your days skiing.
📝 Medium — it’s Twitter for long read/writing. Let’s see what happens if Twitter really launches a Medium alternative. What I like about Medium is you lose less time with cosmetics and you focus more on content.
Apple apps:
- 🌍 Apple Maps — being an Apple user, for navigation I just prefer the integration it brings across devices. Best way to plan you navigation from A to B (I used to be a Citymapper user).
- 🧭 Apple Safari — as an Apple user it just works better across devices to me and Apple’s focus on privacy is a plus. Cloud tabs & Tab groups are amazing.
- 🌅 Apple Photos — again the integration across devices wins over Google Photos, which might be still better when it comes to searching/grouping pictures by people.
- 💸 Apple Wallet — Apple Pay via Apple Watch is all I do when in-store, so today I use Apple Wallet on iPhone mainly to manage my loyalty cards and boarding passes. For online payments I still like PayPal better 😉.
- 🗒 Apple Notes — in en effort to be true to the motto less is more, I’ve ditched Evernote. Never regretted it. I’ve been tempted to migrate to Notion, but sticking with simplicity implies saying no. In doing so I actually discovered Apple Notes is quite powerful and efficient. Storing loads of information here.
- ✅ Apple Reminders — forgot why 😉… Being able to add items to a grocery list shared with my wife via Siri is what I like the most (even though I end up going for groceries most of the times).
- 🧘 Apple Fitness (not Fitness+) —those 3 circles really get me to move more, while keeping things extra simple. I’d love to have Mac app or access via iCloud.com for some deeper analysis/insights via desktop.
- 🏠 Apple Home — the app keeps getting better, supporting more devices and the ability to play with automation is cool (and kinda nerdy, especially in combination with Apple Shortcuts).
- 💬 Apple Messages — I wish Whatsapp wasn’t that popular to quit it all together. Why? One less app and Apple’s privacy policies. Signal could be an interesting alternative in that sense, but nobody is there.
- 🧮 Apple Calculator — just the most beautiful and useful calculator app. I can’t believe there isn’t still an iPad version by the way.
Useful apps
📇 LinkedIn — such a powerful and indispensable tool for so many professionals.
🛍️ Amazon — the everywhere store. What it lacks in beauty as an app it compensates in usefulness.
🔐 PayPal — all my online payments (except those on Amazon) and it keeps getting better.
🏨 Booking.com — the names says it all. The Swiss-army knife of travelling.(ditched Kayak for searching flights)
🍷 Vivino — Shazam for wines. Honestly, do you remember the names of the all good (and bad) wines you drank?
Google apps:
- 🤌 Google Translate — hey I used to be an Italian leaving abroad, how do you think I’ve survived? Gestures were not enough!
- 📍Google Maps — I use this app mainly as my assistant to manage places I’ve been or I want to visit (ditched Foursquare + Swarm). The ability to manage saved places thought should be improved as filtering places you haven’t visited yet. For navigation I actually prefer Apple Maps.
- 🚦Waze — since Google owns Waze you could argue why bother. While both services can determine traffic conditions from the number of users on the road, Waze actually does something about it. So my choice when going on long drive.
- 🗂️ Google Drive— my second memory. Prefering Google’s Drive to Apple’s for its integration with Google Sheets & Docs.
- 📊 Google Sheets — a lighter, yet better version of Excel for shared online spreadsheets and on iPhone.
- 📹 YouTube — my favorite apps for cooking recipes and well everything else YouTube has to offer.
Beautiful apps
📷 Instagram —I like the square format, the polaroids of nowadays. I am disappointed with Instgram having become so busy with too much ads and reels and stories...Not sure I really see the difference with Facebook at times (call it differentiation/segmentation). Somehow it’s not the place for photo enthusiasts it used to be and overall less of a pleasant experience.
🖥️ Netflix — best user experience across all streaming services, but its catalogue is becoming less and less appealing forcing me to choose each month between Apple TV+, Disney+, Paramount+ etc, besides Prime Video which is a given with the yearly subscription to Amazon Prime. Watching tv shows or movies from iPhone is actually rare.
🎬 IMDb — keeping track of what I’ve seen and what I’d like to watch
🖍 Highlighted — beautiful app if I only had more time to read paper books
🏖 Poolsuite FM — a cool selection of tracks with an 80s touch powered by Soundcloud.
🖼 DailyArt — one piece of art a day, that’s it.
BONUS Apps I’d like to get better
🏦 Revolut — not my main bank, as there are several gaps, but would love for it to become so.
📖 Kindle — ok reading books from iPhone is a bit extreme, but when you are captured by a book you are just glad you can keep reading it no matter where you are. The parts I’d like Amazon to improve is the the library with books currently reading & lists (see below point on Goodreads) and the ability to resurface highlights & notes.
📚 Goodreads — the lack of connection with Kindle remains a mystery considering is a company Amazon acquired nearly 10 years ago.
📣 Apple News — I as it’s not available in the country I live and hence I stick with Google News.
✂️ Apple Shortcuts — after starting on IFTTT, playing with Apple’s Shortcut is fairly simple, intuitive, yet satisfactory, especially for people with basic computer science skills like me. E.g. I’ve created this morning routines that when I stop the alarm Siri will open the shades, tell what’s the weather like, read me the top 5 news and launch the daily episode of podcast of choice. Where it falls short is managing your own library of shortcuts.
