8 Great iPhone Apps in 2020
Apps for entertainment, productivity, and utility
I see my iPhone as an extension of myself. The apps I have on it should serve two simple purposes; to make my life easier and to allow me to do the things I want to do. Here are 8 of my favorite iPhone apps. Enjoy!
Pocket Casts
Free
If you’re like me and love listening to podcasts, having a designated podcast app that isn’t Apple Podcasts can be greatly beneficial. Unlike Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts is very customizable.
Pocket Casts allow you to create filters to organize episodes in certain ways. I have a filter for new releases, downloads, and episodes that were released in the last week. Filters are essentially playlist with conditions. They’re great for tailoring the podcast experience to you and your favorite podcasts. Pocket Casts’ “Trim Silence” feature is also fantastic if you want to cut out periods of empty audio to make your listening experience a little more efficient.
If you listen to a lot of podcasts on a regular basis, Pocket Casts is a great companion.
Carrot⁵
$4.99
The stock weather app is boring and can be very unintuitive at times. Carrot⁵ has a friendly interface, displays the most important information first, and has a nice looking rolling forecast. There’s not much to say about this app other than that it does its job very, very well.
Unsplash
Free
Unsplash is a platform for professional-looking royalty-free photos. If you hang out on Medium at all, you’ve most likely noticed how most photos in popular articles are from Unsplash. It’s no coincidence. It’s a fantastic resource for finding photos for your articles, graphic design projects, or any project that requires nicely edited and professional-looking photos. Having Unsplash on your phone comes in handy when you need to grab an image on the go.
Things 3
$9.99
Things 3 is a powerful task manager that integrates very well into the Apple ecosystem. Your tasks can be sorted into projects, that in turn can be sorted into areas. You can drop your tasks into different categories with different functions, such as “Today”, “Upcoming”, “Anytime”, or “Someday”.
Projects display a small progress pie-chart so that you can see your progress at a glance. Things 3 is designed with simplicity and focus in mind, which makes the process of storing and organizing tasks very easy.
VSCO
Free
When I’m writing an article I don’t always have the time to sit down and edit a cover image. VSCO’s presets and simple editing interface makes editing photos on the go super easy.
The presets are well crafted, and adding your touch on top of a preset is a simple process. The cover image of this article was shot with an iPad Pro and edited on my iPhone using VSCO with the HB2-preset.
VSCO is a must-have if you like making your photos look a little bit nicer!
Google Maps
Free
The quality (or lack thereof) of Apple Maps has been a debate for quite a few years. Google Maps offers a much better experience, with fewer hiccups, more features, and a more reliable navigation system.
I live in a city and spend a lot of time biking. Google Maps has great cycling routes, while Apple Maps offer none. It’s crazy that an app as big as Apple Maps doesn’t offer the simple feature of bike routes. Google Maps is the obvious choice.
Forest
$1.99
Keeping your hands off your phone when you need to focus can pose a difficult challenge. Sometimes, we have to physically limit our impulses, which Forest does in a fun way. Forest lets you set a timer in which you plant a tree, and if you leave the app the tree dies. It’s a fun incentive to stay away from social media and other distractions. You wouldn’t want to kill an innocent tree, right?
Every minute you spend in an active timer gets tracked in a virtual forest which gives you an overview of the time you’ve spent focusing. You receive coins for completing timers, which you can spend on various tree species, or even to plant a real tree through the organization Trees for the Future!
1Password
$2.99/month
When it comes to password organizers, 1Password is simply the best out there. It does exactly what you expect it to do, and it does it very well. The data you store in 1Password is end-to-end encrypted, so you can sleep well knowing you’re the only one with access to your information.
Having 1Password on your iPhone is great when you need to remember credit card information, passwords, or other information that you’d need in your everyday life.
I hope I could provide a bit of value to you with these tips. If you found this article helpful, please give it a few claps and comment with your app suggestions!
Cheers ❤
