Best of 2016: (Almost) all of the iOS favorites
Ok, so I promised this rundown of some of my favorite iOS apps at the end of the last “Best of 2016” post, which was weeks ago. Sorry about that. The sheer length of this list made it a bit of an overwhelming project.
So here’s Part 4, my top-of-mind iOS picks. It’s a lot of apps, and frighteningly only about half of the ones I used/tested last year…
- At breakfast
- Around the office
- At the writing desk
- On the web
- In the bathroom
- With the “indoor kids”
- On the outside
- In the darkroom
- Around the house
- In the living room
- In the studio
- In the car
- At the end of the day
At breakfast
- AeroPress Timer: My favorite morning coffee tool
- Nuzzel: My favorite intelligent news aggregation
- Flipboard: My favorite way to see what’s happening
- Reuters: My favorite international news source
Around the office
- Billings Pro: My favorite cross-platform time tracking and invoicing app
- Streak for Gmail: This deserves its own writeup, but it’s the best free CRM tool I’ve ever seen
- MeisterTask: My favorite project management tool, Kanban style
- Spark: My favorite email app on iOS
- PDFpen: My favorite tool for editing and annotating PDFs
- Slice: Amazing package tracker that picks up shipments and shipping numbers automatically
- OmniFocus 2: My favorite task manager on both Mac and iOS
- Fantastical: My favorite calendar app (again, both Mac and iOS)
- Timepage: Also great, Moleskin’s answer to iOS calendaring
At the writing desk
- Associate / Blink: Amazon/iTunes affiliate linking apps
- Terminology: My favorite dictionary app
- MindMeister: My favorite mind map realtime collaboration
- iThoughts: My favorite native mind mapping app
- MindNode: My other favorite mind mapping app
- Gboard: The best general-purpose iOS keyboard I’ve ever found
- Hemingboard: iOS keyboard with synonyms, thesaurus, and other writing tools
- 1Writer: My preferred companion to nvALT (and any dropbox notes)
- Quip: My favorite tool for collaborative documents and spreadsheets
- Drafts: The best (and most flexible) tool for quickly capturing notes, ideas, and todos
- Ulysses: My favorite writing app when working with an external keyboard on iOS
- TextExpander: My favorite tool for email responses
On the web
- 1Password: Seriously, you need a password manager and this is the best one. Especially after Cloudbleed. Also excellent for credit cards, identities, and notes
- Pinswift: My current favorite Pinboard bookmarking and searching app
- Quicklytics: My favorite tool for Google Analytics (although the official one from Google is pretty great)
- TweetBot: My favorite Twitter client
- Charm for Twitter: A great tool for managing Tweet Collections
- Listomatic: An amazing tool for creating and curating Twitter lists
In the bathroom
- Dungeon Boss: I’m addicted
- Duet: Addicted on iOS and Apple TV
- Alto’s Adventure: Addicted, iOS and Apple TV
- Crossy Roads: Super addicted, iOS and Apple TV with multi-player mode
- Skyward: Beautiful and addictive
- Gemini: Beautiful, addictive, and frustrating
- Mini Metro: Keeps me up at night
- JibJab: Not really a game, but I like it so much I pay the subscription fee for access to making videos that are amazing and often embarrassing; you should try it
With the “indoor kids”
- Screens / Screens for Mac: My favorite screen sharing tool
- Prompt 2: My favorite SSH app
- Working Copy: My favorite Git client
- Launch Center Pro: My favorite quick-launcher
- Workflow: My favorite and most flexible tool for… anything
On the outside
- Wunderground: My current favorite weather app (though I use a half dozen of them)
- Night Sky: My favorite astronomy tool
- Runkeeper: My favorite fitness app
In the darkroom
- Annotable: Flexible image annotation
- Enlight: My favorite image editing tool
- Darkroom: Runner up
- Pixelmator: My favorite image creation tool
- Tangled FX / Prisma: My two favorite image effects apps
- VSilencer: Remove sound from videos, especially handy for sharing quick videos with embarrassing/annoying audio backgrounds on social media
- Coolors: My current favorite tool for color palettes (although, like weather apps, I use too many of them. I don’t even design that much lately)
- Loop: A fun app for stop motion work
Around the house
- Paprika: My favorite recipe manager
- Platejoy: A subscription-based menu generator with recipes and great configurability
- MyTouchHome: The app I use to interface my Indigo home automation with Siri
- Nest: Because I love my Nest
- Tile: Because I adore my Tiles
- Flying Ruler: An amazing measuring tool that lets you just slide it between points to measure
- Timeglass: My favorite multi-timer app
- Tally 2: My favorite counting app
In the living room
- Plex TV: Of course
- StreamToMe: When you want to play videos from your computer without Plex, Airplay them from iOS
- Reuters TV: Same as above, but for my TV
- DropPics: Need a slideshow from a pile of Dropbox images? (Airplay, not native to TV)
- Crossy Road: It’s even more fun on your TV
- SketchParty TV: The party app that everyone wants to play when they come over.
In the studio
- AmpliTube: My favorite guitar effects app
- AmpliTube Slash: The version that makes your guitar sound like Slash
- AmpliTube Acoustic: The version for your acoustic guitar
- Pro Metronome: My favorite metronome app, with Apple Watch and Apple TV companions
- ToneBridge: In tandem with Tabs & Chords by Ultimate Guitar, gives you automatic effects to match the bass/guitar tab your reading
In the car
- VOX: Still my favorite music player (although the interface on Listen is totally worth checking out)
- Castro: My favorite podcast player
At the end of the day
- mySleepButton: The way I fall asleep when I can’t fall asleep
- Pzizz: My favorite app to use with my SleepPhones
- Moodnotes: An app with a slick UI for tracking my moods over time
- Exist: The mobile app for Exist.io, and my way of journaling my health and moods along with quantified-self data
- Day One: My favorite way to document my days events
I still owe you all a couple more “Best of 2016” posts, hopefully I’ll get them done before 2017 Q1 ends…