Our weekly app picks
It’s Appday Sunday and that means we’re back with more of our favorites to share. Every week we bring a handful of great apps to the table and share them with everyone. Sometimes they are new apps, sometimes old standards, but every time they are apps we love to use.
Give these a look and then take a minute to tell us all about the apps you are using and love so we can give them a try. We all find some of our favorites right in the comments on these posts!
Jen Karner — Habitica
Habitica gives me a combination of two things that need to be a part of my life, gaming and organization. Gaming, I’m already good at, organization…less so. I’ve tried white boards, countless apps, and paper planners all in an effort to try and remember everything on my to-do list. Habitica however rewards me when I remember to knock things off my list, and does it in a really fun way.
The initial setup is the only real pesky part with this app, since you’ll need to set up your daily tasks, habits, projects and rewards. Once that’s done things get fun. Each time you finish a task you’ll get gold and xp for an avatar. You can then armor and grab them up, leveling up as you go. It makes staying on top of things fun, and helps to make real life more of a game. Which is almost always a good thing.
Download: Habitica (Free)
Ara Wagoner — Wear Hydrate Me
I’ve recommended Hydrate Me before when I first discovered the app. You can set this wear app to buzz your wrist on a set interval during specific hours of the day to remind you to drink while you’re out and about, something I tend to forget. But there was a problem: a bug could cause the app to turn off those reminders, and days could (and did) pass before I realized I was missing them.
Well, those bugs were fixed a few weeks ago, and I have been happily using the app since to remind me to drink. This was especially important last weekend — where I spent most of my time talking to any co-worker who would tolerate me. Is it a unitasker? Absolutely. But it’s a free app and it’s finally working again, so I’m gonna use it and try to stay hydrated.
Download: Wear Hydrate Me (Free)
Russell Holly — Vysor
The Android N Developer Preview dropping on us in such a surprise fashion this week meant lots of scrambling to flash things quickly. For someone like me, that meant quickly checking to see how things behaved across devices, which meant switching back and forth between phones and tablets as fast as I can. While some of this had to be done on the physical hardware, most of this process could be done side by side on my PC through Vysor.
Vysor draws the UI for the phone or tablet on your PC or Mac, so you can use your mouse and keyboard to quickly check on things without picking up the phone. It’s especially useful when you’re testing the same thing on multiple devices, but even if you’re keeping your phone UI on your PC so you don’t have to look away it’s a handy tool to have.
Download: Vysor (Free Chrome App)
Jerry Hildenbrand — DIRAC
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUBgeQanpt0?rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&controls=2&autohide=1&showinfo=0]
The app description for DIRAC really made me want to try it. Dialog that sounds like it’s straight out of some late-night science-fiction movie on one of those channels on UHF will reel me in. Go read it for yourself.
But anyhoo, after I instantly sprung the $1.99 to try it, I was hooked. It’s dark, it has cool music and it’s easy to play while being addictive as hell. It’s like connect the dots for schizophrenics. Suitably medicate yourself and check this one out.
Protip: Headphones, a tablet and a dark room.
Download: DIRAC ($1.99)
Andrew Martonik — Enpass Password Manager
It’s been a long time since I talked about Enpass as my password manager of choice, and it’s been updated considerably since I last did. The app has received a pretty large Material Design visual refresh (which was also matched in the desktop apps), added Marshmallow fingerprint support, added a new keyboard for auto-filling passwords and quickly fixed bugs for the Marshmallow release on Samsung’s phones.
All of these updates show one of the best features of Enpass: the developer is extremely responsive and quick to add new features or fix problems in the app. After well over a year using Enpass the app has never gotten stale or been stuck behind the latest features or design. Add that to the already great base of password management features like strong encryption, cross-platform support, personal cloud sync and a password generator — it’s really been worth the $10 full-featured upgrade.
Download: Enpass Password Manager (Free, $9.99 upgrade)
Phil Nickinson — Lip Swap
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBcV2-iZ6qo?rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&controls=2&autohide=1&showinfo=0]
I’m being all “old man” when it comes to Snapchat, but I’m very much into the Android Experiments program at the moment. So bear with me. (That’ll make sense in the following sentence.) Lip Swap swaps lips. So you can take a picture of Jerry and make it say whatever you want.
It’s a tad janky (thus “experiment”) and works best with pics actually taken on phones. (At the moment you can’t adjust for crop or aspect ratio or anything. This one’s really more about showing off the shaders. And it’s open source, which is always a good thing. Have fun. Make Jerry say stuff.
More: Lip Swap at Android Experiments
