Aside from the obvious online banking and social media apps, I always love to know what useful apps my friends use regularly, they really can make your life so much simpler or efficient, so I thought I’d share, in no particular order, my top 10.
TimeTree
Price – Free
TimeTree is a calendar where you can log any appointments and plans, with a bonus of being a joint calendar if you require it to be! My husband and I use this daily, if he has plans, he puts them into TimeTree and his user gets a particular colour, as does mine when I enter any plans that I make. Having a joint calendar on your phone, means getting rid of the ‘I’ll have to check my diary when I get home’ response (unless trying to get out of something!) And you also always know if your other half has any plans before committing to anything new. It’s my favourite app for efficiency and saves a lot of back and forth. It has a useful ‘repeat’ feature, where if you have something on every week for 10 weeks, you can repeat in the calendar for the 10 weeks, I use this for baby groups. I’m sure there are other useful features, but honestly, I tend to stick to the basics as it has everything you need.
Audible
Price – Free App, £9.99 a month gives you credit to one book per month with the option to purchase more.
Audible is an app that gives you access to audio books, to listen to rather than read (obviously). I really got into audio books when on maternity leave as I could walk and listen, rather than sitting and reading which was something I definitely didn’t have time to do. Although to be honest I’ve never been a big reader and always feel I could be doing something more productive, this way I can listen and ‘do’ at the same time (with the help of air pods).
Gudak
Price – Free
Gudak is a disposable camera for your phone, but this isn’t just a filter or date stamp to make an image look like it was taken on film. The app acts as a disposable camera would in the way that it gives you 24 (I think that’s the correct amount) shots on the camera, you cannot see any of the images until you have used up all of the shots. You then click a button on the app to get your film developed, and 2-3 days later after the film is ‘developed’ the app notifies you and gives you access to your film. Everything is so instant nowadays that I found it nice to wait for your film to be developed and then get your images through that (in my case) had been taken over a few weeks.
Met Office
Price – Free
The Met Office weather app is a standard weather app; I won’t go into detail on wind speeds and temperatures (I’m sure you get the gist). The reason I like it is because I find it is pretty much always correct, it’s the go too, most precise weather app, thank me later.
Life360
Price – Free
Life 360 is basically ‘Find Friends’ for the android user. Find Friends is the apple version for those without an iPhone. Once you and your family or friends have joined up to the app, you can add one another and see each other’s location. You can set frequent locations such as home and work and get notifications when someone leaves or arrives. My husband is one of those ‘anti-apple’ people *eyeroll* so we have this app as a replacement for find friends. It’s useful in situations where you may be too busy to text or to know if your other half has set off from work or is nearly home to put tea on, I also have some friends that have it on their children’s phones as a tracker for peace of mind.
Freeprint
Price – Free (Pay for postage only)
Freeprint is a photo printing app that, yes you guessed it, allows you free prints. The app gives you an allowance of 45 6X4 free prints every month once you are registered. There is no catch, just free prints. Postage is usually £1.99-£2.99 which isn’t bad at all considering you are getting 45 free prints! There is also a wide variety of options for printing on the app, you can get images printed in pretty much all sizes, posters, onto mugs, mouse mats etc. however only the 6X4 size prints are free. I find it good for giving pictures of our daughter to grandparents who may not be big on WhatsApp.
1SE
Price – Free
1SE stands for ‘One Second Everyday’, and this app allows you to upload a one second video every day and then collaborates that into a montage video. I originally heard about this in one of my mum groups, as capturing a second every day of the first year of your baby’s life is magical to look back on, but I guess this could be applied to anything you may want to see grow and change over a certain period. You can play around with the settings making different montages or just create a one-month video and so on. You can also use live photos as the video snippets, so you don’t have to remember to take a video everyday (let’s be honest we all have a photo a day of our babies, if not fifty.)
ASOS
Price – Free
Asos, standing for ‘As Seen on Screen’, is my go-to clothes app for everyday clothes orders, it has a mixture of designer and high street brands, and for £9.99 a year you can get next day deliveries and free returns (free returns now anyway, as stores seem to be starting to charge for returns at the moment). ASOS stocks male and female clothes, no children’s, I use this instead of going shopping as I find the whole experience of trying on in changing rooms a little tedious, so a bulk order, try on, and return of what I don’t want is the way forward in my opinion.
*Disclaimer* I didn’t want my app suggestions to be too feminine, although looking back at the first eight, they are all pretty unisex. So, I asked my husband for his top two apps to finish off my top ten. Surprisingly *not* they were sports related, if you’re interested then read on, if not it’s probably best to stop reading here.
All Goals
Price – Free
The ‘All Goals’ app informs you on all upcoming football games in all leagues, these can range from the English premier league to the Ugandan premier league. It then shows you the live scores of ongoing games and details on teams’ line-ups, goal scorers and stats. This app updates quicker than any other goal app, so it’s the one to have!
ESPN Cricket info.
Price – Free
This app gives live cricket scores, cricket-based news articles and comprehensive stats on all cricket matters. This app is quicker than any similar apps on getting up to date live scores, so if you want immediate information on cricket, this is the app for you.
