Appsolutely essential iOS apps

Everyone’s got their favorite apps. Some are just fun, some are good ‘n’ useful—and some are absolutely essential. As a living, breathing human being and an owner of a creative business, here are some iOS apps I’d rather not live without.

And I ain’t grabbing links for all of these. Just search for yourself!


iphone-2Getting things done

  • Agenda | My fave calendar app
  • AnyList | Lists. Lists. Lists. Lists.
  • Dragon Dictation | Turn your spoken words into text
  • Pocket | Save links to read later
  • Pomodoro Timer | For when it’s time to get things done (but also get up and move and not go crazy)
  • Post-It Plus | Capture that wall of sticky notes much more easily
  • Scannable | Sometimes you need your phone to become a scanner
  • Slack | Incredibly smart and smooth team collaboration and communication
  • TeuxDeux | Daily to-do lists
  • Zoom | Online meetings without the frustrations and technical difficulties of typical online meetings

Design, creativity, photography

  • Adobe Shape | Turn a photo into vector art, just like that
  • Gamestorming | Group exercises for discovery, alignment, and creativity
  • Paper by FiftyThree | For those about to draw, we salute you—for those who built this iPad app, we love you
  • Retrica | Really nice photo filters for those of us sick of the old Instagram standards
  • Sol | Love photography and/or the rotation of the Earth? This app is especially useful for tracking the “golden hour.”

A little bit of fun

  • Appsgonefree | Daily alerts for free app downloads
  • Ask·O·Matic | Your personal decision-maker app (made by Tremendousness & friends)
  • Audible | It’s like someone actually reads your books for you!
  • Downcast | Great podcast app
  • Instagram | Fewer flower & animal pix than Flickr™ (for now)
  • Roku | Voice search for Netflix & Amazon Instant? Yes!
  • Spotify | I love music
  • Tweetbot | Still my favorite Twitter client

The basics

  • 1Password | Keep all of ’em tidy and secure so you only have to remember one master password
  • Articles | My preferred Wikipedia app—super clean
  • Dark Sky | The nicest (and, I believe, most accurate) weather app I’ve tried
  • Drive | All your Google Docs, &c
  • Dropbox | All your files, backed up and available wherever you can get a signal
  • GoodReader | Great all-around app for various doctypes, from PDF to Office to video

Personal

  • Acorns | Passive round-up investing? Why not.
  • ISS Spotter | Know when the International Space Station will be visible as it passes
  • Roadside America | Find odd sightseeing spots on your travels
  • Sleep Cycle | White noise / sleep monitoring / phased wake-up alarm
  • Streaks | A simple motivational app
  • Timehop | Blasts from your social media past
  • TripIt | Travel plans, travel alerts, travel, travel travel

What are your favorites? Let me know—tweet @tremendo_us & @keaggy.


Photo by Linda Xu on Unsplash.