1 yr. ago • 83%

What are your iOS hidden gem apps

Preferably lesser known but game-changing apps that are able to be bought one-time and put all others to shame.

To help clarify your thinking, which apps have produced such an outrageous level of value (regardless of one-time cost) to the extent you believe it should be #1 in its category, not necessarily #1 app ever.

We'll do a seperate thread for Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, etc but let's stick to iOS for this one. Thanks Lemmings!

75 comments

Apollo 🥲

Oh well.

83
- Bruh...too soon 😭
  
  33
  
  For real. At least we have Voyager!
  
  11
Vinegar. It’s a safari extension that changes the YT player into the stock iPhone one and skips ads. Well worth the one time purchase!

58
- Omg! I’m downloading this now. I already use YouTube via safari instead of the YouTube app.
  
  13
- Just bought it too! Thanks for the recommendation! I got the bundle with baking soda, have you used that as well?
  
  6
  
  What the fuck craig
  
  4
- sponsor block is a great addition to vinegar as well
  
  5
- Just downloaded thanks!
  
  4
- Omg! I’m downloading this now. I already use YouTube via safari instead of the YouTube app.
  
  2
- Just bought it too! Thanks for the recommendation! I got the bundle with baking soda, have you used that as well?
  
  1
- Just bought it too! Thanks for the recommendation! I got the bundle with baking soda, have you used that as well?
  
  1
- Just bought it too! Thanks for the recommendation! I got the bundle with baking soda, have you used that as well?
  
  1
  
  Yeah I’ve tried baking soda out. It’s handy but I seem to just stick to YT so use vinegar more. Absolutely brilliant apps
  
  2
Seek by iNaturalist

The app uses AI to identify the species of plants, animals, insects and fungi. In video mode you scan around something you want to ID as the AI narrows it down to the species. Then you can take a pic. The app keeps track of each unique species you’ve found (along with your photo of it). There’s also badges and achievements for identifying different numbers of species, if you want to gamify your nature sightseeing.

It’s basically real life Pokémon. Oh and it’s completely free.

39
- Whoa! This sounds rad.
  
  5
- Sounds great, have just downloaded. Does it outperform the recognition of iPhone photos for plants etc?
  
  2
  
  Iirc the only main downside to all these apps is that you get a single answer, when it's usually more complex than that.
  
  Seek/iNaturalist are great. I prefer the report style of iNaturalist and how it gives me a list of options, which I can use to try and narrow it down.
  
  E.g. if I take a pic of a flower that looks like a dandelion, it could be a common dandelion, or hawkweed, or burnweed.. and of those there are a dozen sub species. Knowing which one is native is really important.
  
  Tldr yes
  
  5
Paprika. It downloads saves and organizes recipes from just about any website, bypassing annoying ad floaters and, magically, paywalls. I use it constantly. It’s a one time purchase for all your devices. Does shopping lists too, if that’s your thing.

35
- Another recipe app I recommend is Mela.
  
  9
- Sounds like a recipe for a genius and useful app
  
  3
- RecipeBox is another good one that has a recipe search function and a grocery list function that connects to your recipes and populates what you need directly from the recipe itself.
  
  3
- Ooh I dug through recipe apps a while back, I ended up using Pestle. It’s pricier than Paprika but I prefer the Pestle UI. Both good apps with similar feature sets, just providing another option.
  
  Paprika - $5 Pestle - $20/yr or $40 lifetime
  
  2
As a student of life I have to mention Anki. At its core it’s a flashcard app out of the box but it’s almost infinitely more powerful than that if you dig deep.

I paid 35 CAD for it in 2019 and I’ve used it every single day since. The amount of knowledge I’ve committed to memory is truly priceless, and I’ve even gifted this app to several friends.

NB: AnkiMobile, not the free knockoff AnkiApp. It’s open-source and actually free for computers and android devices, and iOS/iPadOS app purchases are the only way the developer makes money.

19
- Gotta use this more, I just hate having to do the grinding of whipping up an entire specialized deck.
  
  2
  
  So I’m using a FOSS spaced repetition app alternative to Anki called Memoet. Self hosted and it does everything I want. Might I recommend using chat gpt to help make cards? You can easily generate tables that can be copy pasted into a csv which (I’m assuming anki) can be imported as cards
  
  2
The original Angry Birds still holds up perfectly imo

17
- I bought the original on my iPhone 4 and still have it in my purchase history, but when I download it on my iPad today it’s full if ads and limited lives….
  
  What am I doing wrong?
  
  Edit: it’s called Angry Birds Classic now if that makes a difference
  
  7
- Such a classic. 'Member Papi-ball or whatever?
  
  2
  
  Papi jump!!!
  
  3
AnyList.

My wife and I have subscribed for years now because it literally never fails to sync and is easy to use. We have a ton of lists including grocery, hardware, trips, camping, and so on. It’s also our meal planner and recipe library.

10
- Gotta subscribe though, don’t you?
  
  4
  
  One person needs to subscribe (I thought it was like 3 bucks a year) for all the premium sharing features.
  
  4
  
  No idea. I don’t remember what you get without their sub.
  
  1
- Permanently Deleted
  
  1
  
  Notes just isn’t a substitute for us unfortunately. It’s not nearly as feature rich. I don’t think there’s a feature of AnyList we don’t use.
  
  3
Kiwix: Download Wikipedia for offline reading.

9
- Glorious, love this app. All of Wikipedia on ur phone
  
  1
VoiceDream and SpeechCentral are amazing text to speech apps that turn your documents (PDF, txt, ePub, Mobi, AZW3 into audiobooks that let you read by highlighting and adjusting the speed etc.

I don't know if VoiceDream can still be bought on iOS but I know SpeechCentral is almost as good and it can be bought one-time.

8
YNAB - it’s subscription based but is the best budgeting app I’ve found. Keeps me honest with my money, and when I was married was amazing for keeping us synced on our shared spending budgets.

5
- Also check out MoneyStats, its like a one-time payment complete forecasting app like Kualto/Dollarbird but way better. No subscription and it syncs using your iCloud but you can also manually export all the data.
  
  2
Dice by PCalc - For when you need to roll some dice

Blackbox - It got some hype when it released but if anyone still hasn’t tried it, it is highly recommended. You will need to learn everything your iPhone can do and think outside the box to solve these puzzles.

4
- Its kinda funny, whenever I need a diceroll I just ~~type~~ whip up a quick JS Math.random script.
  
  2
  
  On your phone?
  
  1
I’ve got three.

For those that like reading articles the built in news app is actually quite good and even has daily crosswords with more puzzles to follow. I used up the free trial and went to paid because I liked the app so much.

Less of an unknown, but if you like OSRS the mobile app is actually pretty great and since OSRS could run on a potato it doesn’t lag at all.

For people wanting to learn Asian languages the hello apps are really good. I’ve been using HelloChinese for awhile now and it’s built and populated with native speakers. Duolingo is weird with its syntax for Asian languages so this one is much better imo.
4
- I started hunting for the news app, until figuring out that Apple still hasn’t launched it in Germany. 🤷‍♂️
  
  4
  
  Also not in Belgium. I’m Apple one for years already, but they are keeping us out of those things. No News, no Fitness, …
  
  1
This community might be a better place for this question.

https://lemmy.world/c/apple_enthusiast

3
- This is a broader audience tho. And I'd like to do a series going through the respective categories so I must respectfully disagree although I appreciate your effort to help find a more granular audience. I think this is right where the post needs to be but I thank you for your efforts.
  
  13
- Unfortunately, that community is filled with anything but Apple enthusiasts…
  
  5
  
  I think if you really are someone who really uses Apple stuff to the extent its basically your ecosystem, you should be able to see some of the absurdities or sometimes the anti-user-friendly quirks that should be corrected.
  
  For example, HomePod should have bluetooth in a addition to AirPlay. Fight me ;)
  
  4
- Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !apple_enthusiast@lemmy.world
  
  1
- I agree with you.
  
  0
Memmy

3
Permanently Deleted

2
All these comments recommending paid subscription software... weird world. Not that this is not a healthy model for the Devs, but how can you trust them?

1
The one I wrote myself to automate tasks at work. It has saved me hundreds of hours of tedium and makes my job so much easier. It only cost me a few weeks of learning (I am not a developer, just a tinkerer) to get it done. It lives happily on my phone and iPad and I use it every day.

1
- You wanna tell us more? Kinda hard to act on this :/
  
  Edit: I might do one on Shortcuts although that might be trickier given the lack of anonymity in "sharing" them since its iCloud and tied to your Apple account :/
  
  2
  
  Oops, I'm sorry - I should have mentioned that it's not on the App Store. It is chock full of company proprietary documents, photos and sales formulae. I wrote it just for myself.
  
  2
the FUTO software suite

1
Pythonista. Great Python editor, REPL, and platform-specific libraries.

Editorial. Same author, Markdown editor which can be scripted in Python. I routinely write al new features for it, like dice rollers, list renumbering, etc.

Documents by Readdle. PDF & epub reading, file management, bunch of optional features.

iCabMobile. Browser with a ton of ad-blocking, filters, good file management, I routinely use it as a private browser.
1

You've viewed 75 comments.