In the weekly section App Missed you can read which apps from the past week are worthwhile. We always discuss about five apps for iPhone, iPad in Mac. These could be apps you might not have known about or that are useful or just funny to try. And that can also be old-timers who have received a major update and therefore receive some extra attention.
Discussed on iCulture earlier this week:
iCulture App of the Week: Magnets
Widgets are a lonely activity if you can only see them yourself. Magnets solves this with a widget that you can manage by several people. This way everyone can see the same photo. You can use Magnets as a kind of fridge magnet, to remind others which groceries still have to be bought. But you can also just use it to show others which one Apple Watch-band you wear today, or what mood you are in. Holiday photos from days gone by or sharing a sweet message is also possible.
Magnets therefore offers widgets that you can collaborate with. You create a widget, add a photo and share it with one or more family members or friends. You can invite others through your favorite messaging app. Everyone decides whether to set the size Small, Medium or Large. The app is free to install and works on both the iPhone and the iPad. For urgent messages, it might be better to send a normal text message, because you will not receive a notification when a new image has been set and the switching can also take a while for the others.
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Scribblet
With Scribblet you can make drawn widgets, in three sizes. You can draw with the Apple Pencil or with your fingers, using the standard drawing tools from iOS in iPadOS at your disposal. But before you can start you have to indicate whether you want a Small, Medium or Large widget. Scribblet is especially good on the iPad, because of drawing with the Apple Pencil. But on the iPhone it is also handy, because you can put them anywhere on your home screen. This way you can view the small sketches and drawings every day.
If you also want to use backgrounds, such as the rainbow colors on the screenshot, you pay € 2.29 for an in-app purchase. But you can of course also first color your canvas yourself and then draw something over it. The American developer Becky Hansmeyer explains in one blogposting from how the app was created and what the idea is behind it. That can be summarized briefly: just for fun. It is not necessary, but it is fun.
Timery
If you are more of the serious widgets, then we have something for you too. Timery has added so many new widgets that you actually don’t need the app anymore. There are now even widgets to keep track of how much time you spend on the time registration itself. Many people use Timery to keep track of what they have lost time with. It uses Toggl, but offers a lot more. Especially now the new widgets iOS 14 are available and you can display all kinds of data as a dashboard on your screen.
This gives you an overview of all your saved timers and you can easily start a new session. Of course you can choose from Small, Medium and Large. You can also use a widget that shows what you are currently doing or you can see activities that you are doing for more than a day or week. You can adjust everything to your own wishes. But that’s not all: the app has also been given a mountain of extra functions for the widget-haters.
OptiLingo
OptiLingo is a new app that allows you to learn a foreign language in a different way. The app wants to do something about the outdated methods that are ineffective and where you are just learning. While you should actually be actively working with the language. Stamping words is therefore not an option. The emphasis is on useful phrases and words that occur often and that you are presented with regularly. You learn phrases that are easy to remember and contain the 1,000 most common words in a language. With that you have covered about 80 percent of the spoken language. It contains 100 lessons, more than 1,500 sentences of which you have to learn 1,000 in order to speak. You can also choose from 20 languages and you will find more than 30 hours of audio in the app. Progress is automatically synced between your devices.
Retro Widget
If you long for the days of the Nokia 3310, then this widget is for you. This popular phone featured the game of Snake and had a battery life that never seemed to end. For a few euros you can now download this widget, which will put you in a nostalgic mood again. This way you can view your mobile signal strength, carrier name, battery level and clock in Nokia style.
Cheqi
Cheqi is a new app that does it differently from the usual payment request apps. Instead of asking for money, you can give small amounts of money to someone with Cheqi. This works via WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or email. You choose the amount you want to give and transfer it via iDeal. You then send a Cheqi message via WhatsApp or another channel. The recipient collects the Cheqi and receives the company on their account.
Cheqi, for example, is intended to refund an advanced amount, without having to wait for a payment request. You can also use it to give someone money as a gift, for example for a birthday. In short, all kinds of situations in which you want to pay or give money, but do not know the bank account number. The app is free to use and you don’t need to create an account.
We Love Lights
We Love Lights is a Mac app for people with Philips Hue lights. The app has been around for a while, but now also works with multiple Bridges. Ideal for people who have a large collection of lamps. With the app you control your Hue lights via the menu bar of the Mac. After pairing with the Bridge, you will see an alphabetical list of rooms and zones, where you can control each lamp individually. You can also activate scenes and, for example, dim everything in a room. Version 2.2 offers several new functions, such as manually adding an extra Hue Bridge via the IP address.
Fullifier
Fullifier is a new app from Arno Appenzeller, who previously made the Glimpse 2 app. While browsing Safari on iOS, Arno noticed that more and more websites are using their own video player in full-screen mode. This makes it more difficult to scroll through the video and sometimes certain functions are missing, such as skipping forward and back. Fullifier is a mini app that adds action extensions to Safari, allowing you to use iOS’s native video player. This makes scrubbing a lot easier. The app is free and works with donations.
Album Player
Album Player is a free app from the Dutch developer Jan Verboom. With this you can easily browse through your music collection and play your (favorite) albums. You can create a playlist of albums by selecting them by genre, genre and artist, genre and composer, or anything from your favorites list. You can play and then browse, pause, skip to the next track and more. The app shows the full album titles, artist names and song titles. The app is free and there are no in-app purchases or commercials. You can use your own music library on the iPhone or iPad, the Music app on the Mac or iTunes in Windows, or all kinds of music tracks from Apple Music if you are a subscriber to it and use the iCloud Music Library.
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