I recently wrote about feeeed and decided to highlight a few more niche apps I’ve been enjoying since getting an iPhone last year. These are in no particular order, but I find them all sufficiently useful and well-made to give them my official okey-dokey.
Lex Friedman1No, not that one. is a wonderful internet personality who decided he wanted to make his own word games, ala NYT Games. Cue a set of daily games that mix augmented versions of those you’ve seen and a selection unique to this app. Get more games for less money than the New York Times requests and enjoy the particular frustrating charm an individual can bring to Connections when they don’t need to appeal to the masses.
Do you have a note on your phone to track movies and TV shows to watch, books to read, albums to listen to, games to play, and other forms of entertainment? Do you wish you could keep those in one place and have a timeline of your leisure activities?
Sofa is not for everyone, but I’ve found it well-designed and extremely useful. I don’t use services like Goodreads or Letterboxd to track media, so having a localized version of those tools with exactly the amount of features I need is great.
Pocketcasts is one of the best cross-platform podcast players available. It’s been all I know for podcasts since I started seriously listening to them in 2015. I’ve used it on Android phones, iPads, the web, and now my iPhone. It supports all the features a podcast nerd wants—chapters with artwork, formatted show notes, variable speed, voice boost, and playing local files—and continues to improve with lifetime statistics and annual reports akin to Spotify Wrapped. I don’t claim it’s better than its competitors, but I’ve only ever enjoyed using it.
When I hopped onto the Mastodon bandwagon in 2023, I closely followed the rapid development of apps. I later updated that post to note that my app of choice is indeed Ivory, developed by TapBots, who created Tweetbot, one of the key players in the early world of Twitter third-party apps. It’s a clean, thoughtful app that holds your position in your timeline from wherever you left off. This way, you’re never scrolling back in time; you’re always scrolling up in chronological order. I couldn’t have it any other way.
Plus, their particular elephant iconography is adorable.
This sleek, straightforward app has an encyclopedic collection of leagues to follow. It lets you quickly move between them and takes no time to load as you poke around. Most importantly, and what got me onto this app, is it’s the best choice if you want multiple Live Activities for ongoing games that live on your home screen or Dynamic Island.
They’ve started leaning heavily into providing betting info, but you can turn it off in settings, and I can’t blame them for serving their clientele.
I impulsively bought Tot because, in general, I like the overall vibe of the Iconfactory and how they represent indie development. It’s an extremely simple text capture app designed to run persistently, sync across your devices via iCloud, and give you access to ideas with straightforward organization. There are seven “pages” you can switch between via keyboard shortcuts, each highlighted with a different color. I’ve yet to solidify how I regularly use it. Still, for now, it’s a great omnipresent text scratchpad that obviates my opening and quitting of other plain text editors that are more fully featured.
It’s IMDB made by someone who cares that you quickly get exactly the metadata you want about a piece of media with none of the advertisements and bloat along the way. Superb.
Pick your colors for each team and tap to keep score. It’s that simple. I used it when I was the odd one out when playing squash in a group of 3; I’d open this app and press it against the glass between points to help keep everyone aware of the score. Utilitarian apps are awesome.
I don’t want to tap the requisite number of times on the Scoreboard app to count in cribbage; besides, the visual indicator of a cribbage board adds the necessary legitimacy to a game. This was the least bloated option on the App Store. It’s held up so far.
- 1No, not that one.