I would love to know what other people consider essential apps. What are some cool apps that not many people are using? 
- Vinegar - Replaces Youtube video player with custom HTML video (no ads)
- Baking Soda - Does the same job as Vinegar with all websites except Youtube (developed by the same person)
- Super Agent for Safari - Automatic cookie consent
- Hush - Blocks cookies and privacy invasive tracking
- Keyword Search - Setting up keywords to search on Safari (eg. you type mc super mario = it goes on metacritic.com and search for Super Mario)
- Banish - Blocks ‘open in app’ popups
- Pennies - Tracking your expenses
- Stock Events - Stocks / Dividends tracker
- AutoPilot - Check expert trader’s portfolios
- SongShift - Transfer music / playlists between apps (Apple Music, Spotify, YT Music etc)
- TVtime - Track movies and TV shows
- HealthFit - Advanced activity tracking (better than Apple Health / Workouts)
- Streaks - Track your habits progress
the fact that super agent required a subscription now really ruined it…
I switched to Consent-O-Matic, it works even better for many sites (there is even an option to minimize the popup so you can start using the site while it’s doing it’s thing).
It sadly stuggles with google, which I use a lot.
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If Safari extensions worked in 3rd party iOS browsers that would be great. I’m using Vivaldi (in beta) and like it a lot.
Well, that answers my question. StopTheMadness sounds great, but I use Firefox.
I’m still using the Super Agent extension, but the constant nagging to subscribe is really starting to annoy me!
Thanks, just installed Vinegar, Baking Soda, Banish, and Hush at your recommendation and I am loving the difference!
Thats good to hear. They really do make a difference. Can’t use Safari without them anymore 🙂
Does Vinegar and Baking Soda still work well? I noticed the apps haven’t been updated for almost a year.
Both still work great. (Keep in mind this is a Safari extension. It doesn’t work on native Youtube app)
Thanks for the response! Yeah, I am aware it is an extension for the website through safari, I appreciate you pointing that out though. I’ve been eyeing those two forever, I’ll pick them up.
you pay so much just to block a bunch of ads. You could achieve the same for free with a Raspberry Pi in your home and PiHole.
In the end it doesn’t matter, the result is the same
- Vinegar and Baking Soda - €3 bundle (one time fee)
- SuperAgent - Free (Now I’m using Consent-O-Matic which is also free)
- Hush - Free
- Keyword Search - Free
- Banish - €3 (one time fee)
- AdGuard - Free
So I paid around €6 to block ads, cookies, pop-ups, and make my browsing experience more private. I doubt you even read my post and checked the apps I mentioned. But good for you that you are using Raspberry Pi.
Apologies, indeed, I didn’t go through all the apps, just quickly skimmed them.
6€ is a reasonable price to pay in that case 🙌
Besides the big ones:
- Octal - App for Hacker News
- Poe - Quora’s implementation of ChatGPT
- Artifact - News app that lets you mark headlines as clickbait and then uses AI to rewrite them with helpful info
- LunaSea - Interface for my home instances of Sonarr and Radars
- Strong - Weightlifting app
- Diarium - Low-cost and straightforward journal app
Used Strong, but I actually found Hevy to be much better. It syncs really well with Apple Watch and is getting consistently updated with new features.
Thanks! I got Poe and artifact installed now. I like them a lot!
I like that Poe gives you free uses of GPT4
that’s what got me on it! i ended up paying for unlimited. it was also really neat when Claude-100k (large context) dropped we got access right away.
Haven’t heard of any of these, great! I use HACK for Hackernews, I’ll see which one I like the best.
Poe, is that Quora embracing AI, and is it trained on their own data? Very interesting.
Poe has options for their own AI (Sage), as well as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. If you use the premium versions of either of those (GPT4 and Claude+), you have to pay.
1 per day for free though
Bitwarden for password management.
Anki for learning anything that can be made into a flashcard.
Infuse for connecting to my Plex server or for watching local content I loaded myself.
Sleep Cycle for tracking my sleep and being my alarm clock.
Trakt for tracking movies and TV shows.
MyAniList for tracking specifically anime and manga.
AppRaven for setting up price/updates/release alerts for apps in the App Store.
Sentinel 2FA Authenticator is my 2FA choice since it syncs with iCloud and I’m well into the Apple ecosystem.
AdGuard for adblocking and DNS filtering.
DeepL is my my choice of translator app.
GoodNotes 5 for taking notes on my iPad.
Overcast for listening to podcasts. I also use it to listen to audiobooks so that I have the same features for speeding up and removing quiet portions, but this requires uploading mp3 files through a web portal and requires the subscription to have more space available.
Paprika 3 for managing cooking recipes.
TechniCalc for my calculator.
Zotero is my reference manager since I’m in academia.
StopTheMadness is such a powerful safari extension.
Logseq (my everything app)
Ulysses (for all my writing)
Procreate (for drawing)
Raindrop.io (for links)
Bend (stretching app, great for creating my own routines based on health status)
Antistress (app with all sorts of low stress games for when anxiety goes through the roof)
wefwef, vernissage and mona (fediverse)There are two apps named antistress in the AppStore, do you mind linking the one you use?
Certainly! It’s this one: https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/antistress-relaxing-games/id1207565651?l=en
Much appreciated!
Is Logseq a desktop app? How does it compare to Obsidian?
It’s cross platform, for desktop and mobile. I run it on my Linux box, my Mac and my iPhone.
To synchronise you have to pay 5 dollars a month, but it’s worth it, as it’s the first time I found something that just fit with how my brain works.
You can run it stand alone for free on either platform to try it out, that’s how I started. if you would like to know more, don’t hesitate to ask
Here are the apps I used that I’m not seeing.
- FoodNoms for calorie counting
- Waking Up for guided meditation
- Finch for gamified general mental health
- Future for asynchronous virtual training
- Tripsy for travel tracking
- Organic Maps for offline mapping
- Transit for navigating most US cities via public transit
- Fastmail for personal email (Apple Mail for work email)
- 1Password for password management
- Elaho for browsing Gemini
- Tidal for music
- Vellum for cool backgrounds
- SwiftScan for scanning documents
- iPlum for a cheap business phone number
- Kagi Search to set the Kagi search engine as the default in Safari
- Parcel for package tracking
- Mona for Mastodon
And I’ll second some others.
- Overcast
- Bookplayer
- Reeder
- AnyList
- Sleep Cycle
- Signal
- Obsidian
- Vinegar
- Noir
- Reeder for RSS (connected to FreshRSS)
- Overcast for podcasts
- Linkthing for reading list/saved links (connected to linkding)
- Bookplayer for audiobooks (can airdrop a folder of audio files to ingest)
- MyNetDiary for diet tracking
- WebSSH for ssh client
- Infuse for all things video (connected to Jellyfin)
- FE File Explorer for connecting to SMB shares
- Bitwarden for passwords
- DailyArt widget for nice art on home screen
- Shockwave to kill Google amp
I often use the built in Files.app for connectivity to SMB shares. Is there additional functionality that FE File Explorer offers?
more file compatibility for previewing, verbose transfers, a web server, to name a few. but I mostly just like how it handles shares.
Thanks for the info, I’ll check it out.
Wipr : No fuss ad blocker, one time payment. StopTheMadness : Native video player on the web (+YT) and many general web improvements. Sequel : Media tracking app (Movies, Shows, Games, Books) with a nice UI. It has a subscription, but the free version has worked well enough for me.
Sofa and Up Ahead are my two favourites. Neither of them fulfill an essential “function” and they both have subscriptions but they bring a ton of joy to my life.
I have answered so many of these posts with just one app: Apollo. Mighty sad it’s gone. Therefore I’d pick Reeder, I think.
Most of the apps I use for my personal life exist for both iOS and macOS
- Ghostery as an AdBlocker
- Reeder 5 RSS client syncing over iCloud
- DayOne journaling app
- Omnifocus GTD app
On smartphone only
- Wikipedia, because most of the search I make on iPhone are knowledge related
- WefWef! Because you know why
Does the save function work for you in wefwef?
Wefwef looks great but has been buggy for me. Can’t save anything, comments often don’t load, and I’ll see errors loading my feeds.
Obsidian (Notes) Twobird (My mail app) Cron (Calendar)
Not iOS-only but, great on iOS:
Telegram: fav messenger
TickTick: best reminders app imo
Bitwarden: great password manager
Marvis: cool 3rd party app for Apple Music, connects with Last.fm too
- Feedly for RSS feeds
- Pocket to save everything I want to tag as wanting to read later (super useful for recipes, tech blogs for work…) I use this with Feedly.
- AnyList for all my lists
- Tody to track household chores with rest of family
- Libby for library e books
- Yousician for guitar lessons
- Sketches Pro and Canva for doodling and creative design
- Day Organizer for combined calendar, to do list and habit tracker. (https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/day-organizer-schedule-planner/id1385049326)
- JustWatch to track movies and tv shows
I know this is sort of the opposite of the answer you’re looking for , but I think it’s interesting there’s all of these apps listed and my app usage is 99% Apple’s includes apps and YouTube with a tiny bit of Instagram tossed in.
I’ll say one of my all time favourite apps that I do use quite often is Konvert.
