These 88 Essential iPhone Apps make your life fun, productive, and easy!

Suffice your needs before your wants. That's the way.


Utility

A one-size-fits-all tool can come in handy at the most vicious times when you embark on a trek. Likewise, your daily life is a trek of some sorts and your smartphone equipped with utility apps is your ultimate tool. A legendary lifesaver. Utility apps help you get the most out of your iPhone in needy situations. These aren’t apps that you may use anytime you want. These are apps you might use only when you need them.

Tab

Tab

Having a dinner with friends tonight? Make sure to install this app beforehand. Cause even great mathematicians blank out when it comes to splitting a tab. “Tab,” however, makes splitting a bill significantly easy. All you have to do is snap a photo of the bill using the app and dedicate each item to the respective peer and the app will handle the money part. To our surprise, Tab will also transfer money to friends automatically through a Venmo integration.

Otter Voice Notes

Otter Voice notes is a simple note taking app with a twist in that it offers voice notes with automatic transcription. The description of this app on the App Store states, “Otter creates smart voice notes that combine audio, transcription, speaker identification, inline photos, and summary keywords. It helps business people, journalists, and students be more focused, collaborative, and efficient in meetings, interviews, lectures, and other important conversations.” Furthermore, it comes with a built-in AI that learns and becomes more accurate as you use the app. Otter is extremely useful for people who need to jot down stuff that can’t be traditionally jotted down. For now, though, Otter only supports transcription in English.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts

Shortcuts is the legally plagiarized version of the Apple-acquired Workflow app that is powered by Siri on the back-end. It’s major highlights, however, are Siri and tighter integration with iOS. Using Shortcuts, you can create custom processes that automate the tasks you perform on your iPhone. For example, you can set a process that wakes you up in the morning with weather and news updates. Learning to design and create custom tasks, however, is a bit difficult for basic users. But there are many readily available shortcuts that you can use.

IFTTT

IFTTT

Similar to Apple’s Shortcuts app, IFTTT covers an advanced spectrum of tasks that you can automate. You can share every picture you Tweet to your Instagram automatically, for instance. You can also perform simpler tasks like sending yourself an automated notification updating you on the weather condition outside. IFTTT is a serious competitor to Shortcuts and also probably is better thanks to its wild collection of readily available automated tasks.

Google Translate

Google Translate

Instances where you find yourself in a different country with a different language are rare. But when it’s time, Google Translate is the best translator you can rely on. Free, accurate, and intuitive, this app from Google allows you to translate from many languages. You can also just point out the camera at sign boards, heaps of texts, and possibly even entire pages to translate the text in real time. Like most Google apps, however, Translate is also heavily underrated.

Dark Sky

Dark Sky

Most weather apps get information from data centers that track weather information and highlight the conditions of a particular city or an area. Dark Sky, however, is different in that it fetches weather information of your current location. Subsequently, it forecasts whether the climate around you is about to change in some time or not. Dark Sky has been prominent among mainstream media and also has been the go-to choice for most people. Now it’s your time.

Unfold

Unfold

As I have mentioned above in this post, Instagram is currently a voguish social network. Part of the app’s popularity, however, is its Stories feature. It’s a method of sharing photos that appear as portrait images and videos designed to fit a phone’s screen. Also, a proponent of success on Instagram, posting perfect stories is essential, which is not possible if you just blurt out photos and videos. Unfold, fortunately, helps you create beautiful Instagram Stories that stand out. And it does that by adding cool frames, text, etc. You may really want to check this out if you’re an influencer.

Tunity

Tunity

If you’ve ever felt annoyed by not being able to hear a football commentary on a TV that’s too far away, Tunity is for you. The way the app works is by scanning the TV screen and streaming the channel’s audio directly to your phone. With this, you can connect your headphones and listen to the commentary while sipping on that perfect cappuccino.

Cinder

Cinder

For some reason, owning an iPhone is a major disadvantage when it comes to handling contacts. They mysteriously duplicate themselves without you knowing about it and multiply into thousands in a jiffy. Cinder, however, proposes a fascinating way to manage your contacts. It brings Tinder’s card-based format to deleting or keeping a contact. Just tap on the green tick to keep the contact and the red cross to delete it. As simple as that.

Deliveries

Deliveries

Track packages with this app. Intuitive and fascinating.


Travel

Ever since Christopher Columbus trotted the globe, we all have had an ambitious traveler living inside of us. It constantly urges your mind to follow the traveling ambition. But the daunting thought of getting stranded without any direction haunted Columbus too. He made it, however. Today, we won’t be able to, without any help from those electronic bricks in our palms. Hence, here are the essential travel apps you must consider.

Google Maps

Google Maps

Any travel app list is incomplete without Google Maps. It is the most reliable and advanced maps app in the app store. And even though Apple offers its own maps baked into the iPhone straight out of the factory, the one created by Google is much more preferred by users.

Citymapper

Citymapper

Cities are complex, no doubt. But Citymapper is created solely to help people effortlessly commute in cities with confusing transport options. It offers transit options along with their suggestive timings. Basically, if you’re stuck in London, just fire up this app and make your way home.

Uber

Uber

A cab hailing app that offers a wide range of cab services. You can call a cab just by tapping a button.

Airbnb

Airbnb

An Uber for short-duration stays, Airbnb allows you to rent a room in someone else’s house for a short period. There are certain rules both landlord and the paying guest must follow to ensure utmost comfort without any violations, though.

XE Currency

XE Currency

I’ve found myself helpless various times when making a transaction in a foreign country due to my ignorance in terms of currency conversion rates. Thankfully, XE Currency makes the conversion process easier. It also offers a widget and an Apple Watch app which is exponentially valued in terms of convenience.

Skyscanner

SkyScanner

Skyscanner scans flights around you and displays ticket rates. As simple as that.

Zomato

Zomato

Emerged out of India, Zomato is an alternative to Yelp. It rates and lists various restaurants in an area according to their overall quality and popularity while also allowing people to add their own reviews. This makes it easy for you to decide where you may wanna bump out for Sushi next.

WiFi Map

WiFi Map

Uses crowdsourcing to show all the WiFi routers that you can connect to in your area. But in an era of unlimited cellular connectivity and 5G being on the brink of birth, WiFi Map may soon lose its credibility and go out of use. As of now, though, it’s kind of important.

Google Trips

Google Trips

Google partially dominates the travel scene on the internet. Trips is one of such apps that makes this possible for the search engine giant. In theory, it helps plan a trip beforehand by highlighting interesting points in a city. However, it lacks in variety in terms of places by only offering major cities and prominent towns. You won’t get many places. Even if you search for it.

Detour

Strictly for hyper-curious tourists, Detour is an audio guide that lives in your iPhone. Hear audio guides of the peculiarities, significance, and wonders of a city, a historical place of importance, etc. It latest update has added support for 45 new cities.

Next Page: Music and Entertainment Apps