Kassidy
Jezierski
Apps have all but replaced the many useful tools that once appeared in our daily lives. From our alarm clocks and radios, to our maps, wallets, and telephones, technology has allowed us to pare down our belongings and accomplish increasingly more, with less. Whether you prefer a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop, the question persists: how do we choose the best apps to make the most of our multipurpose devices? Thankfully, our team of software design, development and product experts here at Lithios created a hand-picked guide of our top ten favorite apps, so you don’t have to.
We’re about to dive into our recommended apps, why we love them, and our favorite features within each app to guide you in your quest for some of the best software around. We capped the number to cover only ten true essentials, which range from mental wellness apps to on-demand entertainment and transportation.
Here are our Top Ten Apps Recommended by App Developers (aside from the ones we’ve built , of course):
Lime is a provider of electric vehicles for rent, including scooters, bikes and mopeds and is available in over 150 cities worldwide.
It’s so easy to use the app! Just scan a scooter, or bike and go. Lime has also added a Group Ride feature, which let's multiple people ride without all having to download the app. Scooters and bikes are perfect for short/medium distances, especially in a busy downtown, and the app makes it really easy. The color choice and iconography is also subtle and welcoming
The Group Ride and QR Scan-to-Unlock.
Example from Mova
From the Apple website: “The Wallet app lives right on your iPhone. It’s where you securely keep your credit and debit cards, transit cards, boarding passes, tickets, car keys, and more — all in one place. And it all works with iPhone or Apple Watch, so you can take less with you but always bring more.”
This app is fantastic -- especially when traveling. It can store payment methods, loyalty cards, boarding passes, concert tickets, and more for easy access. One of the most aesthetically pleasing features is the "card" user experience, which simulates selecting a physical card from a wallet. It's a nice touch that makes the app satisfying to use.
The "Card" experience and Recent Purchase Log.
Example from 9to5 Mac
From the Autosleep website: “Automatically track your sleep from your Apple Watch. No buttons to press. Even the Watch app is optional. Just sleep!”
Autosleep helps track sleeping habits on a granular level when paired with an Apple watch. It tracks light, deep, and REM sleep as well as the quality of sleep, in addition to other metrics. It’s fun to correlate productive days with days that we get a healthy amount of sleep.
Historical data view. When the application is active and paired with the Apple watch, it provides good weekly insight into sleep habits.
Example from Mac Stories
From the AllTrails website: “Search over 200,000 trails with trail info, maps, detailed reviews, and photos curated by millions of hikers, campers, and nature lovers like you.”
The AllTrails app is the place to find hiking and backpacking trails in your area of choice. AllTrails provides relevant trail details, recent hiking history, pictures, and other information that help guide fun outdoor excursions. AllTrails users can even create various lists within the app, which is perfect when you want to check out a number of trails in a given region.
Definitely the social features. Seeing reviews and recently shared content from users that hike specified trails is helpful in understanding what trails have accessible water, river crossings, or other relevant considerations.
Example from AllTrails
A quick blurb from UpNote: “UpNote is a feature-rich note-taking app which is beautiful and easy to use on all platforms: Mac, iOS, Windows and Android”
UpNote has a featureful text editor to insert code, a table, highlight text and more into your notes. It’s great for note-taking and journaling, plus you can add photos! The ability to add images to your notebooks makes it feel more personalized, which we love. UpNote has a friendly user interface, a great overall design and is available on both mobile and desktop.
Focus mode, which is a feature that prevents you from seeing all of your other
Example from Product Hunt
A quick blurb from the Greg website: “The intelligent plant care app. Greg tells you exactly when to water each of your plants.”
Our team loves our plants, and what better way to care for them than a reminder to water them? Greg features AI that has learned when other users water their plants depending on where they live and where their plant is positioned in the house. If you love plants but have a difficult time remembering when and how much to water them, Greg takes that stress away and does all of the thinking for you. It also helps you find new plants that will work well in the environment you have. It is beautifully designed and easy to use.
Detailed plant bio and watering reminders.
Example from iDownload
From the Instagram website: “A simple, fun & creative way to capture, edit & share photos, videos & messages with friends & family.”
Instagram makes it quick and convenient to view images from friends, your community, celebrities, influencers, and more! The feed’s emphasis on photos and a limited amount of text creates an appealing visual experience. We love how easy it is to promote your own brand and/or lifestyle as well. Instagram is available on mobile and desktop.
The ability to hold down on an image to view it in a bigger frame is pretty neat and saves time when scrolling!
Example from The Verge
A quick blurb from the Spotify website: “Listening is everything. Millions of songs and podcasts. No credit card needed.”
Spotify has a fun, dark mode UI that makes for a cool visual experience alongside the music. The colors really pop off from the dark background. Spotify offers personalized “Daily Mixes” and “Discover Weekly” playlists depending on your listening history, offering a simple way to find great new music. Spotify is an intuitive and user friendly app on both mobile and desktop.
We love the “Spotify Wrapped” feature where your most played songs throughout the year are combined into a single playlist in December. It’s fun to see favorite moods/vibes for the year and correlating that with how the year went!
Example from The Verge
From the YouTube website: “Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.”
We love to educate and entertain ourselves where and when we want -- plus, free never hurts! YouTube is an ideal platform to access a wide variety of on-demand video content. Available on desktop and mobile.
The video feed and ability to follow different channels, as well as the chat and commenting features.
Example from Medium
From the InsightTimer website: “The best meditation app with the world's largest free library of more than 100K guided meditations, 11K teachers & the world's most loved meditation Timer.”
InsightTimer is a fabulous meditation app, and it also has plenty of courses, music and yoga classes. Users can filter by keywords, length of time, or rating. Guided meditations are a great way for beginners to get started or for more advanced meditators to deepen their practice. There are plenty of guided options to choose from on InsightTimer, and you can create customized timer presets if you prefer to meditate in silence or with music.
The Timer and the Meditation Daily Streak Tracking
Example from Adam Bernard
When the App Store was first released in 2008, it offered just 500 applications. Now in 2021, with over a million apps on the App Store alone, it can be overwhelming to choose which ones to download onto our devices. As consumers, we want the best of the best -- apps that not only improve our lives in a practical sense, but also apps that are fun and intuitive to use, and appealing to the eye. With so many choices out there, we simply won’t stand for a mediocre app.
Here at Lithios, we live and breathe software applications. We evaluate them, we design them, we create them, and we launch them. Our team focuses on creating the best user experiences for our clients, and we don’t settle for less when it comes to using apps ourselves. Whether we’re building apps, or just recommending them, we want to provide you with the highest quality products around.
Do you have questions or comments about the apps in this blog or about our app development process ? We want to hear from you! Contact us here!
If you liked this blog, you would love Feature Flexes: Going The Extra Mile During Project Development, or any of the other blogs on our website ! We’re always putting out more content, so stay tuned for new, industry-relevant topics.
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