Indispensable iPhone apps

The best iOS apps, from creativity to productivity

YOU KNOW THE slogan: there’s an app for that. “That” can be pretty much anything on your iPhone. It’s particularly great for exploring the world around you, or for recording your trips and travels, and then touching up the photos in an editing app. It’s a cool kitchen companion and shopping list creator, as well as a media player, podcast platform, note taker, and currency converter. It can even tell you how much your Taylor Swift collection is worth.

Shortcuts

> FROM www.apple.com > ALSO ON iPad, Mac

Apple’s Shortcuts app is a little gem of an app. It’s a way of automating your iPhone (and other devices), and comes with a range of pre–programmed actions and a full editor that enables you to create your own. You can create actions that’ll whip up quick recipes, summarize PDFs, or just tell you if there’s a second season of Pluribus.

Cloud Battery

> FROM www.alanyan.ca

> ALSO ON iPad, Mac, Apple Watch Cloud Battery does one simple thing very well: it tracks the batteries of all your Apple devices from iPhone to Apple Pencil, and enables you to see which ones need charging up. The exception is AirPods, which aren’t currently trackable in the app. In addition to the app itself, you can run it as a Home Screen or Lock Screen widget.

Image rights: Apple Inc, Atlas Obscura Inc, Alan Yan, Flavorish. Image rights: Apple Inc, Kagi Inc, Google LLC, Flexibits Inc, Xe Corporation Inc.