My Must-Have Apps, 2019 Edition

My Home screens.

Every year in late October, I start putting together a rough list of candidates for my annual ‘Must-Have Apps’ story, which I’ve historically published in late December, right before the holiday break. As you can tell by the date on this article, the 2019 edition of this story is different: not only did I spend the last months of the year testing a variety of new apps and betas, but I also kept tweaking my Home screen to accomodate MusicBot and new Home screen shortcuts. As a result, it took me a bit longer to finalize the 2019 collection of my must-have apps; in the process, however, I’ve come up with a slightly updated format that I believe will scale better over the next few years.

In terms of app usage, 2019 was a year of stabilization for me. Having settled on a specific writing workflow revolving around iA Writer and Working Copy, and having figured out a solution to record podcasts from my iPad Pro, I spent the year fine-tuning my usage of those apps, refining my file management habits thanks to iPadOS’ improved Files app, and cutting down on the number of apps I kept tucked away in folders on my iPhone and iPad.

Two themes emerged over the second half of 2019, though. First, thanks to various improvements in iOS and iPadOS 13, I increased my reliance on “first-party” Apple apps: I embraced the new Reminders app and its exclusive features, stopped using third-party note-taking apps and moved everything to Notes, and switched back to Apple Mail as my default email client. I’ve written about the idea of comfort in the Apple ecosystem before, and I’ve seen that concept work its way into my app preferences more and more over the course of 2019.

The second theme, unsurprisingly, is my adoption of a hybrid Home screen that combines apps and shortcuts powered by our custom MacStories Shortcuts Icons. Following changes to running shortcuts from the Home screen in iOS 13, I realized how much I was going to benefit from the ability to execute commands with the tap of an icon, so I decided to mix and match apps and shortcuts on my Home screens to maximize efficiency. Thanks to the different flavors of MacStories Shortcuts Icons (we just launched a Color set), I’ve been able to assemble a truly personalized Home screen layout that puts the best of both worlds – my favorite apps and custom shortcuts – right at my fingertips.

For this reason, starting this year you’ll find a new Home Screens section at the beginning of this roundup that covers the first tier of my must-have apps – the “ultimate favorites” I tend to keep on the Home screens of both devices. Because I like to keep my iPhone and iPad Home screens consistent, it made sense to start grouping these apps together in their own special section. These are the apps I use most on a daily basis; I’m pretty sure you’ll find at least a couple surprises this year.

This entire story features a collection of the 50 apps I consider my must-haves on the iPhone and iPad, organized in seven categories; whenever possible, I included links to original reviews and past coverage on MacStories. As for the traditional list of awards for best new app and best app update: those are now part of our annual MacStories Selects awards, which we published last December and you can find here.

Let’s dig in.

[table_of_contents]

Home Screens

Overcast. After using Apple’s Podcasts app for the past year, Marco Arment’s podcast client won me back thanks to audio improvements that are coming to the public version of the app in the near future: Voice Boost 2 and AirPlay 2. We will write in detail about both changes when they graduate out of beta, but here’s the gist of why they matter to me: AirPlay 2 integration allows Overcast to be just as efficient as Apple’s Podcasts app for my multi-HomePod setup at home; Voice Boost 2 sounds incredible, and it’s unlike any similar audio effect I’ve tested in other podcast apps, including Arment’s original Voice Boost. With AirPlay 2 putting Overcast and Podcasts on the same playing field, I now get to enjoy Overcast’s Smart Speed, Voice Boost, and sharing features again without sacrificing playback performance with my HomePods. I’m excited about this app update dropping soon. [Review and previous coverage]

Reeder. After a long hiatus, Silvio Rizzi has returned to the App Store with a polished, multi-platform version of his popular RSS reader that has been rewritten from the ground up for the modern era of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

Reeder’s Read Later account.

These days, I use Reeder as my client for Feedbin as well as my read-later app of choice: I moved out of Safari’s Reading List a few months ago and have been enjoying Reeder’s dedicated Read Later account, which syncs articles across devices in the background, extracts text from them, and even supports modern Shortcuts actions to retrieve all the articles you’ve saved for later. Whether I want to see what’s new in my RSS subscriptions or catch up on a few articles, I find myself opening Reeder a lot these days. [AppStories episode]

CARROT Weather. I recently went through the process of re-testing different weather apps on my iPhone and Apple Watch, but I keep coming back to CARROT Weather. Some people enjoy this app because of its whimsical and rather…unique personality; I just think it’s the most accurate, intuitive, well-designed prosumer weather app currently available for iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS. With AccuWeather as a data provider, I get accurate forecasts here in Rome, but I can also choose to load data from a local Netatmo weather station if available; thanks to CARROT’s deep customization options, I’ve been able to personalize each view of the app to show me only the data points I care about. On the Apple Watch, the CARROT Weather complication reliably refreshes in the background and, when tapped, launches the main app in less than two seconds. In 2020, I’d like to see even more custom icons. [Previous coverage]

Apollo. Same as above: I recently tried a bunch of Reddit apps again (including the official client, which has improved a lot lately), but I always return to Christian Selig’s powerful third-party client. There are a few features that make Apollo the premier Reddit experience: with filters, you can choose what kind of content you don’t want to see based on keyword exclusions; the app’s jump bar lets you seamlessly navigate across your favorite subreddits or multireddits; with plenty of customization options available through themes and the periodical release of new icons, Apollo’s appearance can be easily tweaked to your preferences.

Browsing a multireddit in Apollo.

Apollo lets me switch between different communities with a couple taps, which makes it the ideal on-the-go Reddit experience, but it also lends itself well to longer reading sessions (no, I definitely haven’t spent hours perusing threads in r/stunfisk). [Review]

Instagram. One of my goals for 2020 is to use Instagram more, by which I mean sharing more photos and stories on a daily basis. (You can find me on Instagram here.) Besides the sharing component, however, I find Instagram a pleasant haven of respite from the constant sharing of hot takes/criticisms/sarcasm/terrible world news that takes place on Twitter nowadays. I enjoy scrolling through a timeline of my friends’ shots and checking out what they’ve been up to. Lately, I’ve also been enjoying the simple act of browsing Instagram to discover new accounts that share photos of tattoos, old videogames, and dogs – you know, the very best things in life.

Twitter. That’s not to say I don’t use Twitter anymore: in fact, I actually get a lot of benefit from Twitter as a “professional” social network that lets me communicate with readers and get in touch with developers working on new apps. As a tool to promote my work at MacStories, Club MacStories, and AppStories, Twitter is still my best option; I just don’t like the company’s delusional belief that Twitter is the best place to discover news when its “news” often boils down to useless trending hashtags or shortsighted hot takes.

To compensate for Twitter’s lack of a proper sidebar, I use the prototype twttr app in Split View, next to the main Twitter for iPad app.

The fact that the iPad app now constantly showcases this content in the sidebar (an egregious waste of space) doesn’t help. That said, there are still plenty of reasons to use the official Twitter app instead of third-party clients, which, at least for me, no longer reflect the real, modern Twitter experience. As someone who’s been getting into competitive Pokémon after years away from the series, I also want to point out how convenient it is to switch between lists from the main timeline; when I’m not in the mood to read the latest opinions about Apple and tech, I switch to my Pokémon timeline, which brightens my day immediately.

Timery. The best new app of 2019 has become a staple of my Home screen: I find time tracking essential to understand where my time is going, and Timery makes it easy to start a timer by choosing from lists of presets or recent activities. Over the past few months, I’ve also added shortcuts based on Timery’s time tracking actions to my Home screens using our own MacStories Shortcuts Icons. In addition to the app and its shortcuts, I also rely on the widget to see which timer is running and, if necessary, stop it. If you use Toggl to track your time, Timery is the best way to access the service on the iPhone and iPad. I hope developer Joe Hribar adds support for reports and charts in 2020. [Review]

iA Writer. There’s little I can say about iA Writer that I haven’t already written elsewhere several times before.

With custom templates, I can preview posts in iA Writer to see how they’d appear on MacStories.

iA Writer is my favorite Markdown text editor because it’s deeply integrated with the Files app and framework, which allows other apps to communicate with it by way of iCloud Drive and the file bookmarks technology. iA Writer supports Content Blocks, which are ideal for writing multi-chapter stories that reference external files or that need to load resources (such as images) from assets located in sub-directories; with custom templates, I can preview my articles just as they’d look on MacStories. The app keeps getting better, too: just a few weeks ago, iA Writer was updated with a new local backup feature (which has saved me from iCloud Drive sync issues multiple times already) and a refreshed context menu that puts document actions front and center. It would be very difficult for other text editors to compete with iA Writer at this point. [Previous coverage]

WhatsApp. I don’t love WhatsApp and I fundamentally despise its parent company, but I have to use this app if I want to have a social life and communicate with friends. Yes, I’ve tried to convince them to use Telegram and iMessage, but WhatsApp is so deeply rooted in our social conventions at this point, it’s a wasted effort. At least the WhatsApp team has made the app somewhat better in the past year; based on my experience, notifications now load image previews reliably and the quality of voice calls seems to have improved. WhatsApp doesn’t have an iPad version still, but its web client can be accessed with iPadOS’ Safari now.

Slack. We use Slack to communicate at MacStories and, just like WhatsApp, I don’t particularly like this app, but I have to use it because I don’t have the mental energy or patience to learn something else. Unlike WhatsApp, though, Slack seems to be getting worse over time: the most recent example is the visual text editor, which has removed all the convenience of the old Markdown-like syntax and replaced it with the cruft of a Microsoft Word-like editing environment. If Slack ever reaches the point of being unusable for my taste, I will have to find the energy to switch to another product, but I don’t want to think about it now.

Fantastical. I’ll have more to say about Fantastical soon, but in short: I’m using the app again because it combines two services I’m already using (iCloud Calendar and Reminders) into a single dashboard. I still use the standalone Reminders app (particularly because of its Today and Scheduled views), but I like the overview provided by Fantastical as it encompasses both tasks and events. Like I said though: more on this app soon.

Working Copy. Anders Borum’s Git client has seen a steady stream of improvements in 2019, most notably with the adoption of parameter-based shortcuts, dark mode, and multiwindow in iOS 13. Working Copy continues to be the core of our Markdown collaboration workflow at MacStories, and I can’t imagine using anything else at this point. [Previous coverage]

Raindrop.io. My favorite new Home screen entry of 2019, which I’ve been saving for this article, is the native app for the Raindrop.io bookmarking service. A bookmarking service in 2020? Well, yes – let me explain.

As part of getting back to playing competitive Pokémon over the last few months, I started saving all kinds of links about strategic plays, team builds, and VGC basics in Apple Notes as rich links. After a while, I realized that Notes wasn’t making it easy for me to organize these links and search in their titles to find something I’d archived before. I knew I needed to find a dedicated bookmarking system for my Pokémon links, but:

I didn’t want to go back to using DEVONthink, whose mobile development has stagnated lately as the developers are focused on the Mac version;

I’ve tried using Keep It again, but I always run into visual glitches or bugs that I find somewhat annoying;

I didn’t want to use Pinboard because I don’t find its website’s design attractive (and yes, I like to use nice things) and most Pinboard clients for iOS don’t seem to be actively developed anymore.

To sum up: I wanted to find an app/service that would help me save links from the web, organize them with folders or tags using a good-looking UI, and find them again with ease. Raindrop.io, which has been around for several years at this point and is in active development, ticks all these boxes: it’s a web service that comes with a desktop web app, browser extensions, and native mobile apps; links are automatically saved with rich thumbnails and descriptions extracted from the original webpage; you can organize links in collections, tag them, and choose from multiple view and sort options; you can also customize the look of a collection by choosing from thousands of icons. Here’s where it gets better and why Raindrop.io is ideal for my needs: on iOS, links open with Safari View Controller, not a custom web view; and, if you pay for the Pro version, you’ll be able to upload your own images, create nested collections, and rely on the service to find duplicate or broken links for you.

My collection of bookmarks in Raindrop.io.

Thumbnails are generated for both articles and videos.

I’ve saved hundreds of links in Raindrop.io, and I’ve meticulously sorted them in nested collections and tagged them so I can find them quickly when I need them. There are several details I like about this service, such as the way the search bar includes filters to find articles or videos, or the system used to determine whether an old link is “broken”. I’ve enjoyed using Raindrop.io so much for my Pokémon links, I’ve also started collections for non-Pokémon content such as movies to watch on Netflix and FLAC albums I want to buy. It’s not a dealbreaker, but the app still doesn’t support native dark mode or multiwindow in iOS and iPadOS 13, which I hope the developer will fix in 2020.

LaunchCuts. As soon as I got my hands on the first beta of LaunchCuts last December, the app instantly gained a spot on my Home screens. LaunchCuts is a meta-utility for the Shortcuts app that lets you organize your shortcuts in folders, giving you a way to group related shortcuts together and find what you’re looking for more quickly. If you’re a heavy Shortcuts user with more than 30 shortcuts in the app, LaunchCuts is the utility for you: the app has been designed to provide a solution to problems that Apple hasn’t fixed yet; its developer Adam Tow has paid close attention to popular requests in the Shortcuts community (such as the ability to filter shortcuts by type or input), and shipped an app that serves as the perfect companion to Shortcuts. It may be based on a (well executed) workaround, but until Apple builds native folders and filters into the Shortcuts app, LaunchCuts is the best way to organize and run shortcuts I’ve used to date. [Review]

Home Screen Shortcuts and Custom Icons

The Bundle edition of MacStories Shortcuts Icons contains both the Classic and Color sets.

As you may have noticed from screenshots at the top of this story, both my iPhone and iPad Home screens are now heavily based on custom shortcut icons. Specifically, both Home screens run a combination of icons from the MacStories Shortcuts Icons Classic set as well as the just-launched Color set.

As I wrote when we introduced the Classic set of MacStories Shortcuts Icons in September, running shortcuts from the Home screen has gotten much better in iOS 13, but I was feeling let down by the limited icon options provided by Apple in the Shortcuts app, so we decided to design our own icon set. What I like about MacStories Shortcuts Icons – and the reason I use them myself – is the flexibility granted by Silvia’s beautiful glyphs as well as the new Color set.

With the Classic set, I was able to install additional shortcuts on my Home screen while keeping their original background color. With the new Color set, however, I’ve been able to use multi-color glyphs with white and black backgrounds, creating some interesting effects on my Home screens such as the “sidebar” of folders on my iPad Pro, pictured below.

My custom iPad Home screen, powered by the Color set.

As a side note: if you purchased the Classic icon set in September and are interested in the new Color set, you can purchase the additional set at $6 (instead of $14.99) for a limited time only. For instructions on how to get your discount, check your email or read the FAQ here.

If you don’t own any version of MacStories Shortcuts Icons yet, now’s a great time to jump in: we just introduced a special Bundle version that contains both sets, available at $20.99 here.

Work

Secure ShellFish. The genius behind this app by Anders Borum isn’t the fact that it connects to SFTP servers, which several other apps do – it’s that it brings remote connections to the Files app and Shortcuts. With Secure ShellFish, I can access the contents of my personal FTP server from Files, so I can move and upload files as if it were just another native location of Files. Even better, Shortcuts integration means I can now upload files to my remote server in a couple seconds, without having to deal with complicated web requests or authentication because Secure ShellFish offers native, visual actions powered by parameters. This is a must-have for anyone who wants to access a remote server from an iPhone or iPad. [Review]

Google Docs. Despite the improvements to desktop-class browsing in Safari for iPadOS, I still keep the native Google Docs app on my iPad because I’ve noticed some odd issues with scrolling and formatting in Safari under iPadOS 13.3. Also, I have to use the Google Docs app on my iPhone when I’m working on show notes for my podcasts on the go.

Trello. We use Trello at MacStories to plan our editorial calendar at different times of the year as well as to organize the different sections of our MacStories Weekly newsletter. Trello’s native app isn’t great (for instance, it only supports a subset of the power-ups available for desktop browsers), but the service is so good, we keep using it, and it’s been working well for us. I particularly appreciate that Trello integrates with Zapier, which has allowed me to put together some interesting automations that, for example, send me a Pushcut notification whenever a specific label is added to a Trello card.

Kodex. I use this free text editor for iPhone and iPad whenever I have to open a large text file (usually in .json or .txt formats) that other apps would typically choke on. While Kodex doesn’t sport all the features of powerful desktop editors such as BBEdit or SublimeText, it is a good approximation of them thanks to its mini-map, customizable keybindings, and several syntax highlighting modes.

A large JSON file in Kodex.

More importantly, Kodex combines these classic desktop features with an iOS-first approach: the app uses the Files document browser to open and modify documents, which means it can edit any file on your device thanks to the latest open-in-place APIs.

1Password. Apple’s iCloud Keychain continues to get better every year, and if the company ever turns the feature into a standalone app with two-factor authentication support and Family Sharing integration, I could see myself switching from 1Password. But that hasn’t happened yet, which means our household still uses 1Password for everything security-related, from accounts to secure notes and documents. For over a decade now, 1Password has been reliable and served me well.

MindNode. I don’t create mind maps for all my articles, but I always do for my longform stories, such as Beyond the Tablet and the iOS 13 Review from 2019. After years of using iThoughts, I switched to MindNode last year (primarily because of its support for external displays), and I’ve appreciated the app’s integration with keyboard shortcuts on iPad, stickers to highlight nodes, and iCloud Drive-based versions. I plan on using MindNode again for my longform stories this year; Visual Tags, a new feature in version 7 of the app, looks just like the kind of organization tool I’ve always wanted to have in my larger mind maps. [Review]

Scriptable. What Shortcuts can’t automate on iOS these days, Simon Støvring’s JavaScript IDE usually can. Scriptable, which lets you write and run JavaScript on the iPhone and iPad, has in many ways filled the role left vacant by Pythonista: the app connects a traditional programming environment with native iOS frameworks, so you can automate native system functionalities such as Files, notifications, dark mode, and Reminders – all while taking advantage of standard JavaScript to perform common tasks such as text manipulation, regular expressions, web requests, and more. I use Scriptable as a complement to Shortcuts: the app can access native features of iOS and iPadOS that Shortcuts cannot; for instance, with Scriptable I can list the contents of any iCloud Drive folder and save images programmatically into an iA Writer sub-folder. In its latest version, Scriptable comes with a Shortcuts action that lets you execute any JavaScript code inline within a shortcut, which opens up some fascinating possibilities for sharing advanced shortcuts that do not require users to install additional scripts. [Previous coverage]

Jayson. In putting together advanced shortcuts that communicate with web APIs, I often have to deal with complex responses returned as JSON objects. On iOS and iPadOS, there’s no better way to preview and browse the structure of JSON documents than Simon Støvring’s other fantastic app, Jayson.

A JSON document viewed in Jayson.

Unlike code editors that merely syntax-highlight JSON code, Jayson uses a file manager-like interface to let you browse multiple layers of key:value pairs using visual elements such as columns and in-app split views. Even better, Jayson comes with native Shortcuts actions that let you pass data from a shortcut to the app, which also supports navigating JSON content inside a rich notification. Jayson is a must-have tool in my arsenal of Shortcuts utilities. [Review]

Toolbox Pro. Speaking of Shortcuts-enabled apps, Alex Hay’s Toolbox Pro is entirely built on the idea that parameters in iOS 13 can let third-party apps become native components of Shortcuts. More than an “app”, Toolbox Pro is a container of advanced actions that you can only use in Shortcuts – it’s a new kind of meta-utility that only makes sense in the context of extending Apple’s Shortcuts app with more actions. As I explained in my review, not only does Toolbox Pro enhance Shortcuts with quality-of-life improvements that compensate for the lack of basic actions in Apple’s app, but it also brings new advanced actions such as deep Apple Music integration, global variables that sync with iCloud, rich menus, and more. Some of my more advanced shortcuts these days (including MusicBot Pro) were made possible by Toolbox Pro, and I can’t wait to see where developer Alex Hay takes the app in 2020. [Review]

Pushcut. Another app that is best experienced as an addition to Shortcuts, Pushcut by Simon Leeb lets you configure push notifications that can be delivered to your devices; when expanded, these notifications can contain additional actions in the form of running a specific shortcut, triggering a HomeKit scene, or even performing a web request in the background.

Custom notifications delivered by Pushcut.

I wrote about how I use Pushcut with my HomeKit-enabled Dyson fan here; lately, I’ve also started using Pushcut in combination with Trello and Zapier. The flexibility granted by Pushcut’s notification design tool is unparalleled on Apple’s platforms, which makes it one of the apps to keep an eye on in 2020.

TransferWise. I stopped using PayPal to send money to friends and writers, and I love how TransferWise makes it easy to switch between US Dollars and Euros with reasonable transfer rates. The app can authenticate transactions with Face ID, uses notifications to verify your account on other devices, and it’s powered by a clean, elegant design that’s easy to understand.

Skype. I don’t love the Skype app, but ever since I figured out a system to record podcasts from my iPad Pro, it’s what I need to use if I have to record a show without my Mac. Many of the hacks I rely upon to record podcasts with an iPad Pro could be removed if only Microsoft added support for outputting a locally-recorded track from the Skype app, but I’m not holding my breath on this one.

Entertainment

Shazam. I was afraid Apple would turn Shazam into an Apple Music-only app after their acquisition, but that hasn’t happened yet. I still use Shazam as a simple “recognize this song and save it into a playlist” type of app, and I care very little about its additional bells and whistles. I like the design, but I prefer to spend as little time as possible looking at its UI. As a basic utility to save recognized songs into an Apple Music playlist, Shazam still works very well.

MusicHarbor. As someone who deeply cares about music, I like to keep up with new music releases from my favorite artists and make sure I stay on top of upcoming albums.

New music releases in MusicHarbor.

I feel like MusicHarbor has been designed specifically for people with my same preferences: the app provides a better ‘New Releases’ section than Apple’s Music app and, as I wrote in my article about it, it integrates well with other system features such as the share sheet and Calendar. MusicHarbor makes it easy to see what’s new and start listening, and I check the app multiple times per week. [Previous coverage and AppStories episode]

Netflix. How else was I supposed to binge four seasons of Lucifer in two weeks? There’s nothing particularly special to say about the Netflix app – it’s the gateway to thousands of TV shows and movies that my girlfriend and I like to watch together. For those times when we’re not at home, we watch them on the iPad Pro.

YouTube. Same as above: it’s YouTube, and there’s very little to say about it. Am I bummed that YouTube for iPad doesn’t support Picture in Picture? Yes, of course I am. But as a Premium user, the appeal of watching ad-free videos and supporting my favorite creators at the same time is too strong to even remotely consider using a third-party YouTube client.

Plex. Unlike others, I don’t use Plex to store a library of movies and TV shows: between Netflix, Apple TV+, and buying content from the iTunes Store, my TV needs are served pretty well these days. Instead, Plex is where I store a mirrored copy of my library of high-res FLAC albums. For the past year, I’ve been slowly re-building a music library comprised of albums I really like from artists I love by purchasing them, just like I used to 15 years ago. I mostly listen to these albums via my Sony Walkman and over-ear balanced headphones, but I like keeping the library accessible from Plex if I ever want to listen via my iPad Pro, stream to one of my HomePods, or just browse the albums I’ve purchased.

My FLAC music library in Plex.

In addition to FLAC music, I also use Plex to watch YouTube videos downloaded in 4K thanks to youtube-dl on my Mac mini. The official YouTube app for iPhone and iPad doesn’t support 4K playback; with youtube-dl and Plex, I can watch videos in glorious, crisp 4K on my iPad Pro, and I can definitely tell the difference from standard 1080p. Plex’s video player is great and, thanks to my well-specced 2018 Mac mini, hardware-accelerated transcoding works well with 4K video streams.

Prism. Developed by Lachlan Charlick, Prism is a third-party music player for your Plex library that provides a cleaner design, more playback options, and a dedicated experience for music files you store in Plex. By removing the additional layers of media management required by the official Plex app and focusing entirely on music, Prism lets you browse your Plex music library more quickly, taking advantage of powerful options that aren’t available in the standard Plex client.

Browsing my music library in Prism.

For instance, you can use custom filters and mix and match different pieces of metadata to craft a personalized view of your music library (including star ratings and download status); you can long-press any item in the app to access queue and playback shortcuts; the app supports AirPlay 2 playback, has a good selection of custom themes and icons, and even comes with “I’m feeling lucky” buttons to pick random artists, albums, or songs from your library. For those times when I want to listen to an album from my library without streaming it via Apple Music (perhaps because I don’t want my social feed to show my activity), I turn to Prism, which is unique in its category and with virtually no competition on the App Store.

Images

Annotable. After several years, Annotable is still the best way to annotate photos and screenshots on an iPhone or iPad. Little has changed in terms of features and design since our coverage of version 2.0, but that doesn’t matter: the app is updated regularly for compatibility purposes, does the job well, and comes with an unmatched feature set if you want to add multiple annotations with different style options to an image. [Review]

Pixelmator. In the era of Photoshop for iPad and Affinity Photo, I still rely on good old classic Pixelmator for iPad whenever I have to put together a composite image for the site. My graphic needs are basic and do not require the full power and complexity of something like Photoshop: I usually just need to overlay a PNG on a transparent background or crop an image to specific dimensions. Pixelmator for iPad hasn’t received a lot of substantial feature updates over the years, but it still does everything I need with a native iPad UI that I can understand.

Pixelmator Photo. The other app from the Pixelmator team is a powerful photo editor that is best experienced with the Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro’s large screen. With its large collection of machine learning-powered adjustments, advanced cropping tools, and filters, I’ve found Pixelmator Photo to be a lightweight, yet powerful companion to Apple’s Photos app when I want to apply some specific modifications to photos on my iPad Pro.

Pixelmator Photo takes advantage of the iPad’s large canvas.

The feature I use the most is, by far, Pixelmator Photo’s intelligent healing tool, which magically “fixes” photos by removing unwanted objects or spots that would otherwise draw too much attention in an image. I love using this app with the Apple Pencil. [Review]

Quick List: Apple Apps

One of the trends from this year’s collection is the prevalence of Apple apps on my Home screens. As I wrote in 2018, there’s a certain comfort to using Apple’s built-in apps in lieu of third-party alternatives: they’re often more integrated with the operating system thanks to private APIs developers can’t use, and they always support new technologies (such as iPad multitasking and multiwindow) before third-party alternatives due to the nature of the iOS and iPadOS beta cycles.

Here’s a list of the Apple apps I use every day on my iPhone and iPad:

Apple Music

Mail

Calendar

Notes

Reminders

There are hundreds of third-party alternatives to these apps available on the App Store. However, the combination of platform-exclusive features (e.g. Siri and Apple Music integration on HomePod) or new options not available to third parties (see Reminders’ new features in iOS 13) has pushed me to embrace Apple’s native apps; even if they don’t typically offer as much customization as third-party apps, their deeper integration with the rest of the ecosystem is the most important factor for me these days.

Health

AutoSleep. Keeping a consistent sleep schedule in my adult life has always been challenging for me, but since I started using AutoSleep on my Apple Watch a few years ago, the task has become more manageable, and I have a good sense of what my sleep trends are like at different times of the year. I wear an old Apple Watch as a dedicated sleep tracking device at night, and AutoSleep lets me keep track of how much time I sleep, what my “sleep debt” is, and the total decrease of my average resting heart rate when I’m sleeping. Every year, I continue to expect AutoSleep to be Sherlocked by Apple, but it hasn’t happened yet, so I continue to rely on David Walsh’s app. [Review and previous coverage]

HeartWatch. Also from developer David Walsh, HeartWatch is a heart rate dashboard for your iPhone that lets you make sense of the data captured by the Apple Watch with daily breakdowns, weekly and monthly trends, and other interesting correlations. In my effort to lose weight and lower my resting heart rate, HeartWatch has proven a trusted companion utility that puts actionable data front and center and lets me easily monitor my progress.

WaterMinder. Hydration is important, but it’s easy to forget to drink enough water on a daily basis, particularly on busy days. WaterMinder is my favorite utility to keep track of my water intake because it comes with a useful Watch complication in the form of a ring that fills up during the day as you keep logging your glasses of water.

WaterMinder’s complication is a great way to quickly log water intake.

I mostly use WaterMinder on the Watch, where tapping the complication launches the WaterMinder app, which comes with four custom shortcuts that I set up on the iPhone. These buttons let me log a glass of water, two glasses, or a half-liter bottle of water without having to talk to Siri or run a shortcut. WaterMinder integrates with HealthKit, so I’ve been able to build a nice archive of my hydration habits and patterns over time.

Home

Home+. Ever since there has been a Home app for iOS, it’s been affected by an odd omission: certain features of the HomeKit framework, which is maintained by Apple and available to all developers, are not implemented in the Home app itself. One such feature is the ability to run automations based on value ranges for sensors that report numeric values – for instance, turning on a fan when the temperature drops below a specific level.

An example of the advanced HomeKit automations you can create in Home+.

Matthias Hochgatterer’s Home+ client exposes all these options and, unlike Apple’s Home app, has a fun, well-organized interface that is highly customizable and informative at the same time. I use Home+ primarily to create automations that can’t be set up in Apple’s Home app, but I also appreciate the app’s overall structure and detailed breakdowns of accessory data. [Review]

HomeRun. I don’t use HomeRun on my iPhone – the app is a HomeKit remote for the Apple Watch – but since I have to configure its Watch UI from the iPhone, it qualifies for this list. HomeRun is the Home app for the Watch Apple should have made. Rather than forcing you to swipe through an endless carousel of scenes and accessories, HomeRun allows you to set up a personalized, modular dashboard of buttons that will trigger HomeKit scenes with one tap. You can craft your own grid of scenes on the iPhone, choosing from a selection of colors and thousands of icons, which will then sync to the Apple Watch.

You can design HomeRun’s custom Watch dashboard from the iPhone app.

I tap the HomeRun complication on my watch face several times a day, and it’s become the fastest way I can turn my lights a certain color or switch my Dyson fan to heating mode. I prefer the HomeRun app on the Watch to asking Siri for HomeKit actions, and I believe it is one of the finest pieces of software available on watchOS. [Previous coverage]

Utilities

Deliveries. I’ve tried different package tracking apps over the years, but I always return to Deliveries because of its intuitive design, reliable notifications, and excellent integration with Amazon. Purchasing stuff on Amazon constitutes the majority of my online shopping these days; with Deliveries’ extension, I can start tracking an Amazon delivery simply by sharing the Amazon order webpage with it and choosing “Amazon – by tracking link”. I use Deliveries all year long, but the app is especially useful to check on the status of multiple packages that we order over the holidays. This is the kind of essential utility that, if necessary, I would start paying an annual subscription for.

LookUp. My favorite dictionary app for iPhone and iPad was updated in September with terrific new Shortcuts actions and, more importantly for me, a very specific feature I’ve always wanted from a dictionary app: quiz mode.

LookUp’s main screen is too pretty not to include in at least one screenshot.

Quiz mode is what I’ve always wanted in a dictionary app.

With quizzes, you can now play a game against LookUp and see if you can remember the meaning of words you’ve previously saved in a collection. I used to ask my girlfriend to quiz me about words I’d saved in LookUp, but now that the process has been “gamified” inside LookUp itself, I don’t have to anymore (Silvia didn’t really like this game). I use LookUp to save new English words I discover while reading, so being able to practice on those words has added a lot of value to an already-useful app. [Review]

PCalc. What else is there to say about James Thomson’s versatile calculator for iPhone and iPad? I use it every day for simple calculations as well as currency and unit conversions. PCalc is a fine piece of software that’s been consistently maintained and refreshed over the years, and it’s one of the first apps I download on a fresh installation of iOS and iPadOS. [Previous coverage]

Linky. Still the best way to share links and pictures to one of multiple Twitter accounts from other apps using the share sheet. Linky’s extension supports syntax highlighting for URLs and hashtags, lets you easily switch between multiple accounts, and has a character count that ensures your tweets fit within the 280-character limit. Unless I need to share a thread made of multiple tweets, I always share links to MacStories articles and AppStories episodes using Linky in Safari.

Text Case. I rely on Chris Hannah’s text transformation utility for one specific purpose: the ability to capitalize headlines using the Chicago Manual of Style guidelines from within the shortcut I use to publish articles from iA Writer to WordPress. The Text Case app supports a plethora of text transformation options, but using it in Shortcuts with parameters is enough for my needs.

AnyFont. I thought that iOS 13’s improved font installation support would allow me to stop side-loading fonts with the old profile-based method of AnyFont, but, sadly, that isn’t possible. Font apps from the App Store (a new feature in iOS 13) need to come bundled with the fonts they let you install; in my case, I want to install Apple’s family of San Francisco typefaces, which is only available for download on the Apple Developer website. For this reason, I’ve continued to use AnyFont to install Apple’s fonts on my devices the old fashioned way, and the app still works well.

Google Maps. We still don’t have access to Apple’s fancy new maps here in Italy, so I rely on Google Maps to look up points of interest and other local businesses because I find its data superior to Apple’s current maps. However, I’ve been noticing a gradual decrease in Google’s quality of turn-by-turn directions over the past year with some highly questionable choices, and I’ve been eagerly anticipating the rollout of Apple’s improved maps in my area. After several years, for the first time I’m not so sure Google Maps is going to stay on my iPhone forever.

PDF Viewer. This app continues to be my favorite PDF reader for iPhone and iPad for two reasons: its superb selection of editing tools and integration with Files’ native document browser. With PDF Viewer, I do not have to learn another file manager’s UI and I can keep using iCloud Drive to manage my collection of business documents and other PDFs. The document browser is far from perfect, but at least it lets me integrate apps such as PDF Viewer in a single, consistent workflow.

Adaptivity. It’s somewhat tricky to describe Adaptivity, which is a niche developer utility that I find myself using every summer when I’m working on my annual iOS review. Adaptivity is a debugging tool for designers and developers who want to visualize the operating system’s size classes, semantic colors, safe area insets, SF Symbols, and other native UI elements in practice. It is, effectively, a design playground for Apple’s HIG and latest UIKit APIs.

Adaptivity lets you visualize dozens of iOS system features and interact with them.

Adaptivity has saved me hours of work I would have spent reading through Apple’s documentation or finding ways to describe concepts that are much better explained with screenshots. Adaptivity lets me visualize iOS’ latest design changes, and it plays an essential role in the making of my iOS reviews every year.

Countdowns. A newcomer to my devices this year, Countdowns, as the name implies, lets you create countdown timers that show you how much time is left until a specific event occurs. My use case for the app is very specific: I use it to create countdowns to upcoming music releases previously saved via MusicHarbor or MusicBot Pro. Countdowns can import future events from any calendar on your device and, thanks to iCloud integration, sync events across platforms, including the Mac thanks to the app’s new Catalyst version.

2019

My 50 must-have apps.

Every time I put together this annual roundup, it’s always fun to look back on the concluding thoughts of the previous year’s edition and see how my predictions panned out. Two thoughts stood out to me from the 2018 roundup:

Looking ahead at 2019 and the next WWDC, I fully expect Shortcuts to continue growing and assimilate more functionalities that are still part of apps included in this collection today.

And:

By this time next year, I expect iOS for iPad to sport drastic improvements to file management and multitasking; it’ll be interesting to see the effect a more powerful iOS will have on the third-party app ecosystem, and if I’ll find myself using fewer apps, more pro tools, or perhaps new and different apps that are impossible to imagine right now.

Over a year later, I can see the impact that the updated Shortcuts app and iPad multitasking have had on my typical workflow. By far, the biggest change to my Home screens has been better support for launching shortcuts, which is reflected in the custom icons that now coexist alongside “regular” apps on both my iPhone and iPad. We made MacStories Shortcuts Icons because I needed them; in addition to other improvements I’d like to see in the Shortcuts app, I hope the ability to run shortcuts from the Home screen becomes even more powerful and flexible in iOS 14.

Similarly, the positive effects of iPadOS rippled through the apps I consider must-haves on my iPad Pro: I now consistently favor apps that support Split View and multiwindow, have good integration with external keyboards or displays (see Working Copy and MindNode), and which integrate with the Files app and its document browser. I’m curious to see if Apple will continue to improve upon iPadOS in 2020 following its 2019 relaunch, and, if so, how my favorite iPad apps will keep up with the platform’s evolution.

Besides the more prominent role of Apple apps on my devices (see Mail, Reminders, and Notes), 2019 has been the year of Shortcuts integration with apps made possible by parameters. Over the past few months, not only have we seen developers come up with fresh ideas for how their apps can expose functionality to Shortcuts (see Reeder’s read-later management, Secure ShellFish’s remote uploads, PCalc’s dynamic conversions), but we’ve also observed the progressive rise of a tooling ecosystem built around Shortcuts with apps such as Toolbox Pro, Scriptable, Pushcut, and LaunchCuts. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple take on some of these in 2020 with native enhancements to Shortcuts, but I also know that the company can’t do it all, and I only expect this trend to continue. After all, it’s only a smart decision to let third-party developers expand Shortcuts’ feature set for power users who seek extra options.

2019 was a great year for iPhone and iPad apps, with design improvements such as dark mode and SF Symbols and underlying platform enhancements in the form of Shortcuts parameters and iPadOS multitasking. I’m feeling pretty optimistic about 2020, and I can’t wait to see what developers will come up with over the next few months.

As always, let’s check back in a year.