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My name is Adrian, and I have a lot of things to keep track of. That might be a good thing because I love playing with apps that help me manage it all. I used Above & Beyond throughout the 90s on my Windows laptops, and when I became a Linux geek turned to Task Coach and web apps like Todoist, Remember the Milk and Toodledo.
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After moving to the Mac, I fell in love with Cultured Code’s Things, and I’ve used it successfully for the last decade. But I do love to play, so I keep five or ten of these apps installed on my Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Some I use, and others I play with from time to time. I have a keen interest in OmniFocus and used it as my main task manager for a few years. I also use Apple Reminders and Wunderlist to share tasks with my family. I’ll share some of my experiences throughout the review.
What You Need to Know Up-Front about Task Management
Another excellent to-do list and planner app is the aptly named Todoist (Android, iOS), a multi-platform planner app that keeps things efficient with a clean, gimmick-free approach to interface.
Before we look at the individual apps, here are a few things you should know first.
1. Just Installing a New App Won’t Make You More Productive
Apps are tools, and they will be of more use to you if you know how to use them effectively. Right now, there’s a lot of advice out there about how to become more productive and get more out of your apps. You can’t read it all, but some study will yield a great return on your investment. Start by reading the material that comes with your task management software.
Many have found value reading and practicing David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done“. In it, he covers a range of useful techniques, including capturing tasks and ideas as they occur to you, keeping project lists where you identify the next action to be done, considering higher horizons of focus like your vision and goals, and reviewing all of your lists each week. I recommend it.
2. There’s Room for Personal Preference
We’re not all alike. We have different tasks to manage, and different approaches to the way we organize them. There’s a lot of room for personal preference, and the app that best suits me might not suit you. Look for the app that works the way you do.
3. Lists Aren’t Just for To-Dos
Are you a list keeper? They’re helpful for a lot of things in life. Don’t just use your app to list your daily to-dos — you can use it to track so much more! Here are some ideas:
- Keep a list of the books you want to read and movies you want to see.
- Record the places you’d like to go and people you’d like to visit.
- Keep track of the bills that need to be paid and the dates they’re due.
- Create a bucket list of achievements you’d like to accomplish while you’re still breathing.
4. Other Types of Apps that Help with Task Management
In this review we’ll cover list managers, but keep in mind there are other types of apps that can help you to be productive, and supplement your to-do list:
- calendars to manage your time (Apple Calendar, BusyCal, Fantastical),
- timers and Pomodoro apps to keep you focused and accountable (Be Focused, Timing),
- project management apps (Merlin Project, OmniPlan, Pagico),
- notes apps to keep track of reference material (Apple Notes, Evernote, Google Keep, Microsoft OneNote, Bear),
- outliners to structure your life and information (OmniOutliner, Outlinely, Workflowy, Dynalist),
- Kanban boards to track your team’s progress (Trello, Any.Do, Freeter).
Who Should (& Should Not) Get This?
Years ago my friend Daniel told me, “I thought only disorganized people used to do lists.” I disagreed, but that experience helped clarify to me that not everyone values using a to-do list. He’s certainly not the sort of person who’d spend $80 on an app! Perhaps you feel the same. I encourage you to give a task management app a serious try anyway.
At the time I was editing several blogs, managing a few dozen writers, and having to meet deadlines most days. I couldn’t have survived without the getting the most out of the best task management software I could afford. If you’re the same, then you’re sold on the idea of using a to-do list, and just need to identify the right app for you.
In “Getting Things Done“, David Allen explains that trying to remember all of the things you need to do just adds stress to your life. Once you write them down and get them out of your head you can relax and focus on the task at hand, and become more productive.
Almost everyone will be better organized by using a to-do list app. Once you’ve listed everything you need to do you can become objective. You’ll find it easier to get an idea of how long it will all take, which tasks are most important, and which don’t need to be done at all. You can start to put what you need to do in some sort of order.
How We Tested and Picked
Comparing apps that can manage your to do list is tricky. Each has its own strengths, and there’s a wide range of prices, features, and techniques. Here’s what we were looking for when evaluating.
How Easy Is It to Capture Tasks?
Once you’ve thought of something to do — or someone has asked you to do something — you need to get it into your to do system as soon as possible, or you may forget it. Doing so should be as easy as possible. Many apps have an inbox, where you can enter multiple items quickly without having to organize them up front. Integration with other apps is also helpful, so you can add a task from, say, an email directly into your app.
How Versatile is the App’s Organization?
We all have different roles and task categories, so you need an app that can organize things in a way that makes sense to you. You might want to separate work tasks from your personal ones and create a number of lists to match your responsibilities. Folders, tags, priorities, and flags are some of the ways an app will let you create structure.
Does the App Provide Different Ways to View Your Tasks?
When organizing tasks, it’s helpful to see the details of each project. When doing tasks, it’s helpful to group them in different ways. You might want to see a list of all the tasks that are due soon, quickly check all of the phone calls you need to make, or create a shortlist of the tasks you aim to accomplish today. Many apps allow you to view your tasks by context, filter by tag, or notify you of tasks due today. Some apps even allow you to create custom views.
How Does the App Handle Dates?
Some tasks are associated with a date — most often a deadline, like a homework assignment. It’s helpful to see a list of tasks due today (or in the next few days), and some tasks may deserve a pop-up notification to remind you. Some tasks are recurring and need to be done on a certain day each week, month or year, for example, putting the garbage out. You may have some tasks that you can’t actually start yet. They shouldn’t be clogging up your list, so some apps will let you hide them from your list until a future date — a feature I find very helpful.
Is the App for an Individual or a Team?
Many of the apps we’ll cover in this review are for one person only. Others allow you to share lists and delegate tasks with others. Which do you need? Many people prefer to use two different apps, one for personal use (which other members of the team can’t mess up), and one for shared tasks and projects.
Can the App Sync to Mobile?
I find myself checking my to-do list on my phone and iPad more than my computer. I often review my tasks on the go and add new tasks as soon as I think of them. Mobile apps are helpful and should sync quickly and reliably with your Mac.
Cost
The best to do list apps are not cheap, and in my opinion, that cost is justified. Not everyone will agree, so we’ve included apps right across the price range, all the way down to free. Here’s what the apps we cover cost, sorted from cheapest to most expensive:
- Wunderlist – free
- Apple Reminders – free
- WeDo – free
- GoodTask 3 – $19.99
- 2Do – $24.99
- TaskPaper – $24.99
- OmniFocus – $39.99
- Todoist – $44.99/year
- Things 3 – $49.99
- OmniFocus Pro – $79.99
Now let’s get to the winner’s list.
The Winners
Best Choice for Most People: Things 3
Cultured Code Things is a sleek, modern task manager, and has recently been rebuilt from the ground up. Tasks are logically organized by area of responsibility, project, and tag, and can be viewed in a number of ways — tasks to do today or in the near future, tasks that can be done at any time, and tasks you may get around to someday.
$49.99 from the Mac App Store. A fully functional 15-day trial version is available from the developer’s website. Also available for iOS.
Meet the all-new Things! A complete rethinking of the original, award-winning task manager – with a perfect balance between simplicity and power, incredible new features, delightful interactions, and a timeless new design.
Things has been my main task manager since 2010 — almost as long as I’ve been using a Mac. It suits me well. Maybe it’s a good fit for you too.
Above is a screenshot of the tutorial project. The app looks clean, and there’s a sense of logic in the way it’s set out. The left pane contains a list of your areas of responsibility and projects, and above them, some shortcuts for smart folders that give you useful overviews of your tasks.
Areas of responsibility are the categories that sum up your major roles and interests. It could be as simple as “Work” and “Home”, but I find it useful to include additional areas like “Cycling”, “Tech” and “Finances”.
You add tasks under each of these areas, or you can add projects for jobs that require multiple tasks. For example, under “Family” I have a project that lists the places we’d like to visit while living inter-state for the next year, and under “Work” I have a project related to writing this review.
The smart folders at the top list tasks according to the level of commitment you have toward them:
- Today contains the tasks you should finish today. That includes the tasks that are due today and the ones you’ve flagged as wanting to work on today. You can also list separately tasks to do in the evening.
- Upcoming tasks have start dates or due dates that are coming up. These are listed by date along with events from your calendar.
- Anytime contains important tasks you can work on now, but don’t have a deadline.
- Someday is a list of tasks you haven’t committed to doing yet. They could be wish list items or tasks you don’t have time for right now.
Other folders include the Inbox where you can rapidly enter new tasks, the Logbook which contains all of your done tasks, and the Trash.
Things offers two additional methods of organization. The first is headings. A big project can become cumbersome, and headings allow you to split it into smaller sections. That’s clearer than having one big jumbled list and simpler than creating two different projects.
Things also allows you to categorize your tasks by tags. One task can be assigned multiple tags, and these can be used for a variety of our purposes. Here are some examples:
- Context, for example, home, work, phone.
- People, so you can quickly look up tasks you need to talk to someone about, or tasks that relate to a certain client.
- Priority, so you can focus on just your most important tasks.
- Energy required, so you can choose easy or challenging tasks depending on how much energy you have.
- Time required, like 15m, 30m, 1h, so if you have limited time, you can still find something to do.
Once you have set up some tags, you can filter any list to show just the items tagged a certain way. For example, here are the tasks I can do anytime that are tagged “Phone”.
Things also supports checklists, which is helpful for tasks with multiple steps that aren’t significant enough to be set up as a project.
Things offers three date features:
- When (start date). Some tasks can’t be started yet, so shouldn’t be cluttering your to-do list. The “When” setting will hide the task until you can actually start to work on it, though you’ll always be able to track it down in the Upcoming section.
- Deadline (due date). Some tasks have a deadline, and there may be consequences if you miss it!
- Reminder (notification). For those tasks you can’t afford to forget about, you can set a reminder alarm at a specific time on the day it’s due.
Things is designed for individuals and doesn’t allow you to share or assign tasks. There are mobile versions of the app for iPhone and iPad, and sync is reliable.
At $49.99 Things is not cheap, and if you need the iPhone and iPad versions, it’s even more expensive. I find it worth every cent. You can read more from my full Things app review.
Best Choice for Power Users: OmniFocus 2
OmniGroup’s OmniFocus is a power user’s tool for getting things done. Unique features like outlines and perspectives allow you to optimize your workflow, and the review feature allows you to periodically check up on your projects.
Power users will want the Pro versions of both the Mac and iOS apps, which comes to an eye-watering $139.98. If you put a high value on productivity, you might find that a bargain.
$39.99 from the Mac App Store or the developer’s website. A 14-day trial version is available from the developer’s website. OmniFocus Pro is available for $79.99 from the developer’s website, or you can upgrade through an in-app purchase. Also available for iOS.
Live a productive, contextual life with OmniFocus 2 for Mac. Keep work and play separated with contexts, perspectives, and focus. Ignore the irrelevant, focus on what you can do now, and accomplish more. And do it all much faster than before.
OmniFocus can do everything Things can do, and more. It’s a powerful and flexible tool that can adapt to your way of doing things. For best results, you’ll need to purchase and carefully configure the Pro version. So it will cost you more and require more effort to set up.
You can view your OmniFocus tasks by project or by context. Project View allows you to organize what you need to do in detail. You’re able to create as many folders and subfolders as you need to give categories to place your tasks and projects in.
Projects can be parallel or sequential. A parallel project has tasks that can be completed in any order, where the tasks of a sequential project must be done in the sequence they are listed. You can use the outline feature to create a hierarchy of subtasks. I love the idea, but find the interface a little fiddly, and wish it worked more like OmniOutliner.
Context View is often the best way to work on your tasks. You could pull up your “Phone” context if you’re in the mood to chat, or the “Errands” context when shopping. All relevant tasks from across your projects will be there. However, while Things allows you to apply an unlimited number of tags, each OmniFocus task can be associated with one and only one context.
Regular reviews are important. In OmniFocus, you can define how often each project should be reviewed. The Review view shows you all projects that are due.
But the real power of OmniFocus Pro is its Perspectives, where you can create as many custom views as you need. You could create a perspective to imitate Things’ Today view that lists all tasks that are flagged or due today.
You could set up “Home” and “Work” perspectives, have one for tasks that are due soon and another for tasks that are on hold. This feature is only in the Pro version and really allows you to personalize the app.
The Best Free Choice: Wunderlist
Wunderlist is an attractive, multi-platform task app that is now completely free. The Pro version was recently discontinued, and its features incorporated into the standard app. There are versions for Windows, Android and more.
Wunderlist has fewer features than both Things and OmniFocus. That keeps the app simple, which will appeal to some people, as will its price. One final benefit — the app allows you to share task lists and assign tasks, making it the only winner appropriate for teams.
Free download from the Mac App Store. As of April 4, 2018, Wunderlist Pro is no longer available, and its features are now included in the free version. Also available for Android, iPhone, iPad, Web, Windows Phone, Chromebook, Kindle Fire.
Wunderlist is the easiest way to get stuff done. Whether you’re planning a holiday, sharing a shopping list with a partner or managing multiple work projects, Wunderlist is here to help you tick off all your personal and professional to-dos.
If you’re concerned about the cost of our other winners, Wunderlist may be for you. It’s a simple and attractive task manager that manages to include quite a few features, and it’s absolutely free.
Like most task managers, you can set up lists for the main categories of your life. With Wunderlist, you can share each list with others, so you could share a shopping list with your family, and a work project with the other team members. Individual tasks can be assigned to other members of the group.
This is something our other winners are unable to do. So, besides cost, the ability for multiple people to manage the same task is another strong reason to consider Wunderlist.
You’re also able to star important tasks, and set due dates and reminders. When looking for urgent tasks, you’ll need to check both the “Starred” and “Today” lists. I wish that you could view both in a single list, but that’s not possible unless you go through the list of tasks due today and manually star them.
Tasks can contain checklists, notes, and comments. Comments allow team members to discuss a task with one another.
The Competition and Comparisons
There are plenty of alternatives. Here are a few highly rated apps you may like to consider.
2Do is recommended in many reviews and highly rated on the App Store. It has many of the features of our winners and costs the same as Things.
The app offers tags and notifications, lists and projects, mobile apps and sync. Although it looks quite simple, there is plenty of power under the hood, including smart lists, which are similar to OmniFocus’ perspectives. They are configurable saved searches that can pull tasks from all of your lists, for example, all tasks due in the next three days that are tagged “bill”.
2Do is $49.99 from the Mac App Store, or $9.99/mo on Setapp. Also available for iOS and Android.
GoodTask 3 is based on the standard Mac Reminders and Calendars app and adds functionality. That makes it a good choice if you’re already using Apple’s productivity apps, but wish they were more capable.
Like 2Do, GoodTask features smart lists, which search for tasks from certain lists, or that include (or exclude) certain tags. This feature isn’t as powerful as OmniFocus’ perspectives, but it’s helpful all the same. Other features include subtasks, repeating tasks, manual sort, and quick actions.
GoodTask 3 is $19.99 from the Mac App Store or $9.99/mo on Setapp. A trial version is available. Also available on iOS.
Todoist started as a web app, but now has apps for most platforms, including Mac. I used it long-term over a decade ago, and it’s come a long way since then.
The free version includes everything you need to get started but doesn’t include all of the features of our winners. It allows you to capture and organize tasks, remember deadlines, and review the week ahead. You can map out your tasks with projects and goals, and highlight tasks that are important with color-coded priority levels, and even visualize your progress with attractive charts and graphs.
There are some limits to the free version. You can have a maximum of 80 projects, and up to five people can access a project. Yes, it’s a multi-user app. A premium subscription will increase these numbers to 200 and 50, and unlock even more features, like templates, labels, themes and custom views.
Download Todoist from the Mac App Store. It’s free for a basic plan and $44.99/year for premium.
TaskPaper 3 is quite different to the other apps we’ve listed. It’s a plain text app and very minimalistic. It’s also quite smart, offering a very different way of working with your tasks. You organize your projects, tasks, and subtasks in an outline, and I find it more intuitive than OmniFocus’ outlining features. You can use tags on each item, and quickly filter your whole list by a specific tag.
When my daughter’s family moved in with us a few years ago, rearranging the house was a huge task. So I used a TaskPaper file in Editorial on my iPad to organize and track our progress. I just attempted to open that file in TaskPaper for the Mac for the first time, and it worked perfectly.
TaskPaper is $24.99 from the Mac App Store, or $9.99/mo on Setapp. A 7-day trial version is available. It is no longer available for iOS, but compatible apps like Taskmator and Editorial are.
Free Alternatives
Here are some ways to manage your to-do list without spending any money.
Use Pen and Paper
You don’t absolutely need to use an app to manage your to-do list. There’s something satisfying about crossing completed tasks off a paper list. You could scribble on the back of an envelope with a pencil, or purchase a stylish Moleskine or Daytimer, it’s totally up to you.
There is a certain amount of redundancy and duplication when using pen and paper. You may find that frustrating, or you may find it a good way to review your tasks each day. Paper productivity systems seem to be taking off again, and new methodologies like the Bullet Journal are being developed.
Free To Do List Apps for Mac
Wunderlist is a great free task manager for the Mac. Here are a few more.
Apple Reminders is already installed on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad, and allows you to create tasks with reminders, and shared lists. Some time ago I moved our family shopping list from Wunderlist to Reminders, and it works well. My wife and I can add items to the list, and they’re updated automatically on both of our phones. It works well.
Siri integration is very helpful. You wouldn’t believe how many times I say to Siri, “Remind me to check the washing machine in 90 minutes.” It creates a Reminders task for me and notifies me 90 minutes later without fail.
WeDo is free from the Mac App Store. It includes subtasks, due dates, repeating tasks, reminders, notes, and attachments. You can also share and assign tasks to others, making it suitable for families and small businesses.
Free To Do List Web Services
Instead of using a Mac app, there are a quite a few web apps that will manage your to-do list. You’ll be able to access your tasks from any device without installing a thing.
Toodledo isn’t the most attractive web app out there, but it’s free and includes all the features you’ll ever want. Mobile apps are available.
Google Tasks is simple and doesn’t have many features, but if you use other Google apps like Gmail or Google Calendar, it is well-integrated and may come in handy.
Asana is a great way to share and assign tasks with your team, and is free for up to 15 team members. A Pro plan is available for $9.99/month that allows more members and includes more features.
The basic plan for Remember the Milk is free, and includes plenty of features. If you want more, you can upgrade to the Pro plan for $39.99/year.
GQueues Lite includes all the basic features you need for free. Upgrade and gain additional features for $25/year.
Trello‘s boards, list, and cards allow you and your team to organize and prioritize your projects. The basic version is free, and if you need additional features, Business Class costs $9.99/user/month.
You may have the latest and greatest iPhone XS Max, but what good is it without awesome iOS apps? Not much good at all. Even if you don't have Apple's new top-of-the-line device, a major reason for owning an iPhone is the wealth of apps available for the platform. The question is, which ones should you install? We've got you covered. The experts here at PCMag have tested a vast number of apps, sorting the good from the bad, to come up with this massive list of the 100 best iPhone apps.
If 100 apps are too many for your attention span, check out our much shorter and sweeter 12 must-have iPhone apps. There you'll find essential and well-known apps.
The apps included here will run just fine on the past few generations of iPhones, large or small. However, if you have an iPhone X or later, some apps let you do new, different things. The newer models include better cameras, Face ID, and more-powerful AR capabilities, which can make a difference for some apps. Inside the new phones' guts, the newer processors also make many activities feel much zippier.
Our favorite apps cover a range of activities, including photo editing, social networking, messaging, getting organized, and staying healthy. There's even one that helps you fill your gas tank cheaply. We've broken this list into 12 relevant categories, so you can browse just the app types that most interest you. Each app name is linked to its page on the App Store; if we have a review of the app, that's linked in the description text.
In the past, this list also featured the coolest video games the App Store had to offer. The iPhone gaming scene has become so robust that we decided it deserved its own separate, expanded list: Check out our feature covering the 50 Best iPhone Games. The selection is sure to be beefed up even further with the upcoming Apple Arcade streaming game service.
Be sure to revisit this page from time to time. Cool new apps arrive on the App Store all the time, so we update this list when we make new discoveries. Have you become enthralled with an app we failed to mention? We'd love to hear about it. Leave a comment and we might add your suggestion during our next update. We didn't forget Android users either; we have a separate roundup of the 100 best Android apps as well.
iPhone App Categories:
Best iPhone Communication Apps
Best iPhone Education & Reference Apps
Best iPhone Entertainment Apps
Best iPhone Finance Apps
Best iPhone Food & Travel Apps
Best iPhone Health & Fitness Apps
Best iPhone Lifestyle Apps
Best iPhone Photo & Video Apps
Best iPhone Productivity Apps
Best iPhone Security Apps
Best iPhone Social Networking Apps
Best iPhone Utility Apps
Best iPhone Communication Apps
Facebook Messenger
Free
Whatever your take on the social network of record, its messaging app is without equal. You don't need a phone number to use Facebook Messenger, you can use it on any device without the need for your phone to be present as it must with WhatsApp. It works on every platform, unlike iMessage. It also has many cool features, like audio calling and video chatting with AR masks, stickers, and even mobile payments. You can even play games through it with your contacts. Oh, and all of that's free.
Gmail
Free
Google's email app is a wonderful communication tool. Like our other Editors' Choice, Microsoft Outlook, it now lets you read mail accounts from Hotmail, Yahoo, and others via IMAP. It doesn't integrate your calendar the way Outlook for iPhone does, but Gmail does make your entire email database easier to deal with than the preinstalled Apple Mail app. It's smooth and fast, and even gives you five seconds to undo sending.
Kik
Free
Many messaging apps require you to give up your phone number to those who you chat with, but Kik only requires a username. And with a bot store already boasting more than 6,000 bots, Kik beat Facebook Messenger and Skype to the punch in the field of artificial conversationalists. Group chat, photo and video sharing, and gaming add to this youth-focused app's appeal.
Microsoft Outlook
Free
Microsoft Outlook's light and flexible mobile email app supports nearly every email account you might have, includes an integrated calendar, and provides a Focused inbox that shows you only important messages. Frequently updated, the app includes an ancillary Apple Watch app and supports 3D Touch. Unlike the rest of Office Mobile, the Outlook iPhone app is totally free.
Skype
Free
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Skype is one of the best free communication tools for the iPhone. The app lets you make video calls and supports rich texting with animated emojis. A good selection of bots gets you info you can use as well as entertainment. As with other versions of Skype, you can call or chat with other Skype users at no charge, or buy credit to call any other phone number, landline, or mobile.
Snapchat
Free
Sexting and security worries aside, the visual chat app Snapchat can be a lot of fun to use—if you can figure out its very nonstandard interface. Snapchat should not be used as a private and secure messaging app. Rather, it's a simple app that you can use to swap funny, ephemeral visuals with your friends. Messages sent through Snapchat disappear from the receiver's phone after a short time. Snap a picture, draw or write on top of it if you like, choose the amount of time the recipient can see it, and send away. Just bear in mind that all digital media is reproducible.
Spark Email
Free
Spark sports a slick interface and organizes your email into logical categories like Personal, Newsletters, and Notifications, though you can switch to a more standard full inbox view if you like. It handles multiple accounts, but doesn't combine categories for them as Outlook does. The app is very configurable, with customizable swipe actions It also lets you pin improtant stuff and snooze emails to deal with later.
Viber
Free
The ability to seamlessly transfer calls from mobile to desktop and vice versa was an early differentiator for Viber, which lets you exchange sticker-emblazoned texts as well as make calls and engage in video chats and calls to standard phones for free. And though it requires your phone number, it does encrypt communications.
Best iPhone Education & Reference Apps
ASL App
Free
The ASL App is a free iPhone and iPad app specifically made for learning the basics of American Sign Language, and it's a welcome introduction. It uses videos to teach you the alphabet, various useful words and phrases, and the required gestures. The free version covers the basics, and in-app purchases add advanced material in 99-cent packs. $9.99 gets you everything the app offers.
Bing
Free
People often forget that there's more than one way to find webpages, directions, videos, and photos on the Internet. There are actually plenty of good reasons to try out alternatives to market leader Google, and the Bing app for the iPhone shows several of them. Bing has a design that's gorgeous, clear, and simple to use. Feature-wise, Bing's app can keep up, and adds voice and camera input along with local info. What's more, the Bing app's home screen offers local guidance and news suggestions, rather than just a blank search box.
Chegg Books
Free
Every college student is familiar with handing over several 100-dollar bills and lugging many pounds of textbooks from the campus store. Chegg's goal is to take some of the pain out of that process. The app lets you rent, buy, or sell books. The company offers study apps, too.
Duolingo
Free
Could your learning a new language somehow add value to other people all over the world? It's a strange idea, but one that's playing out when you use the free language learning app Duolingo, which now has an iPhone app as well. As far as free, mobile apps for language-learning go, the Duolingo iPhone app is easily the best. A recent update makes your next lessons available offline, so you can continue learning even when you're not connected to the Internet.
Elevate
Free, with premium subscription for $39.99 per year
Elevate offers training in writing, listening, speaking, reading, and math. You can set your goals, and after you've completed some engaging exercises, it graphically shows your performance in each of these categories. Unlocking all content costs $39.99 per year, but you can try everything free for 30 days. Go ahead: Make yourself smarter!
Rosetta Stone
Free app; $79 for three-month subscription
Rosetta Stone, our top pick among advanced language-learning programs, offers a mobile app that mirrors the lessons available online. When you log into the mobile app, you're able to pick up your learning from the place you left off. Its simplified interface is easy to navigate and effectively lets you keep up your practice while on the run. It's not cheap, but it's the best way to learn a new language.
Wikipedia
Free
Half the fun of having a smartphone is looking things up when you're in the middle of a bar bet—and hopefully being right. Wikipedia is the go-to source for fact-checking in the mobile age, and the Wikipedia app usually returns results faster than a mobile search engine.
WolframAlpha
$2.99
WolframAlpha is like a math and science version of Wikipedia. It's an outstanding source of knowledge and computation about virtually anything, from basic algebra to the depths of the universe. It's like a search engine for algebra, physics, engineering, and so much more—even nutritional information. As you might expect, the app requires an Internet connection to work.
Best iPhone Entertainment Apps
Crunchyroll
$6.95 per month
If you love anime (or live-action Asian TV), Crunchyroll is the ad-free streaming service for you. It offers tens of thousands of episodes, shows simulcast from overseas, and numerous services fans crave, including social interaction features. We do wish, however, that it had a Netflix-like recommendation feature.
Downcast
$2.99
Downcast's iPhone app shines with excellent features, smart downloading options, and a great interface. It's worlds better than the stock Podcasts app from Apple. Downcast is suited for people who want a lot of control over their podcast listening experience, and it's that fine level of control that makes it our Editors' Choice. Downcast lets you customize not only how often the podcast catcher checks for new episodes, but also where you are when it does, using geo-fencing. For example: 'Check for new episodes when I arrive at work.'
Hulu
$7.99 per month
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Hulu is the best service for legally streaming new and classic domestic and international TV programs soon after they air, and the service offers up some excellent films as well as a notably extensive anime collection. You can even stream live content with a Hulu with Live TV subscription.
Netflix
$8.99 per month
Netflix, like many of the other apps included here, has become a cultural phenomenon. Original, exclusive series, such as The Crown, House of Cards, and Stranger Things, are viewed by many as superior to much of what's available on broadcast or cable. Add to those the host of favorite standbys in both television and cinema releases, and you've got a must-have service. And now you can download much of the content for offline viewing. Note that this is one of the few apps included here that costs money, with subscriptions starting at $7.99.
Pocket Casts
$3.99
There are plenty of fantastic podcasts you can listen to on your iPhone. Unfortunately, Apple's own podcast app hardly does them justice. Good podcast discovery and rich settings and options, including the ability to sync your listening experience across multiple devices, make Pocket Casts one of the best podcast catchers and players on the iPhone.
LiveXLive
Free, with premium subscriptions starting at $3.99 per month
Slacker Radio is now LiveXLive. It always seems to pound just a few beats harder than the rest. The revamped app combines the company's live music and video streams with Slacker Radio's knowledgeable DJs and deep music well to produce one of the most complete streaming music services on the market today.
SoundCloud
Free; $4.99 for SoundCloud Go
SoundCloud has become an audio phenomenon. The app provides a gorgeous and clear interface to the tunes. If you want more than the mainstream or want to upload your own music, you can't ignore SoundCloud. The SoundCloud Go option removes ads and offers unlimited offline track saving; the $9.99 per month SoundCloud Go+ adds a huge library of commercially released music.
Spotify
Free; Premium subscription $9.99 per month
All of earth's music-on-demand! Spotify offers a massive catalog of every conceivable genre, and even creates playlists based on your listening history. Now you can use it to listen to podcasts as well as music, and download content for offline listening. Easily switch between your listening devices from any other device. Listen for free with ads or pay $9.99 per month for ad-free listening as well as other premium features like 320Kbps high-quality audio.
TuneIn
Free; $9.99 for Premium per month
Internet radio remains one of the wonders of modern global communications: Listen to broadcast and Internet-only radio without geographical restrictions, and even without temporal restrictions: There are dozens of Internet Radio stations that can take you back to the 40s and 50s, if you're a fan of the Fibber or Jack Benny. TuneIn Pro offers the very best portal to all this, and throws in an MLB radio option, as well as other sports. Oh, and you can also get your Radiolab fix in it, as it also supports podcasts. A free, ad-supported version is also available.
Twitch
Free
Twitch's iPhone app may not allow you to stream your own gameplay videos, but it is the best way to watch your favorite streaming personalities and chat with fellow gaming fans on your mobile device. Twitch is the service to turn to if you want to watch countless people, from professionals to hobbyists, streaming every video game you can think of. It's also mostly free of the harsh copyright restrictions that are currently kneecapping competitor YouTube Gaming. Twitch on iPhone is a great portable portal into the Twitch community.
Vimeo
Free
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Vimeo is the grownup's version of YouTube. With a higher quality level in general, you'll find art films and independent projects, as well as animation, sports, music, instruction, and comedy. No more being overwhelmed with cats, memes, and skateboard wipeout videos. Not to mention the ads and the uncivil comments found on the incumbent internet video service. Fave and share, follow users who post videos you like, add to your Watch Later set, and save videos for offline viewing. Among some slick interface features is a PiP player, for while you explore other parts of the app.
Best iPhone Finance Apps
Coinbase
Free
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Get in on the cryptocurrency craze with this full-featured and well-designed app. See current rates and set up digital currency wallets for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. You can use Touch ID or Face ID (on the iPhone X) to secure viewing of your account, and set price trigger alerts.
LevelUp
Free
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LevelUp can save you a few dollars the very first time you use it. The app provides the easiest possible way to pay at your local salad bar, café, or doughnut shop. You won't be billed until the beginning of the following month, either. You can also order ahead through the app, and find participating nearby businesses. No more waiting in line!
Mint.com
Free
Mint.com helps you keep detailed accounts of your finances by connecting to all your financial accounts and tracking all the money you earn and spend. The iPhone app gives you deep insight into how you're spending your money and whether you're sticking to the budget you've created. It's one of the best personal finance apps you'll find.
Qapital
$3 to $12 per month
Proper budgets are serious business, but who says they also can't be a fun game? Personal finance iPhone app Qapital entices you to save through gamification and tiny actions you take every day. It makes saving for goals easy. Just be ready to open a new savings account that entails a low monthly fee.
Venmo
Free
Devices like Square and built-in services like Apple Pay Cash make it easy for you to pay businesses without cash or cards. But if what if you just want to pay back a friend for a fun night on the town? With Venmo, you won't have to scrounge up dollar bills or remember how to write a check. Just download this app, enter your bank account or debit card data, connect to your friend, and start letting the money flow. Venmo also talks to Facebook so you can share your wildest transactions with the world.
Best iPhone Food & Travel Apps
Airbnb
Free
Despite some controversy in some areas over hotel laws, we've had nothing but good experiences, clean rooms, and friendly hosts via Airbnb. The app has all the capabilities you could ask for and more. Travelers can book their stay, chat directly with the host, get exact directions, and explore fantasy accommodations like furnished tree houses. Hosts can vet potential boarders, manage their calendars, and promote their properties through the app. It's a win-win proposition.
GasBuddy
Free
Yes, driving by yourself with a combustion-engine vehicle is so passé, but those of us who still occasionally use that old 20th-century mode of transportation universally want to pay as little for fuel as possible. Gasbuddy shows you the best prices at the nearest stations. I discovered that I could either pay $3.19 per gallon in Manhattan or hop over to New Jersey and pay $2.37. With a big enough tank, that could cover the cost of the tunnel!
Google Maps
Free
Another one from the dominant force on the internet, Google Maps may well have the most up-to-date and detailed geographic information of any organization around. Its turn-by-turn directions by car, foot, and public transportation are hard to beat. The app integrates with your Google account so it knows your home and work addresses to determine commute times. Offline maps, street view, and indoor maps are nifty plusses. After a shaky start, the iPhone's built-in Apple Maps now matches most of its strengths, however, and competitor Here WeGo offers another good alternative if you're concerned about privacy.
GrubHub
Free
Most cities have plenty of delicacies to offer, but going out and getting them can be a pain. If you live in or are visiting any of GrubHub's 1,100-plus covered towns in the US (or London), you can have tasty local food delivered directly to your doorstop with the GrubHub iPhone app. After merging with competitor Seamless the service now offers a choice of over 45,000 takeout restaurants. We love how it texts you to tell you when your food will arrive, lets you tip inside the app, and lets you tell restaurants to save the earth and spare the plastic utensils.
Hipmunk
Free
The Hipmunk iPhone app, a spinoff of the Hipmunk website, is a travel booking app for flights and hotels. What makes Hipmunk unique is it incorporates accommodation options from alternative sites such as Airbnb and HomeAway, two services that let homeowners rent out their private real estate by the day or week.
Kayak
Free
Kayak is a wonderful multipurpose travel app, helping you find and purchase flights, hotels, car rentals, and more. A companion Apple Watch app keeps your plans an alerts on your wrist. Another perk: detailed maps of more than 100 airport terminals.
Maps.Me
Free
When visiting far-flung places, you can't always get your iPhone connected to a data signal, yet you need to figure out where exactly you are. For those times, there's the Maps.Me offline map app. It lets you download an entire city or country's map data with one click, so you don't have to worry about getting lost when you haven't got mobile or Wi-Fi data. The app shows local transportation and dining choices, and even offers bike directions. It's based on the open-source OpenStreetMap projects, which means a big corporation isn't recording your every move when you use it. You can remove the small, unobtrusive ads that support the project for just $3.49 per year.
OpenTable
Free
OpenTable has long been a choice service for making dinner reservations without picking up the phone, and with TouchID support, the iPhone app now has a whole bunch of new features. You can not only make a restaurant reservation, but also pay for your meal at the end of it using Apple Pay. The redesigned interface makes use of the Plus iPhones' extra-large size, too.
Transit
Free
Transit has become the go-to-app for city dwellers and travelers to cities who want to get around like natives. Without even requiring you to tap anything, transit instantly shows all the public transportation options around you. It also lets you know how long the nearest Uber car will take to get to you, and its map shows you the location of nearby Car2Go cars. For anyone who craves the most efficient way to get around any of its 125 included worldwide cities, Transit is a must.
Weather: The Weather Channel
Free
None of us will be able to bend the weather to our will like Sean Connery in 1998's The Avengers, or Thor in the other Avengers. Instead, we rely on weather apps like The Weather Channel's offering to keep us alert to the weather's whims. This excellently designed iPhone app provides all the weather information you need, and it even works with Apple Watch.
Weather Underground
Free
Sure, iOS has a Weather app, but you should forsake it because Weather Underground is far better. It succeeds because it sticks to what it does best: clearly presenting lots of hyper-local information in a simple and highly customizable interface. The rich data in this excellent app will keep the most info-hungry meteorology geek satisfied.
Yelp
Free
The most comprehensive business-reviewing app, Yelp turns out to be an invaluable tool for finding restaurants, stores, and services nearby, especially when you're in a town you don't know well. YAnd you can find good local spots worldwide with it, not just in the US.
Best iPhone Health & Fitness Apps
Cyclemeter
Free, with $9.99 Elite upgrade
Bicycle-ride tracking app Cyclemeter collects a wealth of data, is very accurate, and contains several well-thought-out features. Cyclemeter is a free download, but to unlock all its capabilities you'll need to pay $9.99 for the Elite in-app purchase. It maps and records your bicycle rides, then compiles all your data into excellent graphs. Despite its name, Cyclemeter doesn't just record cycling. Other activities, from cross-country skiing to running, also come preloaded. And now you can control many of this fitness app's functions from an Apple Watch, and store your workout data in iCloud.
Headspace
$12.99 per month
There are other components to fitness than huffing and puffing on the jogging track. Relieving stress is high on the list, and meditation can aid in that goal. Headspace offers hundreds of guided meditations that can reduce anxiety and increase mindfulness. In-app subscriptions for more courses start at $12.99—still a lot cheaper than a shrink!
MyFitnessPal
Free, with premium subscription for $9.99 per month
The free health app MyFitnessPal is one of the best all-in-one calorie counter and exercise trackers for the iPhone. A simple design and interface make using the app a quick chore rather than a fatiguing project, which is essential when trying to reach a long-term fitness or weight goal. The selling feature of this app is its exhaustive food and nutrition database, which trounces every competitor's that we've seen. For ad-free use and some additional capabilities, there's a $9.99-per-month in-app subscription, which is a bit steep.
Pear Personal Coach
$3.99 per month
The Pear Personal Coach app talks you through runs, at-home workouts, yoga routines, and even training programs for running races. Real human voices make the audio part of the experience excellent. After a 30-day trial, there's a $3.99-per-month subscription cost.
Runtastic
$4.99
Don't be fooled by Runtastic's name. Runtastic PRO isn't just for runners—it's for anyone who wants to track an activity, including cycling, hiking, skiing, kayaking, or just walking. Runtastic spits out a wealth of information about your activities and route. Maps of your route, for example, have mile markers on them, and you can pull up detailed charts to see your speed, pace, elevation, and more for each leg. When you wear a supported heart-rate monitor while using the app, it will show you that data in your final outputs, too. Audio feedback, music integration, and much more make this one of the best running (and sports activity-tracking) apps.
Strava
$7.99 per month
Google To Do List App
Runners and cyclists who thrive on competition love the Strava app. After a major overhaul and release, this app is better than it was before. Whether you're competing against yourself to beat your best time, or looking at the long list of strangers who have smoked you on some nasty uphill stretch of your favorite route, Strava brings a fierce competitive angle.
Touchfit: GSP
$4.99
If you need someone to kick your butt into shape, MMA World Champion Georges St-Pierre may be the one to do it. His iPhone workout app, Touchfit: GSP, coaches you through a series of exercises for a total body workout. After each set, you 'touch in' to tell the app whether it was easy, hard, very hard, or impossible to complete. The app uses that information to adjust your workout to make sure you're always challenged but not pushed beyond your boundaries. You're sure to feel sore tomorrow.
WebMD
Free
WebMD is much more than a diagnosis app, although you certainly can use it to input symptoms you are experiencing and find some clues as to what's ailing you. It also contains listings for healthcare professionals and pharmacies in your area, as well as first-aid guides—simple instructions for dealing with emergencies. This free reference app is one you hope you don't need, but the moment you do, you'll be glad you downloaded it.
ZocDoc
Free
If you haven't been scrupulous about staying in shape using any of the apps above, had some accident or illness, or just contemplating a butt-lift, ZocDoc can hook you up with the right physician. It not only finds you an appropriate doctor or specialist, but makes appointments a snap and lets you see other users' ratings of the doctors you're considering. The app knows which doctors take your insurance, recommends checkup types, and keeps track of your medical visits, even if you didn't make the appointments through ZocDoc.
Best iPhone Lifestyle & Hobby Apps
5miles
Free
Before the Internet, if you wanted to buy a used item or strange service not available in a local store, you crossed your fingers and hoped it was in your newspaper's classified ads. Now, 5miles adds a twist to Craigslist, letting you specify how far you want your search to reach. It's a wonderful, if occasionally seedy, digital marketplace that resembles Pinterest in its card-like presentation. 5miles's mobile marketplace connects nearby buyers and sellers. Enter a bustling bazaar of goods, services, housing, and job offers right on your iPhone.
Dubsmash
Free
Dubsmash lets you create and share short videos of you lip syncing to an audio clip. It's silly, pointless, and a lot of fun. Sometimes that's what you need. The app is more than a goofy idea, though. The huge catalog of user-submitted sound files includes everything from questionable political quotes to famous movie one-liners to animal noises. If it's good enough for Hugh Jackman, it's good enough for you.
ESPN
Free
ESPN's free app lets you check the game quickly, and discreetly when necessary (that is, with your phone under the dinner table), for your favorite teams in more sports than most other apps. Get scores, news, and a live Twitter-like feed from top analysts. It covers baseball, basketball, football, soccer, tennis, ice hockey, cricket, racing, rugby, WWE, and more.
Free
Flipboard is an app that curates content from your social networks and Web partners (think periodicals and blogs) based on your interests and turns it into stunning magazine-like digital pages. The app is free to download and requires a free user account. Flipboard absolutely shines on the iPad, taking advantage of swiping gestures with both visual and interactive grace, but it's still elegant on the iPhone despite the smaller screen.
Groupon
Free
Who can resist a deal? Groupon finds nearby deals for you, sometimes at massive savings. Find discounts on goods, things to do, spas, restaurants, and getaways. See what other users thought of the deals, and check out the super-cheap 'door-buster' deals. You can even pay with Apple Pay!
iBird Pro
$14.99
Birding has hit the big time. One recent study named it the fastest growing outdoor recreational activity. Paramount for birders is being able to identify the species they're seeing and hearing, and the iBird Pro app lets them do just that. Each species includes illustration, photos, and several recordings of the species songs and calls. You can search among its 940 included species by common or Latin names. When you're carrying binoculars and possibly a telephoto camera, not having to lug a field guide is a big plus. No internet connection is required, so it's a fairly big download.
Kickstarter
Free
The king of crowdsourcing offers an iPhone app worthy of royalty with this free entry. Whether you're a supporter or a creator, the Kickstarter app provides everything you need. It doesn't, however, let you sign up as a creator, which you'll still have to do on the web on a computer. Be careful, though, you could be so entranced by its engaging interface that you overspend your crowdsourcing budget.
LibriVox
Free, with $1.99 Pro upgrade
LibriVox is a volunteer project that records public-domain audiobooks. It's a great way to take in some Dickens or Twain while resting your eyes. You can either stream or download. Browse by author or genre or just search for what you want to hear. You can even set a sleep timer if you yearn for that childhood feeling of being read to sleep. A $1.99 Pro version removes the brief audio ads.
NASA
Free
NASA has released many iPhone apps, most of them with a specific focus (NASA Television, ISSLive, NASA Space Weather) but this app is the space agency's flagship app, and, in that role, it aggregates a wide range of NASA content. Space enthusiasts and curious minds will love how it packs a wealth of news stories, features, images, video, and information about the space agency's activities into this one mobile app.
On Now US TV Listings
Free
Television watching is a lifestyle choice that's indulged by more than a few. This app makes it easy to find out what's on, when it's on, and what channel it's on. Dig into episode summaries, set alarms for when your favorite shows are on, and even see what's available on-demand. If you're a confirmed couch potato, this is the app for you.
Best iPhone Photo and Video Apps
Adobe Photoshop Express
Free, with in-app purchases for some features
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Adobe is known for creating the highest-quality imaging software around, and Photoshop Express follows in this pedigree. In a clear interface, you get excellent lighting and color correction tools. Not only are there classy preset effect filters, but you can create your own custom ones, too. The only drawback is that some features require an Adobe account.
Apple iMovie
Free
Apple's mobile video-editing app is the perfect tool for making those snaps and clips from your last vacation watchable—and enjoyable. iMovie makes it easy to do a surprising amount with your media, including freeze-frame, filters, titles, trimming, and adding background music. And now it's free.
Facetune
Free, with in-app purchases for some features
Need to make someone's face more beautiful in an iPhone photo? Facetune gives you an abundance of tools for doing just that. Smoother skin, better hair, happier smiles, and even a more prominent jawline are all possible with this powerful app.
Flickr
Free
Not only does Flickr have one of the largest communities of passionate photographers, but its iPhone app has a good number of photo correction and effect tools. The app does a great job of showing you responses to your photos as well as the stream of photos from accounts you follow. It even takes advantage of the iPhone's 3D Touch.
PicsArt
Free, with in-app purchases
PicsArt may be the most imaging-tool-packed app of all, and on top of that it includes its own social community. Overlays, layers, clone stamp, curves, and masks are all at your disposal. And though with so many tools the interface is still in some places more cluttered than those of some competitors, it's streamlined compared with earlier versions.
Prisma
Free
Prisma, which takes prosaic smartphone photos and uses AI to produce truly artistic results, understandably made a big splash on the Internet this year. Make that street scene look like a Van Gogh or that portrait like a Picasso. Really! This is one app you've got to see at work to believe. It does its magic on its servers rather than locally, though, so you may have to wait.
ProCamera
$4.99
Where most iPhone photography apps focus on what you do after you've shot a photo, ProCamera is more concerned with the shooting itself. The app shows an interface that resembles that on a D-SLR. You can change the ISO, EV (exposure value), shutter speed, and white balance. A stabilizing option waits for the phone to be still before snapping a photo. Brilliant.
Best iPhone Productivity Apps
Any.do
Free, with $45-per-year Premium subscription
List-making and task-management app Any.do has a unique feature called the Any.do moment that encourages making a habit of reviewing your daily tasks. Geolocation reminders actually work in this app, and it's an overall great app for jotting down tasks and goals.
Asana
$11.99 per person per month
PCMag's favorite collaboration tool also has a great iPhone app. Asana not only shows you your tasks and notifies you about status changes, but even let you create new tasks, projects, and kanban boards. You can add comments, files, and images from your iPhone, and you can do all of this offline for syncing when you're reconnected.
Dropbox
Free, with premium subscriptions starting at $15 per month
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If your files live all over the place—your office computer, home desktop, laptop—having a dependable syncing program is a must. Dropbox, the service that lets you store your files in the cloud and access them from anywhere you have a signal, fills that role nicely with a Dropbox iPhone app. It has a simple interface, easy uploading, and swift syncing across all accounts.
Edison Assistant
Free
Formerly EasilyDo, this free iPhone app works as a personal assistant and automation machine, taking care of a variety of tasks, like adding new contacts to your address book, tracking packages, and monitoring some of your social networks for important news.
Evernote
Free, with premium subscriptions starting at $34.99 per year
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The Evernote iPhone app lets you make notes on the go and find information stored in your account anytime, anywhere. While Evernote has been a leader in the note-taking and syncing space, current plans limit the very best of the service to the highest paying members only.
IFTTT
Free
If this, then that—shorten that little tag line to IFTTT, and you've got one of the best apps on the market. This amazingly simple yet powerful iPhone app can automate just about anything you'd want to do in your digital life. for example, if I add a new contact in Gmail, then save that person's contact information to my Evernote account. If you're turning your home into a smart home, you definitely want to keep the IFTTT app on your iPhone, as it can help you manage a range of devices, so that if you get into your smart bed, then the app can turn the lights off for you.
Microsoft Office Mobile
$6.99 per month
You probably don't want to write that report or edit that spreadsheet on your smartphone, but you'd be surprised how smoothly Microsoft Office Mobile makes doing those things. Your documents are saved to and synced with the versions on OneDrive, so you can fluidly move from one form factor to another. You can get the familiar Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for on-the-go productivity. Requires an Office 365 subscription starting at $6.99 per month.
Todoist
Free with $29-per-year premium subscription
Todoist lets you geek out on organizing tasks and offers support for a wealth of platforms and integrations. The paid version adds task labels and reminders, location-based reminders, the ability to add notes and upload files, and a unique productivity chart.
Best iPhone Security Apps
Dashlane
Free, with premium subscriptions starting at $39.99 per year
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Like LastPass, Dashlane puts your login credentials at your fingertips with this iPhone app—and literally if you have an iPhone with TouchID. Some users may find it simpler to use than LastPass, though you pay to use it on more than one device. It keeps all your username and password combinations safe. It can also generate strong passwords. As with any password manager, all you have to remember is one strong password to unlock your Dashlane account, and all your other passwords will be accessible to you to unlock all your online accounts.
Duo Mobile
Free
Duo Mobile adds a comforting layer of security to your most critical logins. It works well with sites like Yahoo and services like LastPass or Dashlane, by requiring you to tap a button on your iPhone to permit logins from new devices on any of your Web accounts. And if you use an Apple Watch, tapping that will log you in, too!
Kaspersky Safe Kids
$14.99 per year
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Implementing parental control on iOS devices is tough, but Kaspersky Safe Kids manages the job, and, unlike some competitors, it's tenacious. Your kids won't be able to remove it. There's no limit on the number of devices or child profiles. And the app offers unusually flexible control of device usage time, along with geofencing and an alert system.
LastPass
Free download, with $1-per-month premium subscription
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The venerable password manager LastPass—a favorite here at PCMag—is one of the top 100 iPhone apps because it lets you access, manage, and create unique passwords wherever you are. The app syncs with other installations of LastPass, such as those on your laptop or desktop computer. Granted, it's a bit clumsy to use compared with Dashlane.
NordVPN
$11.95 per month
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With internet service providers getting more and more snooping privileges, thanks to the FCC, you're well advised to protect your privacy with a VPN. NordVPN is our favorite, and its iOS app sports one of the sleekest interfaces of the lot. It can give you some peace of mind while you surf on you iPhone using the coffee shop's Wi-Fi.
Onion Browser
Free
You can use a VPN, but that means relying on an often relatively unknown company to keep all your browsing private through a single encrypted proxy server. Tor offers real privacy by routing encrypted internet traffic through multiple anonymous endpoints, obscuring your identity from the sites you visit. It also offers access to the scary darknet, a sort of alternate internet that's devoid of government or corporate oversight. There's no official Tor browser for iOS, but Onion Browser is suggested on the project's page, and that's good enough for us.
Signal
Free
Signal offers the easiest way to send secure messages. The ZRTP protocol it uses for calling is thoroughly tested as is the open source Signal protocol for sending text. The organization that supports it is run on grant money by volunteers and is disinterested in monetizing Signal's users or their data. It's so trusted that messaging apps from Facebook and Google use it for their secure messaging options.
Best iPhone Social Networking Apps
Cloze
Free
The iPhone app Cloze collects tweets, emails, Facebook posts, and other bits of communication from your contacts, and prioritizes them based on people who are most relevant to you. In other words, even if your boss isn't chronologically at the top of your Twitter feed, she will be at the fore of your Cloze view. It's a wonderful tool for getting relevant information about people in your network, and its Web app has even more features and insights to love.
GroupMe
Free
Create private groups consisting of family, friends, or coworkers and communicate in many different ways. The app is very flexible, letting you start with a simple chat to which you can add people, setting up a group with an avatar, or using a QR code to join. Your group can even have its own notification sound, and turning a photo into a text meme is a snap. It's an attractive alternative to Facebook Groups.
Free
Despite—or maybe because of—its limitations, Instagram has surpassed Flickr as the number-one photo sharing service on the Internet. Its social discovery aspects are addictive, it offers excellent image-manipulation tools, and it now supports video, as well as still photos. The company keeps adding more features, like direct messaging, Snapchat-like Stories, and, finally, pinch-to-zoom. In keeping with the times and trends, the app now supports Handoff to switch between your Apple Watch and your iPhone.
Free
LinkedIn provides an effective online network for keeping up with your contacts. It's easy to rely on LinkedIn more than your own address book for finding otherwise long-lost colleagues and business partners. Anyone in the job market will want to stay on top of LinkedIn for both its networking aspects and its wonderful database of job listings. It works well on an iPhone, although I like the full-sized LinkedIn iPad app even better.
Mention
Free, plans starting at $29 per month
Mention scours the web day and night to find new instances of search terms of your choosing, and alerts you when it finds them. The search-and-alert program is an alternative to Google Alerts, taking the core concept from that competitor and blending it with social media monitoring tools, resulting in a supremely rich package for businesses or anyone in a branded-persona line of work.
Free
Pinterest is a virtual pinboard, but don't be fooled by that description. It's for shopping, and that includes virtual window-shopping. Pinterest lets you organize and share all pictures of anything you find online or in your life. With Pinterest on your iPhone, it's easy to snap photos in the real world and upload them to your boards. You can watch what others are pinning on Pinterest, and often, you can purchase the items by following a link out to the retailer's site.
Toot!
$2.99
PCMag's Max Eddy is our in-house Mastodon fanatic. You don't know Mastodon? It's the open source alternative to Facebook and Twitter, but it's not for the fainthearted. The Toot app lets you get your Mastadon on your iPhone, with a fun design, account switching, and never any ads.
Tumblr
Free
Less restrictive than today's dominant photo-sharing app, Instagram, Tumblr goes beyond photos, letting you post blog entries, GIFs, videos, and more. But more important than posting is reposting, which fosters a lot of user interaction. The service avoids the negative trolling of other social networks through its design of reblogging rather than commenting.
Free
For a long time, Twitter Inc., the company that owns the 280-character social network, didn't make its own app. Dozens of third parties did, however, but not all the resulting apps were worth using. So when Twitter released its official Twitter app—and it worked well and loaded quickly!—users folded the new tool into their iPhones happily. If you tweet, it's a no-brainer to have this app. If you don't tweet and have been on the fence about joining the masses, the iPhone app makes it easy and convenient to get on board.
Twitter Periscope
Free
Live streaming is the hot new way to constantly document your life and share it with the world. Twitter Periscope app makes it easy to find interesting new streams or start broadcasting one of your own. You can save streams and revisit them later, and privacy options mean your face will only be seen by a select few if that's what you want. Welcome to the future of vlogging.
Best iPhone Utility Apps
1Blocker X
Free, with $2.99 upgrade available
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No one likes ads, but ads on the mobile Web are especially obnoxious, eating up your time and your data. It's now possible to throw off the yoke of privacy-compromising trackers, pop-over ads, and the like with iPhone ad blockers. If you're willing to pay, 1Blocker will deliver the most powerful and flexible ad-blocking experience on the mobile Web. If you're not willing to pay, it's still pretty great.
Converter Plus
Free
This all-in-one calculation app, Converter Plus, delivers numbers on nearly everything, from currency conversions to loan interest figures. It converts metric to imperial measurements for temperature, cooking volumes, length, and more.
Cortana
Free
Sure, your iPhone comes with Siri, a perfectly capable voice-controllable digital assistant, but if you want reminders and preferences synced with a Windows 10 PC, Cortana on the iPhone is a great option. With this smart app, you get time-, person- and place-based reminders, travel notifications, and a personalized news feed. Your daily glance reminds you about scheduled appointments, packages, stocks, and your favorite teams' performance. Now you can even instantly continue reading a site you were viewing in Cortana on your PC.
Firefox
Free
Firefox, the open-source browser, has come to iPhone, and it's a very worthy download indeed. Its tab layout is much clearer than Safari's, and it lets you sync your favorites and more with desktop Firefox, the PCMag Editors' Choice browser. Reading View clears away those annoying mobile ads, and Reading List saves articles for later, when you have time.
Gboard
Free
Best To Do List App For Mac 2018 Collections
Third-party keyboard for the iPhone got off to a slow start, with options that didn't equal what was available for Android and Windows Phone, but Google's Gboard delivers on letting you use swipe text entry, find GIFs for your text messages, and, of course, pull up search results.
Microsoft Office Lens
Free
You can throw out that flatbed scanner if you get the Office Lens app for your iPhone. This iOS app can clean up shots of documents and whiteboards, and convert them to editable text using OCR. You can mark up your scanned image and then save it in PDF, photo, Word, OneNote, or PowerPoint format. You can also directly share it to email or to any app on the iOS Share Sheet.
SwiftKey
Best Apps For Mac 2018
Free
Best Macbook Apps 2018
Since iOS 8, iPhone users have had the ability to install custom keyboards, and SwiftKey is one of the best. Once you have it, you can drag your finger across the keyboard to type instead of tapping each key individually. The app learns your writing habits and vocabulary using AI, so it gets better with use. It also lets you save up to 30 text snippets in its clipboard for later use, search for GIFs and Emoji, and add photos to the document you're typing in from your phone's camera. If you get tired of its appearance, there are dozens of themes and you can even create one with your own photo.