The 50
Best Apps of the Year (2)
NYT Cooking
iPhone, Free (web version for Android)
Need an easy weekday meal for two? What should you do
with all those apples you just picked? How about a slow-cooker recipe? NYT
Cooking, from The New York Times, can answer all these
questions and more. It offers lots of great recipes searchable by type of meal,
prep time and more, often along with beautiful photos. A big bonus: You can
save recipes from around the web to this app, making it a clearing house for
the meals you'd like to cook.
Spotify
iPhone, Android (Free With Ads)
Even with Apple, Amazon and Google all taking aim, Spotify is still king of the music
streaming apps. A big redesign this year brought a more modern interface that's
still dead simple to use, and gorgeous to boot. One of our favorite features is
the mood-based playlists, great when you need something for a rainy day or a
morning workout.
A Good Snowman Is Hard to Build
iPhone and Android, $4.99
A puzzle game about crafting people made of snow, rolled
into being by a blobby black creature surrounded by tiny gardens of white.
Players fashion snowballs from strips of snow by swiping to roll, then stacking
them in threes, large-medium-small. Only each garden has constraints, from
ornamental bird baths and birdhouses to rows of potted plants. Beautifully
visualized and scored, A Good Snowman Is Hard to Build is one of the sweetest,
smartest puzzlers to grace 2016.
Prisma
iPhone and Android, Free
Photo editing apps are generally a dime a dozen, all
offering slight variations on the same basic features: Film-style filters, crop
and resize tools, red eye reduction and so on. Prisma stands out from the pack
by using complex algorithms to transform your images into vibrant and unique
works of art. A recent update means it can now do the same for video, too. It
takes some practice to know which filters will work the best with which photos,
but once you nail it, the payoff is sweet.
White Noise
iPhone, Android (Free With Ads)
Getting a newborn to sleep, or even just break out of a
crying fit, is no easy feat. White Noise helps by flooding baby with soothing
sounds, from "Heavy Rain Pouring" and "Ocean Waves
Crashing" to "Extreme Rain Pouring" and "Stream Water
Flowing." It's easy to switch between sounds and adjust the volume to find
the mix that works best for baby. Only one downside: The app doesn't work in
the background if you exit it to work on other things. Best to download it onto
one of the old disconnected iPhones sitting in a drawer and make that baby's
iPhone.
bitmoji
iPhone and Android, Free
Why say it with words when you can say it with stickers?
Bitmoji lets you create custom emoji-like stickers complete with an avatar that
looks just like you. Stickers have been around for years, but they’re really
taking off this year — so much so that Snapchat acquired the company behind
Bitmoji for about $100 million in March.
Google Translate
iPhone and Android, Free
One of the coolest pieces of fictional Star Trek tech
is the Universal Translator, which lets the Enterprise’s crew understand alien
languages. The next best thing is Google Translate, which can take typed phrases, spoken
words and even real-world text (like street signs) and transform them into
other languages. This year’s big update brought more useful features, like
tap-to-translate on Android and offline language packs for the iPhone version,
helpful when you’re traveling abroad without a data plan.
Breathe
Apple Watch, Free
Apple’s Breathe app, for the Apple Watch, walks users through a short set of deep
breathing exercises. That might sound silly, but spending a few minutes every
day to take some deep breaths can have remarkable benefits for your mental
health. Our advice: Disable the daily breathe reminders, stressful in their own
right, and open the app only when you need it. Get it now
Burly Men At Sea
iPhone and Android, $4.99
Brain&Brain's folklorish adventure is a whimsical
romp starring three bearded adventurers that speaks in plaintive accordion tunes
and whispers, airy sighs and polyphonic hoots--one that marries quirky
activities with starlit encounters and aquamarine serpents plucked from
Norwegian myth. It’s a little bit The Old Man and the Sea, a
little bit O Brother, Where Art Thou? And a reminder that
every journey is a circle, filled with both farce and delight.
Amazon Alexa
iPhone and Android, Free
Amazon's Alexa app turns your smartphone into a remote
for your Echo Internet-connected speaker, handy for setup and when you're too
far from your Echo for it to pick up your requests. If you're an Echo fan, this
app is a can't-miss companion.
Quik
iPhone and Android, Free
Modern smartphones can record very high-quality video,
but what to do with all that footage? Try Quik, an automatic video editing app
that action camera maker GoPro acquired and rebranded this year. Quik takes a
bunch of your video footage, identifies the best moments automatically, and
sets the whole thing to mood-appropriate music. It’s a great way to add a
professional-looking touch to your recordings before putting them on Facebook,
YouTube or Instagram.
Mint
iPhone and Android, Free
Mint’s an older app, but it’s still the king of budget
management software. Mint connects with your various bank accounts, pulling in
your spending and income and organizing it into categories that make it easy to
track and stick to a budget. It’s great in those situations when you’re
contemplating a big purchase and want to see if you can really afford it or
not.
Alex Fitzpatrick,Mandy Oaklander,Lisa Eadicicco,John Patrick
Pullen,Matt Peckham,Dan Hirschhorn,Merrill Fabry
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