NEW APPS THAT’RE WORTH GIVING A GO
Keen on installing new apps to your phone that do more than what’s expected of their app classes and tiers? Here’s a roundup of new apps that offer something different for users.
Rewind: Music Time Travel
Rewind: Music Time Travel is a music discovery-oriented app that helps users “tune in to music from every year”.
Developed by the Z.H. firm, it is NOT a streaming service, but links its users to a massive library of songs that’re archived based on the year they were released – apart from the traditional genre classification of songs.
As a music app, however, Rewind affords users with 30-second previews of the songs in its database, and for the full “music time travel” experience, it can be linked to work with streaming services like Tidal, Spotify, YouTube Music or Apple Music – with the services of the app itself accessible for free.
Squawker
Developed by Jean-Francois Briere, Squawker is a “platform wrapper” that allows users to browse X (formerly Twitter) without having to install the official X app.
It is perfect for those who are on the fence on using the official X app, as it “acts” like an anonymous X browser that allows users to follow certain accounts and bookmark posts that’re important to them.
It is also perfect for those who only want to follow certain hashtags or topics, and though it doesn’t offer same level of features as the official X app, it is a viable alternative that offers features that’re functional and useable.
Beeper Cloud
Beeper Cloud is an indevelopment chat app that’s poised to consolidate different chat apps into one convenient inbox.
Its proponents – Eric Migicovsky and Brad Murray – are convinced that “chat today is broken”, and they aim to fix it by developing a single app to chat with friends on 15 different chat networks.
On its official site (beeper. com), its proponents write: “Apple, Facebook and Google control the majority of chat apps right now. For them, chat is just a minor part of their main business. Their chat apps exist primarily to lock people in to their advertising or hardware walled-gardens.”
“Our approach is different. Chat is our only business. We love chat and are 100% dedicated to making it awesome.”
The app lists Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, iMessage, Android SMS, Telegram, Signal, Slack, Google Chat, Instagram, IRC (Libera. chat), Matrix, Discord and LinkedIn as the messaging platforms it will support, and it has a waitlist for those who are interested to use it when it goes live.
Rain
For those who aren’t keen on using their phone’s default weather app, Rain may just have what you’ve been looking for.
Developed by Dark Night, this weather app-and-service suite has been touted as the best alternative to the then-popular Weather Timeline app, what with its smart interface and easy-on-the-eyes aesthetic.
The app is notorious for sensibly presenting weatherrelated information with easy-tounderstand graphics that tend to be confusing when viewed in other weather suites, and highlights personalization options like setting multiple cities/locations as default bases for weather-related information.
WallFlow
WallFlow is a phone wallpaper downloader and finder that’s designed to help users readily customize their phone’s wallpaper.
Developed by Ammar Githam, it touts a “deep search” function that allows users to find wallpapers from platforms like Wallhaven. It is very lightweight and straightforward to use, and it also features basic editing features and a wallpaper changer function.
Though it is limited in terms of wallpaper sources, the online library it accesses is argued to be among the best, which means that users can find quality wallpapers at the get go when using the app.
FoxyNotes
FoxyNotes is basically a notetaking app that’s steadily been gaining approving nods as a solid Goole Keep alternative.
Developed by sesa.solutions, it touts an intuitive user interface that allows users to quickly jot down their thoughts and ideas, then organize these in ways that’re convenient for them.
Made to support biometric authentication protocols, its security-oriented features includes support for Google Drive synchronization, which makes the notes that a user stores in the app accessible and updateable to multiple devices.
Readwise
Developed by Readwise, the Readwise app is a no-frills e-book reader that does more than access a user’s e-book library.
Among its key highlights is a “Rediscover” feature that basically allows users to “bookmark” passages from a book that they are reading, then organize these as significant “moments” which they can revisit or “rediscover” in the future.
Its highlighting feature can also be used for hardcopy books (through the use of a smartdevice’s camera), and data saved in the app can be synced to different readers and e-book suites like Kindle, Instapaper, Notion and Pocket.