Shake Up Your App Routine
Try these alternatives to Apple's native apps.
Y our standard iOS apps can do the job most of the time, but you have options that are much better and provide more functionality. In this article, I'll share some of my favorite alternative apps and how they can benefit you. I've included more than one option for some of the stock apps and will give you the lowdown on each to help you decide what to try for yourself!
NOTES REPLACEMENT
Evernote & Simplenote
Notes is one of those rare apps that works well, and yet it could still use a little something. There are many alternatives for you to try, but I'll be narrowing my recommendations to two stalwarts: Evernote and Simplenote, both of which take two very different approaches to the Notes app.
Evernote has been around for more than 15 years and comes with great features that make it a heavyweight Notes app replacement. It can be a bit cumbersome to use and many features require you pay a monthly subscription to access, but its feature-rich environment and smooth polish make it a solid choice.
Simplenote, on the other hand, has been around for less than a decade and is intentionally less feature rich. Its minimalist approach is designed to make note-taking simple. It provides a few tools like tagging and note sharing, so you have everything you need and nothing else. I recommend Simplenote if you want a clean approach to taking notes and storing quick bits of information.
CALENDAR REPLACEMENT
Fantastical 2 ($4.99)
The stock Calendar app is pretty plain and boring. It's not that well organized, and it has a serious lack of integration with other apps. That's why when it comes to a calendar on your phone, I turn to Fantastical 2 every time.
This is one of those rare apps that provides everything you ever wanted and needed and gives you more than you expected. Everything in this app is intuitive, smooth, and ultra-responsive.
You can easily switch between month, week, and day view, and back again with a single swipe each. It just makes sense. The standard Calendar app can be a bit frustrating to use, and Fantastical is an absolute joy. Once you try it, you'll never want to go back the stock app again.
SAFARI REPLACEMENT
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo refers to itself as a privacy-based browser, and a lot of its features are very in your face about that. On the new tab screen, it has a prominent bar showing how many trackers it's blocked for you. You can “burn” your history very quickly with the tap of the flame icon. The search engine itself is not only based around privacy but is also extremely fast and responsive. It's a solid choice to replace Safari and can become well integrated with other apps and services if you set it up right. Safari, however, remains tightly integrated with the Apple ecosystem, so if you value that over everything else, you may want to stick with Safari. You'll also hear Dolphin bandied about as a replacement, but my experience with it has proven it to have numerous issues, including consistently crashing when I try to open a blank new tab. I find Dolphin difficult to recommend as a replacement until this and other issues are fixed.
MAPS REPLACEMENT
Waze, Google Maps
Don't use Apple Maps. The navigation has been unreliable and the app poorly designed since the beginning, and the updates so far haven't made up for it. There are numerous horror stories of Apple Maps routing people to wrong destinations. Instead, use Google Maps or Waze. Most of you will already know about Google Maps, a classic yet robust navigation app that offers not only driving but walking, biking, and public transit directions.
Waze, which is also owned by Google, crowdsources information from its users to help you avoid traffic. As you drive down the road, your speed will automatically be recorded by the app (your contributions are anonymous), and you can also manually identify problems like a broken-down car, police, and road hazards, to name a few. The app will update everyone in the vicinity and en route, and, best of all, will quickly re-route you. By collaborating, you improve navigation and reduce your overall time spent behind the wheel. As a bonus, you can choose from a variety of navigational voices, including the Cookie Monster (a crowd favorite).
PODCASTS REPLACEMENT
Overcast
There are a number of excellent podcast players out there, but Overcast is one of the best, and you can access all the features for free. It does have a premium option for $9.99/year to eliminate the banner ads at the bottom, and considering the work the developer put in to making Overcast such an excellent app, it's worth a subscription for ten dollars a year. Simple to use, intuitive to navigate, and scarily responsive, this podcast player does it all and does it better than almost anything else out there. It blows Apple's stock Podcasts app out of the water, and does
it with aplomb. You can add individual episodes or subscribe to the entire podcast and have new episodes automatically available. There are several audio balancing and playback options to fiddle with that make it easy to play to your liking.
WEATHER REPLACEMENT
Weather Underground
The stock Weather app is fairly accurate, but when you want hyper-local weather, you need to go for the best of the best. Weather Underground has been around for decades as a standalone website, bringing you some of the most accurate predictions you can possibly find, sourced from thousands of local weather stations. It's chock-full of great information, like forecasts for a particular activity you're planning to engage in such as running, biking, and outdoor photography; air quality readings; real-time active radar; and forecast summaries.
NEWS REPLACEMENT
Flipboard is a fun app, giving you a daily rundown of ten curated articles directly from the Flipboard team, as well as news and articles targeted to preferences you set the first time you loaded the app. You can change your preferences at any time, and the algorithm for recommended articles keeps getting better the longer you use the app. The interface is reminiscent of Instagram or Pinterest, allowing you to visually navigate the stories you want to read and letting you quickly skim or skip those you're not interested in. If an article catches your interest and you want to read it later, you can “flip” it into a magazine, and you can organize those magazines however you wish.
REMINDERS REPLACEMENT
Any.do
Let's face it: the Apple Reminders app is not that great. That's OK though, because you have a lot of great ones out there to choose from! If you're already using Evernote or Simplenote, those will work in a pinch, but if you want a dedicated Reminders replacement, I've been loving Any.do. It's easy to use, with tasks separated into four categories: Today, Tomorrow, Upcoming, and Someday. You create tasks by clicking the plus symbol, then fill in the details, like when the tasks need to be completed. You can also organize the tasks however you wish, and with the premium subscription ($3/month), you can do much more, like set location-based reminders and collaborate with other users. SHAKE UP YOUR ROUTINE
You can't go wrong with these replacements for the stock apps! Every one of them improves on Apple's stock apps in multiple ways, and most are faster and more intuitive than the original. By installing these apps, you'll help yourself to become more productive, better informed, and more efficient.