The App Store is a busy place, and it’s easy to miss an awesome new release, much less an update to an old app that makes it worthy of re-downloading.

That’s why we’ve done the work for you and collected the very best new app releases from the past week.

One of the most popular third-party podcast apps released its Apple Watch app this week. Instacast now lets you control playback from your wrist, and its implementation is pretty slick. If you’re itching for a good podcast listening experience on the Watch, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Available on: iPhone/iPad/Apple Watch

Price: Free

Download: App Store

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Available on: Mac and PC

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Download: Mac (.dmg) and Windows (.exe)

The official Apple Store app added Touch ID verification for viewing orders, accessing EasyPay receipts, and making Genius Bar reservations this week.

Two-step verification support was also added, which makes it nearly impossible for your Apple ID to get hacked. The Apple Store app is now available in several more countries too, including Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, New Zealand, Taiwan, Malaysia and Philippines.

Available on: iPhone/iPad

Price: Free

Download: App Store

Currencies 2 is a completely rethought take on currency conversion, and it’s optimized for the Apple Watch.

If you’re an international jet-setter who deals with different kinds of money frequently, you may find the new Today View widget helpful. The app tracks your location and shows the local currency as an added connivence, and the Watch app uses dictation to convert values quickly.

Available on: iPhone/Apple Watch

Price: $4.59

Download: App Store

The App Store is a busy place, and it’s easy to miss an awesome new release, an update that makes an old app worthy of re-downloading, or a hidden gem you didn’t even know you even wanted.

That’s why we’ve done the work for you and collected the most awesome new apps from the past week.

One of the most iconic games of all time has been reborn.

Snake Rewind combines elements from the original classic with updated visuals and touch-friendly modern controls. There are 10 levels with distinct challenges and music, and you can compete with others online. Relive your childhood and download this one.

Available on: iPhone/iPad

Price: Free

Download: App Store

Worried about the NSA peeking at your nudie pics? Bleep is a peer-to-peer voice and text messaging built by the people behind BitTorrent.

You create a username that can be shared with anyone, and that’s it. No other details about yourself are given, and your messages are encrypted both ways. It’s kind of like Snapchat in that images can disappear after a few seconds, but the app is designed to be totally decentralized. That means you don’t have to put faith in any one private company to keep your data safe.

Available on: iOS/Android/Mac/Windows

Price: Free

Download: Bleep

In line with Bleep’s focus on private messaging, what if you could easily encrypt any file on your Mac?

That’s the idea behind Encrypto, a simple OS X utility that takes any file and applies AES-256 encryption with a required password. There’s even a way to embed password hints for the intended recipient, and files can be sent through Mail, AirDrop, Messages, and third-party apps like Dropbox.

Available on: Mac/Windows

Price: Free

Download: MacPaw

Duet Display has been on Cult of Mac before, and this week it got a noticeable upgrade. Already the best app for creating a secondary display out of an iPad, Duet Display now supports Windows PCs.

“The story for us really revolves around the iPad and what its purpose is for people,” explained Duet Display engineer Rahul Dewan and former Apple employee to Cult of Mac. “If you look at the top 10 paid/grossing apps, they're almost always games. It's been pretty difficult for many creators to use the device effectively.”

“I’m sure at some point iOS will become more powerful and capable of helping people work, but it's just not there yet. I'm hoping with duet, the branding and use cases will change by being able to use it as a powerful productivity device (while still getting the consumer benefit of an iPad). And because it comes with touch and is cross platform, it's not like a regular DisplayLink or USB display.”

You’ll need a free Mac and Windows companion app to use Duet Display with an iPad.

Available on: iPad

Price: $9.99

Download: App Store

The App Store is a busy place, and it’s easy to miss an awesome new release, an update that makes an old app worthy of re-downloading, or a hidden gem you didn’t even know you even wanted.

That’s why we’ve done the work for you and collected the most awesome new apps for iOS and the Mac from the past week. We’ve got brand new Mac and iOS apps along with some killer updates this go around.

When well known developer Sam Soffes started making Redacted, he didn’t do it to make money. He made it to solve a problem he had: quickly blacking out or blurring parts of images and documents.

Tools like Photoshop can do this already of course, but Redacted makes it dead easy. It’s the perfect example of a well done Mac app doing one thing and one thing well.

Soffes got a lot of attention in the news last week for sharing his surprising sales numbers for Redacted in the Mac App Store. You can find out the gritty details here if you’re interested, but suffice to say that it didn’t make anywhere near as much money as expected.

Luckily, Soffes isn’t sweating. “If I break even on the time I spent working on it, that would be great,” he later told Cult of Mac in an email. “Not a big deal if not though.”

Available on: Mac

Price: $4.99

Download: Mac App Store

Flickr has been steadily improving as a service since Marissa Mayer became CEO of Yahoo in 2012, but lately it’s become a little stagnant. That’s because a huge update has been in the works, and it finally launched to the world last week.

The biggest improvements are shared across the web and mobile app, but to really take advantage of your free terabyte of storage you’re going to want to download the new Uploadr tool on your desktop. It works basically like Dropbox by finding photos and uploading them in the background to a private Flickr album you can manage further whenever you please.

Beyond that, you’re going to notice smarter search, a greatly improved user interface that includes a new Camera Roll timeline of photos, and more.

Available on: Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, web

Price: Free

Download: Flickr

You’ve probably been there: you’re on the go with your Mac and no WiFi connection. What do you do? Tether from your iPhone, of course.

The problem is that tethering to your computer and quickly suck up a bunch of data, and if you’re not on an unlimited cellular plan, you could be in trouble.

That’s where TripMode comes in, a handy new OS X menubar app that monitors your network activity when your Mac is connected to a mobile hotspot. You can even turn off internet access temporarily for individual services, like Dropbox.

Available on: Mac

Price: $4.99 (launch sale, will go up to $7.99 — free trial available)

Download: TripMode

Dropbox has been getting better and better as a service, and now its iOS app is really getting some good attention.

One of my biggest qualms with Dropbox on my iPhone has been the inability to see a list of recent files, which has thankfully been added in this most recent update. The new home view on iPhone and iPad is now a list of the files you’ve interacted with recently, a welcomed change.

Commenting has been added to the iOS app as well, which means you don’t have to be using Dropbox on the web to add a comment on a file anymore. Like Twitter, just @ mention someone’s name or email address to bring them into the conversation.

Dropbox is clearly getting into Google Docs territory, as it’s planning to let users create full Microsoft Office docs in its app soon.

Available on: iPhone/iPad

Price: Free

Download: App Store