Awesome Apps

Anyone who’s used a Mac for years understands the value of Spotlight search, as it can quickly help you search through your Mac, email, apps, and system settings. But if you want to take things to the next level, check out Raycast — a powerful Spotlight alternative that goes beyond simple search.

From setting reminders and tracking flights to running Terminal commands and finding files, Raycast is built for speed and efficiency. It really is a Swiss Army knife for your Mac. Here’s how I use it to supercharge my productivity on the Mac.

Spring is here, and the air is full of birdsong. The Merlin Bird ID app tells you what type of birds you’re hearing … plus it’s quick, easy and free.

With this software from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology on your iPhone, you can learn about all the birds around you — you might be surprised how many of them there are. And if you get interested, you’ll soon be able to identify them without the app.

If you’re considering taking part in Dry January, check out these sober apps to help you quit alcohol for the month — and maybe longer. Dry January is a monthlong challenge to abstain from alcohol for the first 30 days of the year. Popular in the United Kingdom and growing worldwide, it’s a great way to reset after the boozy holiday season, giving people a chance to focus on health and well-being.

A lot of people get guidance and support using Dry January apps, aka apps to drink less alcohol, which can also help cut back drinking anytime during the year.

It’s the new year! If you haven’t given up on your New Year’s resolution already, I have three apps that’ll help you through it. (I won’t hold you to it if you’ve slipped up in the first week.)

Whether you’re trying to exercise more, work more efficiently or change your daily habits, these three apps will help you make a better 2024.

New game Roia challenges players to guide a river down a mountain by rearranging the terrain. It’s another unique premise from Emoak, a team of developers with a history of creating standout games.

I spent a couple of hours playing it on my iPhone, and found the game to be demanding but also relaxing. And not like anything I’ve played before.

OpenAI made the native ChatGPT Mac app available for all users Wednesday. It gives Mac users easy access to the artificial intelligence capabilities of the cutting-edge chatbot, as well as features not available with the web interface.

The free macOS app is “designed to integrate seamlessly into anything you’re doing on your computer,” according to OpenAI.

The latest major update to the popular and snarky Carrot Weather app brings a delightful array of new features and improvements. It adds a dynamic “garden that grows over time” as part of a redesigned interface, along with line charts for hourly and daily forecasts, integrated weather news from around the world and more.

But of course it will still call you a “meatbag” and act surprised you’re still alive if you haven’t opened it lately. New Carrot Weather 6.0 is now available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Vision Pro.

CleanMyPhone is a new app that will tidy up your photo library. Developed by MacPaw, maker of CleanMyMac X, the new app can do a thorough scan of images on your iPhone to clear out years of screenshots, saved TikToks and unusably blurry shots. It’s a simple way to clean up photos on your iPhone.

It also uses artificial intelligence to sort your photos into handy categories. Plus, it makes it simple to periodically look at the last week or month of your photos to sort things into albums and stay organized. As a bonus, the app comes with an internet speed test — good for checking if your connection is solid enough to take an important video call.

The CleanMyPhone app is available today from the App Store, with a free three-day trial. An annual subscription costs $24.99.

In this week’s Awesome Apps roundup, you’ll find apps for managing files, using AI to boost your writing, and turning an iPad into a creative input device for a Mac.

And if all that productivity wears you out, we’ve got other options. You can relax with a charmingly peaceful Apple Arcade game with a delightful Japanese theme. Or you can blast enemy spaceships in an arcade-style game that’s great on iPhone — but even better on Vision Pro.

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to download.

I’ve had a lot of fun playing Void-X, a modern arcade shooter game. If you’ve ever emptied a whole pocketful of quarters into Galaga or Zaxxon, then you’ll love playing it, too. And you’ll like it even more if you play Void-X on Vision Pro. (You can play the tame on iPhone and iPad, too.)

Artists have every reason to fear artificial intelligence (AI) models that might train on their artwork online without permission, essentially imitating it and potentially diluting its value.

A new free app called Nightshade — yeah, after the poisonous plant — is here to mess with AI models to deter trainers from doing that.

The new Aztec Mystery Magic app for iPhone and iPad released Thursday dresses up artificial intelligence (AI) chat in a cool Aztec costume.

It doesn’t do a whole lot, but it looks cool and it’s free. It answers questions, makes predictions and offers ancient Aztec riddles you can solve to get amulets. And hey, you might learn something.

Maccy is a fantastic macOS copy-paste manager that supercharges your clipboard history. It allows you to copy … and copy … and copy again, and still paste the first thing you copied. Of course, it works with cut-and-paste too. It’s super well-designed and very easy to use. With a simple keyboard shortcut, you can bring up a small menu to instantly paste something you cut or copied hours ago.

It’s a fantastic utility that will quickly become a must-have on every Mac you use. You can buy Maccy for just $9.99 on the Mac App Store, or build it from its open-source code yourself.

The TikTok application just got a major revamp for iPad users. And that includes both portrait and landscape orientations.

It’s a significant change for an app that previously emphasized handsets well ahead of every other device.

Backup Status is a simple app that puts a Time Machine widget on your Mac desktop (or stows it away in your Notification Center). If you don’t want the Time Machine icon cluttering up your menu bar, this is a straightforward alternative.

Time Machine, of course, is Apple’s software that makes continuous backups of your files to a separate part of your disk, an external hard drive or network-attached storage. Everyone should use Time Machine.

And, after you set it up, you should try Backup Status, the fun little app that lets you easily monitor your Time Machine backups.

Blip is a delightful utilty that lets you transfer files across the internet — directly from your Mac to theirs. There’s no middleman uploading to and downloading from a cloud, no pesky web app to sign into. It’s like beaming your files onto someone else’s computer.

It’s the easiest and most straightforward way to send someone large folders of files or complex projects from your Mac. And best of all, it’s totally free and secure.

Tired of getting caught in the rain? Startup Rainbow Weather released its hyper-local rain-alert and hurricane-tracking app Rainbow Weather in November, giving you a great way to track weather tied to your precise location at all times via your iPhone.

From the “better late than never” category, a version of the Zoom video conferencing app has launched for Apple TV. This means it’s now easier to make Zoom calls using a TV’s large display.

Turns out the long wait was actually Apple’s fault.

With an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max, you can record high-resolution video directly to an external SSD. And the latest version of the iPhone app LumaFusion lets you edit with the video still on the external drive, too. Don’t try that with any other video editor for iOS.

That’s on top of the many other features of the iPhone and iPad application, which offers multitrack video editing with a focus on controlling everything with touch.

Sick of the same old desktop wallpaper on your Mac? Developer Gemoo recently released a free AI Wallpaper Generator app that lets you replace your screen’s background visual with pretty much whatever you can think of in terms of a prompt, and with your choice of artistic style.

With 10 wallpaper prompts per day on the free version, it’s fun to play with. And if you need more, you can get the Pro version — once Gemoo settles on a pricing plan for it.

AfterShip Package Tracker is a free app that does exactly what it says in the name: It tracks your packages. You can see all your orders in one place, when they will arrive, and how close they are geographically to you. Push notifications are fast and alert you when your items are on their way.

Plus, unlike just about every other package-tracking app for iOS, AfterShip Package Tracker is totally free, with no in-app purchases.

In this week’s Awesome Apps roundup, we have a way to play Legos without the mess, an app that’ll read aloud almost anything, 700 workouts on your Apple Watch, and the best Safari extension ever.

The SmartGym app is already well-loved by Apple Watch users, and its recent update adds more than 70 new workouts and loads of convenient new functionality.

And it’s considered so good it’s currently up against two other finalist apps to win the App Store Award for Apple Watch App of the Year.

Lego Bricktales is a fun way to play with these bricks wherever you go. The game challenges players to build their way through puzzles in a variety of colorful environments.

It’s available for iPad and iPhone.

If you love YouTube but hate YouTube ads, Vinegar is the best Safari extension you can download. It blocks all ads on YouTube and restores many iOS-native features like playing videos in the background, picture-in-picture, and more on iPhone, iPad and Mac alike.

YouTube ads are freaking insufferable. But if you don’t want to put down the dough for YouTube Premium (currently $13.99 per month), you can pay a one-time fee of just $1.99 to buy Vinegar for all your Apple devices.

If you ever watch YouTube, Vinegar is life-changing. Get it now on the App Store for iOS, iPadOS and macOS.