Best New Apps: must-have downloads for your phone, tablet, and more – The Verge

Best New Apps: Darkroom

2015-02-12T12:58:11-05:00

A number of us here at The Verge are big fans of VSCO cam, myself included. But I'm never completely satisfied with the mobile photo editing experience it offers, so I'm always on the lookout for something different. That just arrived in the form of Darkroom, a new photo editing app for iOS that is available in the App Store starting today.

A glance at the app's curves adjustments feature.

Darkroom's most impressive feature is the ability to make curves adjustments, similar to Photoshop on the desktop. You can individually adjust the blacks, shadows, midtones, highlights, and whites of any image with a simple up or down slide of your fing …

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Best New Apps: Workflow

2014-12-11T17:10:02-05:00

I sometimes romanticize the idea of being a "power user," someone who can get done in one click things that would take everyone else five or six. But that status often comes with a lot of time spent setting up apps and scripts, which often require very specific knowledge. That's why services like If This Then That (IFTTT) are great - they make being a power user accessible by mixing customizable functionality with a passionate community and an easy-to-use interface.

New to iOS devices today, however, is an app called Workflow. It takes the approachability of IFTTT and tries to one-up it with a colorful drag-and-drop interface. Unlike IFTTT, …

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Best New Apps: Hyperlapse

2014-08-27T15:37:02-04:00

Instagram might be best known as an endless stream of pictures of your friends' meals, but its new standalone video app Hyplerlapse aims to change that. It's a dead simple way to create time-lapse videos accompanied by an outstanding built-in image stabilization algorithm that can make shaky videos look steady enough you might think they were filmed with a professional rig. It just takes one tap to start recording, lets you pick your playback speed after, and easily shares your video to Instagram and Facebook.

The easiest way to make a time-lapse on your iPhone

With few controls, the creativity really comes from how you use Hyperlapse. The b …

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Best New Apps: Ultratext

2014-07-24T15:09:02-04:00

Ultratext is a dead-simple iOS app for creating GIFs and sending them via MMS and iMessage. It creates flashing neon messages, with the words you type blown up in all caps, accessorized with emoji and selfies and other photos from your camera roll. Every time you hit the space bar, Ultratext gives you a new box to type into, chaining your words into a looping animation. At any point you can add a picture using either the front or rear camera. The result is a message that looks more like a billboard than a message bubble, and it's incredibly fun. "It's like you literally discovered fire and gave it to me," one friend told me, after I tweeted …

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Best New Apps: Overcast for iPhone

2014-07-21T12:30:06-04:00

If you have an iPhone, you should download Overcast, the new podcast app from Instapaper creator and Tumblr co-founder Marco Arment. Podcast clients are a crowded category, of course, and it's harder than ever to stand out now that Apple offers its own free solution. But Overcast sets itself apart with thoughtful design, original features, and smart ideas - and it costs nothing to check out.

Most casual listeners could use Overcast for free without issue

In its first release, Overcast is a pretty simple app. It's iPhone-only at present; there's no iPad version, and Pocket Casts will remain a better option for syncing between Android and iOS …

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Best New Apps: ‘FTL’ for iPad

2014-04-03T10:45:02-04:00

FTL: Faster Than Light is one of the most addictive spaceship simulations you can play - and it turns out it's even better with a touchscreen. First released in 2012 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, FTL tasks you with delivering some very important data to the Galactic Federation headquarters. Standing between you and your goal, though, is a whole lot of space, filled with hostile aliens and treacherous asteroid fields. Your hyperspace drive lets you quickly jump from one star to the next, and along the way you'll do battle with space pirates, barter for fuel, and explore abandoned relics, all while trying to move fast enough to avoid the fleet …

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Best New Apps: Poki

2014-02-20T14:00:03-05:00

poki lead

Pocket lets me save articles so I can read them across all my devices, but a lack of official Windows Phone support means I've been searching for a good alternative for months. I've tried a variety of third-party versions like Owl Reader and Pouch, but none strike the perfect balance of features and design like the official Pocket apps for iOS and Android. The latest contender, Poki, blends the flat "Metro" design of Windows Phone with the basic features of Pocket and mixes in some rather unique additions of its own.

I'm not a Pocket power user who saves audio and video, and Poki lacks solid YouTube support, but I do like to read articles w …

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Best New Apps: Hello SMS

2014-02-11T11:30:04-05:00

best new app

Ever since Google clunkily integrated SMS into Hangouts and killed off the standard SMS app, I've been on the hunt for a better text-messaging app. I've tried Textra, Sliding Messaging, and even newcomers such as Evolve SMS, but they've all let me down in one way or another. Fortunately, I've found Hello SMS, a straightforward, simple SMS app that's good-looking and easy to use. It fully replaces the built-in messaging app on your Android phone and feels like something Google itself could have built.

Hello SMS features a tabbed interface for your conversations (with most recent conversations at the top), trendy circular avatars, a clean des …

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Best New Apps: Dark Sky

2014-02-07T11:11:01-05:00

dark sky

Dark Sky has been around on the iPhone for almost a couple of years now, but the recent redesign for iOS 7 makes it worth a second look - even at the relatively steep price of $3.99. Its raison d'être is telling you what the precipitation is going to be down to your exact location and, more importantly, by the hour. That means it has the unenviable job of conveying a lot of information in a way you can quickly understand - and given the current state of weather apps, it has to look good. Though a few have offered some constructive criticism of the design choices, the overall aesthetic works as a nice example of how to redesign for iOS 7's ge …

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Best New Apps: Storehouse

2014-02-04T13:30:04-05:00

storehouse best new app

Here's the thing: most apps suck. And not only does that make bad apps hard to avoid, it makes the good ones hard to find when there are hundreds of thousands of apps out there. So in this series, we highlight our favorite apps on every platform, whether it's for your phone, your tablet, your laptop, or any other device.

If Medium had an iPad app, it might look a lot like this. Storehouse, an app built by former employees of Apple, Facebook, and The Daily, is great for telling stories and for reading them. Early adopters are using it to create beautiful visual narratives that layer crisp typography, full-bleed photos, looping video clips, a …

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