From money saving to bargain shopping. The phone apps everyone should download today
iPhones can be great tools to help you around your everyday life, but only if you know how to use them properly. With 1.38 billion of us owning iPhones, with over 130 million iPhone users in the U.S. alone, there are millions of apps for us to choose from on the Apple App Store to customise our homepage.
As we look at how to cut back our screen time, it’s just as important to consider how we can use our phones more meaningfully to look after our wellbeing. That may mean spending a limited time on social media, aiming to swap doomscrolling with learning or using our phones as a tool to help us with our lives, rather than being the main activity in the first place. A healthy, balanced digital diet will enable you to not feel left out, but give you the tools to unplug when you want to have that tech-free weekend.
Finding out what apps can help you set goals, stick to them and achieve them shouldn’t be a battle on the app store. We’ve curated the best lifestyle, fitness, shopping and more apps that you should be downloading onto your phone.
Learning
- Duolingo – If you’ve been putting off learning that new language every year, this app might be the trick. Duolingo offers vocabulary lessons, speech exercises and writing practice for all people hoping to pick up a new language in no time. Over 148 new language courses were launched on the app this year, with Mandarin, Spanish, French and Korean to learn from in their lesson catalogue. Just make sure that you complete a small exercise every day, alongside its 50 million daily users, or the green owl mascot will be hunting you down and spamming your notifications for ruining your learning streak.
- Kahoot – For any excited quizzer, battling against your friends can give you a rush like no other. Kahoot brings the fun of quizzing and lets you create quizzes that your friends can compete against each other with, using their phones. And if you’re craving inspiration, there’s a whole catalogue of pre-made quizzes to choose from, including animal facts, flags, popular films, or even study-centred quizzes to help children with their learning.
- Nibble: Your Bite of Knowledge – For anybody hoping to take their learning to the next level, this app offers lessons, quizzes, podcasts and videos that stop your doomscrolling and help you learn using your phone. You can tailor your profile to work around your learning style and choose from a vast number of topics, including art, history, STEM, AI and philosophy.
Shopping
- Vinted – Vinted is the app that makes selling things in your home feel seamless and stress-free, where any item at the back of your wardrobe could be a part of the dream outfit being planned out by someone else in the world. On Vinted, you can easily sell clothes, shoes, accessories, books, electronics and even certified designer and collectable items. This app proves that one man’s trash may just be another’s new favourite outfit.
- Stocard – Flipping through your purse or wallet to find a loyalty or savings card in a shop can feel exhausting, especially when the effort doesn’t feel worth it to save that measly £1. Stocard stops the handbag searching by collecting all your loyalty cards in one app, helping you save without the hassle of remembering to keep your card on hand.
- Etsy – On Etsy, finding handcrafted presents made by skilled experts has never been so easy or customisable-friendly. Etsy is the marketplace for independent traders to share their talents by selling homemade jewellery, art and household goods.
Health & Fitness
- Strava – For beginners to experts and all those in-between, Strava is a space for you to keep track of your fitness goals and push your limits. By tracking your running, hiking, walking and cycling through your smartphone, you can beat your personal bests and even join local sports clubs in your area. And when you need the extra motivation to take that first step out of the house, there’s even challenges you can complete to earn badges, and you can share kudos with your friends.
- Flo – For any person who’s had to panic-guess where they are in their menstrual cycle, having an app to track and alert you for any symptom warnings can be the support you need to get through a rough week. Flo provides menstruation reminders, information and guidance tailored to your body’s normal routine, and it even features a handy app for partners to stay in the loop for medical support and fertility planning too.
- BetterHelp - Accessing help when and where it’s comfortable for you can feel difficult, especially if you’re looking for help for a teenager or as a couple. BetterHelp is a therapist-informed app offering non-judgmental support and advice to users hoping to seek help and focus on their mental health. With your subscription, they’re helping to share their services with under-resourced communities to provide everyone the mental health support their wellbeing deserves.
Creativity
- Pinterest – When you’re in the midst of a burnout and lacking inspiration, Pinterest is the collaborative and creative antidote you need. On Pinterest, you can build digital collages and mood boards to inspire you for new projects, hobbies and designs in your life to help welcome a new you.
- Canva – Cutting and sticking paper to make a bright poster can be fun, but Canva is on hand to help when you don’t want to deal with the real-life mess. From poster and book designing to video editing and presentation support, on Canva, there’s a template to help you create whatever you can imagine. And for projects that you’re working on with friends, you can even collaborate in real time and get your designs printed to match your vision.
- Substack – Imagine a space where you could read the comments from your favourite popstars, actors and experts, and you have Substack. The newsletter platform has been building a community where you can pursue your passions and chat with people who feel the same, with celebrity users already including Patti Smith, Pamela Anderson and Charli xcx.
Lifestyle
- NordVPN – Staying safe online is as essential as brushing your teeth, and installing a VPN across your devices is an excellent way to secure your personal information. It’s the antivirus material that stops hackers from accessing your data when using public networks, while also enabling you to change your country settings to view geography-restricted content available on your favourite streaming services.
- Emma – Sticking to a budget doesn’t have to mean cancelling all your subscriptions and never having fun. It can mean finding interest rates and savings accounts that work for you to grow the amount you have, rather than continuing to chip away at it. Emma is the budgeting app taking you towards your financial goals and helping you boost your financial awareness along the way.
- Locket – Keeping in contact with friends and family can be hard, making it easy to accidentally forget a phone call or check-in to see how someone is. With the Locket widget, you can snap a photo that will immediately appear on your friend’s phone homepage. It could be a visit to a concert, what you had for dinner, or your pet doing a funny trick – savouring and sharing moments throughout your day with your loved ones can now be done at the touch of a button.
Apps to keep any kid entertained
Finding a parent-approved app that can keep children entertained without costing an arm and a leg can feel rather hard, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. These are some of the apps to help your kids have fun, learn, and not click on expensive add-ons and boosts without you realising.
- Focus Friend, by Hank Green – Getting kids to study for exams and do their homework can feel like a fun adventure, rather than a chore. With this app, kids can install an ADHD-friendly Pomodoro timer on their phone to stop them from doomscrolling. If they leave the app before the timer finishes, they’ll disappoint the cuddly bean character on the screen.
- Spark: Puzzles for the Curious – For kids (and big kids) who love trivia games like Wordle, they’ll enjoy this set of quizzes to keep you guessing and boost your general knowledge in the process. With themes changing every day to help you grow your learning streak, there’s no guessing what topic you could learn about each day.
- Is This Seat Taken? – Applying empathy and patience to kids’ decision making isn’t exactly an easy situation to construct, but puzzles getting them to engage in strategic planning for prizes can be a more fun challenge. With this app, kids can try to organise groups of people to sit in groups based on their clashing preferences, helping them to think from new perspectives and finish fun puzzles.
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