Recently I got a new phone and I took the chance to evaluate the apps I keep on it. This put into perspective just how important some apps have become to me.
I’m not talking about YouTube and other apps that just keep me entertained either. Some apps have come to play a big part in my everyday non-digital life.
Feeling motivated by the occasion, I’m using this as an opportunity to share the apps that are the most important to me.
Table of Contents
Recipes done right: Tasty
First on my list is the Tasty app from the crew at BuzzFeed. This is an app which makes home-cooking so much more enjoyable. It delivers you an endless stream of catchy, tightly edited timelapse style videos. Following a recipe like this is so much more fun and visually entertaining than just reading a plain old text recipe.
It’s also great for discovering new recipes you might never have thought about, and a potential lifesaver if you have guests coming over. If you have a gluten-intolerant friend coming over for dinner, it’s easy. Just apply a filter and the app will give you a customized list of recipes perfect for your needs.
It’s also amazingly helpful to be able to see the hands of the chef and the ingredients in the pot as the recipe evolves. If you’ve ever tried to follow a text recipe, you’ve experienced how hard it can be to track what goes in when, and how it’s done. For this feature alone, I give this app a big thumbs up.
Winning wine recommendations: Palate Club
Whenever I cook up a storm, I love to enjoy a nice wine with the end result. I don’t like to get too carried away with matching wine to my food, though. While I appreciate that some people enjoy the art of matching food with wine, I don’t bother unless I’m entertaining guests. When I’m enjoying a wine for my own pleasure, I’d much rather just open a bottle of something I love, regardless of what I’m eating with it. After all, I’m not going to finish that bottle on my own in the time that I eat my meal.
This is why I love Palate Club’s amazing wine tasting app. This app is a bit like a Netflix for wine: it recommends new wines to try, using wines you’ve liked in the past to understand your tastes. For me, this has revolutionized the way I buy and discover wines.
It integrates perfectly with a convenient wine store as well. This means that all the wines it recommends can be delivered to your door without even having to set a foot outside! This is what the internet was made for!
Inspiring travel tips: Travel Magazine
This is an absolute gem of an application that I stumbled upon when searching the app store for travel apps. The concept is so simple and works so well it’s borderline genius!
In a nutshell, it delivers you a stream of well written and concise article summaries in less than 80 words. If the summary interests you, there’s a link to the full article. If not, you swipe along to the next one.
This is fantastic for travel discovery. I love to use travel as a way to grow, so algorithmic recommendations just won’t do here. But getting bogged down by mountains of travel blogs and articles can be so time-consuming. This is an amazing compromise between the two and deserves a home on your phone.
Learning languages effortlessly: Duolingo
This is another one of those apps that deliver in minutes what has traditionally taken hours. It cuts down on the tedium of learning a language and delivers punchy lessons that take five minutes or less.
The lessons contain a mix of audio, visual and writing prompts, making for engaging content that magically sticks in your mind. It’s also an incredibly comprehensive app, with structured lessons that take you from complete beginner to intermediate stage at your own pace. What’s more amazing though, is that this app remains absolutely free!
Never lose a note: Evernote
The grandfather of productivity and organization apps, this app almost needs no introduction. I’ve been using Evernote for years to gather my notes on everything. Whether they be random thoughts, receipts, or todo lists.
It has a ton of features that helps organize all of these notes into meaningful and accessible categories. The paid version is needed if you want all of the professional features but, for personal organization, the free version already delivers more power than you’ll probably need.
