this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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Asklemmy

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Preferably lesser known but game-changing apps that are able to be bought one-time and put all others to shame.

To help clarify your thinking, which apps have produced such an outrageous level of value (regardless of one-time cost) to the extent you believe it should be #1 in its category, not necessarily #1 app ever.

We'll do a seperate thread for Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, etc but let's stick to iOS for this one. Thanks Lemmings!

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] cheese_greater 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] QuarterSwede 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For real. At least we have Voyager!

[–] cheese_greater 3 points 1 year ago

Memmy has more than filled the gap pour moi

[–] MeMyselfandIronMan 61 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Vinegar. It’s a safari extension that changes the YT player into the stock iPhone one and skips ads. Well worth the one time purchase!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Omg! I’m downloading this now. I already use YouTube via safari instead of the YouTube app.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just bought it too! Thanks for the recommendation! I got the bundle with baking soda, have you used that as well?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

sponsor block is a great addition to vinegar as well

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Just downloaded thanks!

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[–] macarthur_park 39 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Seek by iNaturalist

The app uses AI to identify the species of plants, animals, insects and fungi. In video mode you scan around something you want to ID as the AI narrows it down to the species. Then you can take a pic. The app keeps track of each unique species you’ve found (along with your photo of it). There’s also badges and achievements for identifying different numbers of species, if you want to gamify your nature sightseeing.

It’s basically real life Pokémon. Oh and it’s completely free.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Whoa! This sounds rad.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Paprika. It downloads saves and organizes recipes from just about any website, bypassing annoying ad floaters and, magically, paywalls. I use it constantly. It’s a one time purchase for all your devices. Does shopping lists too, if that’s your thing.

[–] cheese_greater 3 points 1 year ago

Sounds like a recipe for a genius and useful app

[–] TheOgreChef 3 points 1 year ago

RecipeBox is another good one that has a recipe search function and a grocery list function that connects to your recipes and populates what you need directly from the recipe itself.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

As a student of life I have to mention Anki. At its core it’s a flashcard app out of the box but it’s almost infinitely more powerful than that if you dig deep.

I paid 35 CAD for it in 2019 and I’ve used it every single day since. The amount of knowledge I’ve committed to memory is truly priceless, and I’ve even gifted this app to several friends.

NB: AnkiMobile, not the free knockoff AnkiApp. It’s open-source and actually free for computers and android devices, and iOS/iPadOS app purchases are the only way the developer makes money.

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[–] PP_BOY_ 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The original Angry Birds still holds up perfectly imo

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I bought the original on my iPhone 4 and still have it in my purchase history, but when I download it on my iPad today it’s full if ads and limited lives….

What am I doing wrong?

Edit: it’s called Angry Birds Classic now if that makes a difference

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[–] QuarterSwede 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

AnyList.

My wife and I have subscribed for years now because it literally never fails to sync and is easy to use. We have a ton of lists including grocery, hardware, trips, camping, and so on. It’s also our meal planner and recipe library.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Gotta subscribe though, don’t you?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

One person needs to subscribe (I thought it was like 3 bucks a year) for all the premium sharing features.

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[–] raffomania 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kiwix: Download Wikipedia for offline reading.

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[–] cheese_greater 8 points 1 year ago

VoiceDream and SpeechCentral are amazing text to speech apps that turn your documents (PDF, txt, ePub, Mobi, AZW3 into audiobooks that let you read by highlighting and adjusting the speed etc.

I don't know if VoiceDream can still be bought on iOS but I know SpeechCentral is almost as good and it can be bought one-time.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

As someone who watches a fairly wide variety of tv shows, “next episode” has been the most useful app on my phone for me. It helps so much for knowing what to subscribe to and when. Only sub when my favorite shows come out and catch up on the rest then. I’ve also discovered some new shows through their upcoming and trending lists (which is more of just a bonus and not why I got the app to begin with). It’s probably the only app I would give my full recommendation for anyway.

[–] QuarterSwede 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you have an app link? Searching for “episodes” shows a ton of romantic apps.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh I’m silly. It’s “next episode” not episodes! Sorry, I’ll have to edit my comment.

[–] QuarterSwede 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] cheese_greater 3 points 1 year ago

ShowPal's actually sick too, has all the seasons and where to actually stream it!

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Glazba. It's a music player that allows for playing files in various formats, including FLAC. Song files can be uploaded to the phone through the app via web browser over Wi-Fi, or it can play music files stored on any of several cloud-storage services. Considering that I've ripped my entire 1000+ CD collection to FLAC, and considering that my collection contains a number of albums not available through streaming services, this app has been quite useful.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

YNAB - it’s subscription based but is the best budgeting app I’ve found. Keeps me honest with my money, and when I was married was amazing for keeping us synced on our shared spending budgets.

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[–] qooqie 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ve got three.

  1. For those that like reading articles the built in news app is actually quite good and even has daily crosswords with more puzzles to follow. I used up the free trial and went to paid because I liked the app so much.

  2. Less of an unknown, but if you like OSRS the mobile app is actually pretty great and since OSRS could run on a potato it doesn’t lag at all.

  3. For people wanting to learn Asian languages the hello apps are really good. I’ve been using HelloChinese for awhile now and it’s built and populated with native speakers. Duolingo is weird with its syntax for Asian languages so this one is much better imo.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I started hunting for the news app, until figuring out that Apple still hasn’t launched it in Germany. 🤷‍♂️

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Dice by PCalc - For when you need to roll some dice

Blackbox - It got some hype when it released but if anyone still hasn’t tried it, it is highly recommended. You will need to learn everything your iPhone can do and think outside the box to solve these puzzles.

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[–] Ghostalmedia 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

This community might be a better place for this question.

https://lemmy.world/c/apple_enthusiast

[–] cheese_greater 18 points 1 year ago

This is a broader audience tho. And I'd like to do a series going through the respective categories so I must respectfully disagree although I appreciate your effort to help find a more granular audience. I think this is right where the post needs to be but I thank you for your efforts.

[–] dpkonofa 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, that community is filled with anything but Apple enthusiasts…

[–] cheese_greater 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think if you really are someone who really uses Apple stuff to the extent its basically your ecosystem, you should be able to see some of the absurdities or sometimes the anti-user-friendly quirks that should be corrected.

For example, HomePod should have bluetooth in a addition to AirPlay. Fight me ;)

[–] dpkonofa 3 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I will not, sir. I agree with you. Although I get why they don’t, at least on the big HomePods. Bluetooth audio quality sucks for such a nice speaker array.

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[–] cheese_greater 4 points 1 year ago
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