Best Apps: Aug '18 Edition

As the big five companies Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft continue to penetrate into the personal lives of most internet citizens on a vast scale, would-be challengers continue to struggle in their shadow. Very rarely comes a success story.

And when it does, seldom long does it stay afloat independently before it's swooped up by one of the big five (Instagram, WhatsApp, GitHub, LinkedIn, the list goes on) except for a few who have managed to hold on with varying degrees of success: Netflix, Spotify, Snap, Pinterest, SoundCloud (?) and Twitter.

So where does that leave the new entrants? Do they even have a viable future? Can they survive just on subscriptions? Or will there be an app-ocalypse, where apps die a slow death, paving the way for browser-based apps? While you ponder that question, here are some of the interesting apps and services, new and old, sorted by categories:

1. Ask questions about your neighbourhood: Neighbourly (Android)
2. Bite-size news: theSkimm (Android/iOS, membership required)
3. Blur sensitive information from photos and screenshots: Censor (iOS)
4. Calculator - Calculator Plus (Android)
5. Camera - Moment (Android/iOS)
6. Clipboard manager: Paste (iOS)
7. Create virtual burner cards to mask online purchases: Blur, Privacy
8. Dealing with breakups: Mend (iOS)
9. Design news: Sidebar
10. Edit photo EXIF metadata: Metapho (iOS)
11. Find information about device hardware and software: Inware (Android)
12. Follow news sources, video channels and RSS feeds: Telescope (iOS)
13. Learn coding: Grasshopper (Android)
14. Measure objects: Measure (Android)
15. Music player: Doppler (iOS, paid)
16. New York City Subway: Pigeon (iOS, invite only)
17. Notes: Agenda (iOS), Index (Android/iOS), Noted (iOS), Notes by Firefox (Android)
18. Open links in apps: Opener (iOS, paid)
19. Plain text editor: Textor (iOS)
20. Podcast magazine: Wilson (iOS)
21. Podcast player: Agora (iOS), Breaker, Castbox, Chorus (Android/iOS), The Podcast App (iOS)
22. Radio: Radiogram (Android)
23. Record podcasts: Anchor (Android/iOS)
24. Reddit alternatives: Raddle, Tildes (invite only), Voat
25. Reddit clients: Joey, Boost, Relay, Dank, Sync (Android), Burst (iOS)
26. Remove UTM tracking parameters from URLs before sharing: Clean Share (Android)
27. Repository of Progressive Web Apps: Appscope
28. Schedule events, tasks and notes: Sorted (iOS)
29. Secure messaging: Briar (Android)
30. Set reminders: Doo (iOS)
31. Subscription manager: Bobby (iOS), Nate (Android)
32. Summarise articles and web pages: SMMRY, Summarize (Android)
33. Tech News: Hacker News, Sip
34. Text editors: Atom (macOS, Windows), Sublime Text (macOS)
35. Trending news topics on Twitter: Hash
36. Turn photos into artwork: Inkwork (iOS, paid)
37. Two factor authentication: Step Two (iOS)
38. Video player: Infuse (iOS)
39. Web browser: Kiwi Browser (Android)
40. Wallpapers: Atlas Wallpaper (iOS), Unsplash
41. Watch handpicked videos: Neverthink
42. Weather: Overdrop (Android), RANE° (iOS), WeatherKit (Android/iOS)
43. Web browser with built-in file manager: Total (iOS)
44. Wikipedia client: Wikiflow (iOS)