My Most-Used iPhone Apps

Those of you who have smart phones might relate to this: Sometimes you don’t realize that you’re consistently accessing hard-to reach apps until you become annoyed that you’re scrolling three screens to the right and looking in a subfolder for the app every time. I wish there were a way that you could sort apps by how often you use them.

That function doesn’t exist, so every few months, I go through my apps and move the ones I use most to my home screen and second screen. I thought it might be fun to share those screens with you, especially in the off-chance that you end up discovering some new, useful apps from this post.

Home Screen

The apps that aren’t obvious:

  • Mail Myself!  I use this ALL the time. Opening that app opens a blank e-mail to yourself. I remind myself of thoughts and ideas all the time thanks to that one-click app.
  • CSC…ote D  This isn’t an app, but rather a bookmark to a website. Did you know you could save bookmarks to your home screen? Nope? Now you do.
  • Urbanspoon  My favorite restaurant app by far.
  • Dragon Dictation  A free and very easy-to-use way to make notes to yourself at times when you can’t type.
  • Kindle  I send almost all of my ebook samples to this app so I have something to read when I’m in waiting rooms.
  • Foursquare  I don’t know why I check in on Foursquare, but I do. It seems important, and I’m okay with that. (It’s an app where you “check in” to wherever you are, like restaurants, pubs, anywhere. You gain points for the check in and can unlock deals at those stores.)
  • HeyTell  A free app that lets you send voice messages just as quickly and easily as you’d send text messages.

Second Screen

  • NumeroRama  A great random number generator app. I don’t know if other people need to generate random numbers all that often, but I do.
  • NewsRack  This is a slick Google Reader interface for the iPhone.
  • Instagram  I might write a full entry on Instagram soon. I couldn’t understand why anyone would use this photo-filtering app until I tried it and realized that it makes any photo look better, instantly.
  • StupidZombie  The best game ever when you have only 1-2 minutes to waste time.
  • Klout  This automatically updates my social media score. It was up to 60 a month ago, but it’s dropped a few points.
  • Remote  This is a must-have if you use iTunes on your home computer. It lets you turn on your computer’s music from anywhere in the house.
  • RealTime Stocks  Perfect for those of you who keep waiting for Facebook’s stock to get back up to $41 (oh, that’s just me. I see.)

What are some of your most-used apps on your phone?

19 thoughts on “My Most-Used iPhone Apps”

  1. I’m going to add waze, twitter, and Facebook. Maps and pocket. Simplenote by far over notes because it syncs online and can be tagged and accessed from the desktop. For distractions, my time killer of choice is water.

    Reply
      • Waze: turn by turn social gps. People can notify waze of slowdowns and police and I will show up as alerts on your map.

        Pocket: read it later app

        Water: route flowing water by digging paths. Water physics game.

        Reply
    • Pocket (read it later) is far and away my most used app. I also really like EverNote for keeping ideas/thoughts together and across multiple platforms.

      Reply
  2. Dragon Dictation – sounds fun, but I am curious – when can’t you type? (or do you just mean because it’s faster?)

    HeyTell – I assume the other people have to have the app? Snazzy.

    I have a dumbphone but an iPad and I love CamScanner for scanning receipts for work or any other documents, Cause.it once it opens up to St. Louis will be awesome, and the app Unstuck is a cool, visual way to get through procrastination and/or writer’s block!

    Reply
    • I most often use Dragon Dictation when I’m driving (especially long road trips) and don’t want to lose an idea.

      Yep, the other person has to have HeyTell too.

      Thanks for your iPad recommendations!

      Reply
  3. So, with Pocket, are you saying that you often stumble upon things you want to read on your phone, and you activate Pocket to save it for later? Or are these things you found elsewhere (i.e., on your laptop), saved to a Pocket plug-in, and then accessed later on your phone when you had some free time? If that’s the case, how is it better/different from Evernote? Or e-mailing it to yourself, for that matter?

    Reply
    • Both ways. You can send pages to it from your web browser at your desk, or on your iphone/ipad. It’s designed to save web pages, so if there is a long technical blog that I want to read at some time, but don’t have time to do it now, I’ll send it to Pocket and read it when I have time.

      Reply
      • I see. I completely understand the utility of that app–that type of “save for later” app is incredibly useful.

        Reply
  4. Thanks for sharing these apps. Most I already use/knew about, but I’m very excited to try out the Dragon Dictation on Sunday when I’m headed back to St. Louis. I always think of things I want to write down while in the car and usually end up forgetting them by the time I can write them down.

    Some phones do have the option to give you a page of your most used apps, but only Blackberry as far as I know, and who really wants to carry one of those when an iPhone exists? My solution to not having 8 pages of apps is to have everything in folders and only the apps I use are out of the folders.

    Reply
    • Yeah, I do the same thing with the folders. They’re helpful for consolidating apps that you hardly ever use.

      Reply
  5. This may sound weird – but I use the IMDB app all the time. I’ll be watching a show and recognize someone and not have any idea what show or movie I’ve seen him/her in before. IMDB is perfect for that.

    I also have the RunKeeper app which track my exercise and includes a GPS feature for when walking/running/biking outside that maps your route and tells you how far you went, what your average pace was, etc.

    I use the RedBox app once in awhile if I’m looking to rent a movie but not sure if RedBox has anything worth driving there for. You can reserve movies at specific RedBox locations.

    And I prefer Yahoo Sportacuar to ESPN’s ScoreCenter. 🙂

    Reply
    • IMDB is a good one! It’s fast, too. Thanks for the other recommendations as well. I have the Yahoo Sportacular and ESPN apps, but for some reason I use the ESPN one as my default.

      Reply
  6. Coming from the other side of the aisle (android) I have to say first that on my phone there is an option to sort by recent apps as well a way to create custom lists, so if you only want social networking apps you can create a list for them. Also my phone has a slide out keyboard which is why I love it.

    This may not help you iphone users much, but I find a lot of the google apps helpful, particularly the google search app, my google calendar and google music (like the itunes cloud, stored on a cloud server, but free and accessible anywhere)

    Other fav apps: Yelp
    colornote- creates notes or sticky notes for lists and reminders, I use this as opposed to other notetaking apps, cause well I’m easily amused and it’s a sticky note, for your phone.
    Gasbuddy (shows gas prices around town)
    Weather.com
    Goodreads
    Craigslist notifications -I don’t use this one as much as I did, but it comes in handy when I do look for deals.

    I’m curious why you need to generate random numbers all that often?

    Reply
    • Maureen–Thanks for your thoughts. That’s pretty cool that Android phones let you sort in various ways.

      I have Yelp and Weather, but I like the idea of Colornote and Craigslist notifications. I didn’t know that Goodreads had an app–I’ll have to check that out.

      I run a fundraising raffle at work that lasts about four months, and whenever I draw a number, I used the random number app. Sure, I could use random.org, but I’ve found that it’s been handy to have the app offline. Every once in a while I’ll need a random number, and so it’s good to have! 🙂

      Reply
    • I just stumbled upon this post. I also have a droid that I have had for over a year. I believe most apps are available for both, but does the iphone also have all the same widgets??

      Certain things I’m obsessive about and have several of the same thing; like weather, clocks, and maps/traffic/navigation. Other times I have done research to find the best for me, like Catch notes my new fav.

      These are my favorite and most used, that people may not know about:

      My work/traffic/travel apps are together. With a 20.5 mile/23 minute commute and about 30% travel for work I use these a lot!
      Navigation, TeleNav GPS, & Google Maps – Depending on the updates I tend to like Nav and TeleNav the best.
      Waze – Mentioned above, a must have for any traveling or traffic!
      Urbanspoon, AroundMe, & Local – search for food, gas hotel, etc.
      Traffic Widget (home and work) – set to show you a map of traffic flow to your set address and an approximate ETA. LOVE this!!
      Nav widget (home and work) – opens navigation for your set location with one touch.
      I will add GasBuddy, thanks for the tip Maureen, I will be putting about 1,000 miles on my car in the next 10 days for work.

      I have two alarm clocks, one has a better timer, stopwatch feature, the other is a better alarm with capabilities of song or playlist ringer and solving math problems to snooze and/or dismiss.
      If you are not a morning person you NEED this app, the icon is a red circle with a + in the middle!!

      Weather; I use my Accuweather widget several times a day and sometimes double check the accuracy with The Weather Channel app.

      Photo editor
      Photaf – panoramic pics
      MapMyRun – sounds similar to RunKeeper. You can share your routes/workout on social media or via email. Fun when I go for a walk during lunch with a friend and I can send to her or run with a friend and I can send to him.
      Active applications widget – shows you how many apps are open and able to close all or select apps.
      Blip.me – walkie, same as HeyTell but you can also switch between voice messages and text messages – They both can be used for both droid and iphone, before blip.me was for only droid.
      Catch Notes – BEST note taker, can take text notes (paragraph like), list notes (like to do and grocery), voice recorded notes, calendar reminder notes/alarm, picture notes. Also you can organize and find easily by ideas, lists, etc… AND you can send and share via text, email, and social media. This has/will take place of my voice recorder, GrocerySmart, and old Note apps.
      I do still love my voice recorder and use it to record and sing with songs on the radio in the car and send to friends for their birthday, to get a laugh, or to get it stuck in their head.
      Coin Doser – is a fun meaningless addicting game to take a break from work
      AutoRap – SUPER fun, you record anything even read a phone book or email and it converts it into a rap song with a beat. I usually use in group road trips short or long or to pass time in a group!

      Reply

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