My Top 17 Favorite Apps I Love To Use
I can’t make it through the day without using an app. Do you have a phone full of apps? It seems like nowadays there is an app for everything. It’s a little mind blowing to think you can do everything from your phone. Email, banking, social media, blogging, photography and so much more. There are all sorts of fun, useful and helpful apps out there. I use apps to write, to take pictures, to keep me organized, to bookmark, to listen to music, to read, to manage my finances, to discover new things and even to shop.
Here’s a list of my top 17 favorite apps I love to use:
Articles + Posts
Medium
I love Medium for reading articles. If you love to read, write or both this app is for you! Medium is a collection of articles on all sorts of topics. I really enjoy reading the Creativity and Entrepreneurshipsections. At the top of every article, right above the title, you’ll find the article’s author and how many minutes it will take you to read.
Anyone can join. You can follow authors, bookmark articles, and clap to like and share articles with your friends. Anyone can write. You can also be an author for free and publish to Medium. In fact you can even get paid for your articles if you sign up for their partner program.
You can Follow me on Medium too!
StumbleUpon
I love StumbleUpon for stumbling upon new articles. That’s literally the idea. You set areas and topics of interest and then StumbleUpon gives you articles to view. You can give articles a thumbs up or thumbs down and “stumble” them to share. This also helps the app know what you like and don’t like so it can show you more articles based on your likes. Much like a social network you can follow and be followed by other stumblers. Update: After 16 years, however, SU is moving to Mix. I just discovered Mix to know only find out that StumbleUpon will actually by transitioning into Mix. As one of my favorite platforms to discover new content I am very interested to see how both the transition goes and how Mix will make it’s mark as a platform!
Mix
I just discovered Mix. It’s both a website and app for finding and bookmarking articles. It’s like StumbleUpon and Pocket rolled into one. I’ve really liked the quality of articles that I’m finding on Mix. The categorization is done really well. You add articles you like to topic categories you create. It’s really a beautiful platform and you can read the Medium story below by founder Garrett Camp on SU moving to Mix.
Pocket allows me to save articles and websites in the app for easy reference or simply to read later. You can save from webpages or even social media apps. When you’re ready to read Pocket has your articles or videos for you. The best part is that once you’ve added something to pocket you don’t need internet connection to view or watch it. Perfect for road trips and flights!
Photography + Editing
VSCO
I love VSCO for editing my photos. Lately I’ve also been using it to take pictures. The iPhone already takes pretty awesome pictures but VSCO has some neat features built in. One feature I like in particular is the ability to set your focal point and your exposure point. I also use VSCO to apply the same filter to all the photos I post on social media to bring consistency to my feed.
PS Express, Photoshop Fix, Photoshop Mix and Lightroom CC
I’m a big fan of Adobe. I’ve been using Creative Suite for over 10 years now. Honestly though, I’m at the point where I do almost all of my photo editing on my phone. Not just the pictures I take on my phone, I also edit the pictures I take on my DSLR Canon Camera on my phone. For quick simple editing I love all four of these apps. The best part is, they are all free!
Stellar
Stellar is a beautiful storytelling app. You create your stories with photos and videos. You can also like others stories and add them to your collections. You follow other storytellers and have a home page feed to view their stories. They have simple and easy to use templates so you can add photos, videos, title pages and text. Check my Steller stories out here: https://steller.co/happilydwell
Financial
Qapital
Qapital is an app that allows you to set a financial goal and set money aside based on the money you spend. Want to save up for a vacation? Have Qapital round up to the nearest dollar on all your purchases. I love that once I set up my goals Qapitol automatically sets money aside for me to save when I spend. * Join me on Qapitol!
Mint
Mint by Intuit has been my go to financial planning app for years. I create and track my monthly budget, income and expenses in Mint. With Mint there’s no getting away with over spending, at least not from myself there isn’t! If I spend an abnormal amount of money or go over budget I get an alert letting me know. It alerts me to upcoming bills and even provides my credit score all for free.
Organization + Planning
Asana
I stay organized with Asana. I use to manage and track all my collaborations with the companies I work with to stay on top of project and posting deadlines. It’s also fantastic for managing team projects and tasks. You can create an editorial calendar, set due dates, assign team members tasks, have in app conversations to keep all your project info in one place. Now that Megan and I are blogging together I keep all the blog communication between us on Asana. This way I have one place I can reference everything between us without hunting down emails or texts. You can access Asana on your phone app or online on a desktop. As a team member Megan and I can each check off our tasks as we go and see when they other person has accomplished their task.
Beauty + Lifestyle
Influenster
Free products for your honest review. I love Influenster because I get to try out new products complimentary for my review of the product. I’m not getting paid, but I do have to unlock a badge which includes writing product review and sharing on social media. You don’t have to be a social media influencer to sign up and participate in Influenster. You simply link your facebook, instagram and twitter and write reviews! The best part is receiving full size product to try out! * Try Influenster out for yourself!
Social Automation
IFTTT
If This, Than That is a fun app that allows you to write recipes (or use recipes others have created) called applets. From reading a digest of the week’s popular Business Day articles from the New York times to down loading new Facebook photos you’re tagged into a Google Drive, you use and create applets to keep you informed, organized or just for fun. IFTTT emails me a famous quote everyday, informs me when the President signs a new law and shares my blog posts to pinterest for me. You set up your applets and let IFTTT do the automated work for you!
Crowdfire
Crowdfire is one of my favorite apps to partner with twitter. Crowdfire pulls tweets based on my interests into a feed in the app for me. This allows me to see tweets that I might otherwise miss and does the topic searches for me. It also helps me find great content to turn around and share with my friends on twitter. Join Crowdfire here.
Buffer
I also use Buffer to share content to twitter. Scheduling sharing to twitter is one way I maintain an active presence throughout the day without flooding my followers with a string of tweets all at once. When I come across articles, posts or other tweets I want to share I buffer them and the sharing is spread out automatically. Buffer also loads images from the link you are sharing and shares pictures along with the tweet!
There you have it my top 17 favorite apps I love to use!
Want to connect even more on Social Media? You can also follow me on Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.
Naomi
