10 apps I pay for 📲
I have 745 apps on my phone. I use about 10% regularly. Time for spring cleaning, right? Read on for 10 apps so useful I pay for them.
Learning 🧠
1. Picture This — Identify Plants
I open this magical app and point it at a plant, flower, or tree. The app gives me its name, a detailed description, info about how to care for it, pictures, answers to common questions, pests, and a place for my own notes as I learn about the natural world. Seek is a free alternative that’s great for animal identification but less comprehensive for plants.
Price: $30/year Download: iOS | Android
2. Duolingo — Learn Languages
My daughters use this app to study Hebrew and French. They practice translating, speaking, typing, and answering questions. The gamification makes progress playful. I aspire to learn more Spanish and Italian, and with the paid family plan, we can all learn.
Price: $120/year Download: iOS | Android
3. Math Tango — Enjoy Math
This app for kids 5 to 10 turns math into engaging quests and puzzles.
Price: $8/month or $50/year Download iOS | Android
Creativity 🎨
4. Metronaut — Practice music
I love being able to easily access a lifetime’s worth of sheet music from my phone or iPad. The app lets me play my violin with an orchestral or piano accompaniment.
Price: $27/year Download: iOS | Android alternative: Tomplay is great on both platforms and includes a wider range of chamber music. I pay $82/year for it.
5. Tabs — Play Guitar
I’m a novice at guitar, so I appreciate how this app shows me simplified versions of songs I can strum. Each piece is linked to a professional recording, or I can watch performances from others who use the app. There’s also a built-in tuner.
Price: $20/year Download: iOS | Android
6. Paper — Draw Digitally
This simple drawing app lets you create digital art without learning complicated tools. It doesn’t have all the features of Procreate, another great drawing app, but it’s easy and fun to use. You can create as many digital notebooks as you want to house your sketches. Price: $12/year Download: iOS
Android alternative: Infinite Painter gets top reviews. Casual doodlers may enjoy playing with nearly 200 brushes. Pros will appreciate advanced tools. Free to try for a week, then a $10 one-time purchase.
7. Google Photos — Backup Photos
I love being able to find any photo in my collection just by typing in a name, place, or even a detail like “snow,” “birthday,” or “school.” I use it to edit and share photos and my wife orders printed family photo books twice a year. Bonus: I like how the app creates special collages juxtaposing pictures of my daughters at various stages of childhood.
Price: $30/year for extra storage and editing features. Download: iOS | Android
Wellness 🧘
8. Wakeout — Stretch Enjoyably
Wakeout makes it easy to exercise in 2-minute spurts at your desk. There are special hand and eye exercises useful for those of us who type a lot or stare at screens all day. A "relief" section has exercises for relieving back, shoulder, and neck pain.
Price: $25 is what I pay, purchased during a sale. Download: iOS | Android Alternative: 7-minute workout provides helpful visuals for simple exercises.
9. Headspace — Relax Mindfully
I listen to this app's wind-down meditations, which can be customized to last anywhere from two to 20 minutes, to relax before bed. Since the early days of the pandemic, I've found its meditations helpful for managing anxiety, and I've come to rely on the app's calming music to help me stay focused at work.
Price: $70/year or free for K-12 students/educators Download: iOS | Android
10. Day One — Journal Comfortably
Apple’s planning a new journal app, but Day One remains a great way to keep a diary. I like being able to add audio entries and photos and videos. I can email in a message I want to save in my journal. Every couple of years, I order a printed book version to reflect on the passage of time. My prior post about Day One suggests ways to jumpstart your own journal.
Price: $35/year Download: iOS | Android
Sponsored Message
Receive compelling writing, plus thoughts about the writer's life from Everlands — now featuring The Lost City of Desire, a utopian novel set in a dystopian world. Take a look
In response to this post I published today about the 10 mobile apps I pay for, readers shared in the comments the 40+ apps they collectively pay for. I asked Notion AI to turn apps referenced in the comments i(as of this afternoon) into a table with links and descriptions, which you can see here: https://www.notion.so/jeremycaplan/005efa9353c047238f7a74d994cf7ce9?v=b31a5410aa4548a2bb06c3fc11552ca9&pvs=4 This was a fun use-case for AI taking a bunch of menial data entry and doing it for me in a few seconds.
Also use headspace for mediation and I’m thankful that my employer pays for it
Pliability- incredible stretching app
AllTrails- helps me find hikes anywhere in the world