Homescreen Heroes
This round-includes features some of our favorite picks from a regular series of articles exploring the apps that we couldn’t live without. Read them all here.
Everyone has apps they can’t live without. The go-to icons that get tapped every day. Many are faithful utilities, like maps and banking. Others help you communicate and stay connected. Some help you find joy, whether through creativity or mindfulness.
We discovered and installed a whole host of apps in 2024: the beautiful Thinkrolls for keeping little ones entertained; Plum for helping to set aside rainy day funds; ShutEye for getting better rest.
We also featured some old favorites throughout the year – the classic apps which we think everyone should have installed on their smartphone. Waze for navigation, Pixelmator for editing images, Babbel for learning languages and Google Keep for jotting notes.
But what we’ve picked out here are nine apps we tried in 2024 that do something a little bit different. You’ll find apps in the list below that help with activity, creativity and productivity. There are beautiful apps to give you inspiration and insightful apps that help you learn.
Whether you have an iPhone or one of the best Android handsets, every app here is one that we’ve kept coming back to all year long. Install it on your own phone and we think you’ll do the same.
1. The Way
If you’re overwhelmed by the different categories of meditation found in apps such as Calm and Headspace, The Way could be the way to go. Rather than selecting a specific strand of mindfulness, such as stress or anxiety, The Way has you follow a single path, guided by Henry Shukman – a Zen master.
Each of the 110 sessions takes you further along your journey. Early sessions focus on mindfulness ‘basics’, before leading you deeper. There are also brief talks from Henry as to where the course is going next and why. In our The Way review, we found the voiceovers to be perfectly recorded, with the natural delivery and silent background creating an overwhelming sense of calm. We also found just a few minutes a day very effective.
As the app is new, there is an Early Supporter offer, which is £9.99 ($9.99) a month (normally £19.99) or £69.99 ($74.99) for the year (usually £139.98). We think that’s good value.
2. Superlist
Made by the same people who created Wunderlist, Superlist is a super-app for managing your tasks, reminders and notes. It offers a neat and tidy way to help you track what you need to get done, divided into lists and days. That makes it easy to keep work and personal actions separate. It also benefits from clever integrations, such as the option to turn emails from Gmail into tasks in the app – and have their contents summarized with the help of AI.
Because it works across iOS, macOS, Android and the web, you can easily use Superlist to track to-dos across multiple devices. While it naturally integrates most comfortably with Gmail and Google Calendar, you can also pay for extra integrations, such as Slack and GitHub. With more features arriving with every update, including sublists in the latest version, we can see Superlist becoming an indispensable productivity tool.
3. Blossom
If you need some assistance to keep your house plants alive, Blossom deserves some space on your smartphone. Take photos of your potted pals and Blossom will identify them, then add them to your virtual garden. Our Blossom review found the image search tool to be incredibly effective, and with a library of more than 30,000 plants, flowers and succulents, you’d need something very rare to stump it.
Once your plants are identified, Blossom will then create a personalized schedule for when to water, fertilize and repot. You can adjust this as you get to know your plants. The app can also help you to identify diseases and issues which might be affecting your leafy friends. Blossom is a quick, simple and effective way to upgrade your green-fingered activities.
4. Gentler Streak
Streaks can help with fitness consistency, but they don’t always work in the real world. You might be aching, ill or on vacation. That’s where Gentler Streak comes in: it retains the motivational power of a goal, without penalizing you for taking days off. It’s all based around an Activity Path, which logs your activities on a bar chart. Rather than focusing on individual workouts, the aim is to balance your efforts so that they follow the trend line.
The app will learn your body’s fitness level and recommend activities accordingly. Take it easy one day and it might suggest pushing a bit harder the next time you exercise. Run hard over the weekend and a recovery yoga class could be the suggestion on Monday. Our Gentler Streak review found it to be a more realistic way of maintaining our progress, without any feelings of guilt when you take a rest day.
5. Headway
When time is at a premium, reading can often take a back seat. That’s where Headway is your friend: it summarizes books as 15-minute reads or audio recordings. It distills the salient points of each text into a bite-size synopsis, giving you the main takeaways without the time required to actually turn every page.
Purists might balk at the idea of skimming through books in this way, but Headway makes them accessible to people who are otherwise too busy to read them in full. Our Headway review found that the summaries accurately represented their source material in most cases and the app adds value by allowing you to highlight phrases. It also recommends reads in your selected categories, helpfully grouping suggestions of similar titles.
6. Relive
A storytelling app for hikes and rides, Relive lets you record and document your journeys. Rather than sharing meaningless route markers on a map, it transforms your movements into engaging videos. Whether you’re on two feet or two wheels, it all starts with tracking your activity: you can follow existing routes or create your own using GPS data. It also plays nicely with tracking devices from the likes of Apple and Garmin.
A key part of the process is capturing photos and videos as you go. Once you’ve finished, Relive will automatically create a highlights video for you. You can customize the generated clip to your liking, so that you’re left with a memory that’s much more interesting to share with friends and family. Some features are only available with Relive Plus, for $38.99 / £38.99.
7. Napper
Cracking your kids’ sleep patterns might feel like an art form, but Napper uses science to help you get them down. A sleep-tracker that creates tailor-made nap schedules for little ones, it’s designed to take the guesswork out of the night-time routine. Once you’ve entered your child’s details, the app goes into its ‘Learning Phase’, where you’ll need to enter the times that your child wakes up, naps and goes to bed. You can also chart feeds and temperatures.
After a few days, Napper will start to make predictions. After a week, we found that it becomes remarkably reliable – and its accuracy only improves over time. It also adds value in other ways, both with restful soundtracks and the Baby Sleep Bootcamp – a set of training courses that give you useful insights based on research into sleep and attachment theory.
8. Ahead
A bit of self-reflection can go a long way. If there are behaviors you’re looking to change, we’ve found that Ahead can help you get there. An app-based coach that’s home to a catalog of emotional intelligence journeys, it can help you with everything from procrastination to silencing your inner critic. Its clean interface and attractive visuals help to make it one that you’ll want to open daily.
Select a journey and the app will present a range of techniques tailored to your objective. Working through each level will see you tackle different subjects, with information and activities to help you understand at every stage. The app guides you without judgement, with useful tools such as a learning journal to help you see how far you’ve come.
9. Cosmos
If mood boards are part of your creative flow but you want to try an ad-free alternative to Pinterest, take a look at Cosmos. Like Pinterest, it allows you to gather visual inspiration from things that other people have created. Unlike Pinterest, it has no ads or sponsored content. As a result, its monochrome interface is distraction-free, letting inspiration take center stage.
Our Cosmo review found the user experience to be so beautifully minimalist that the process almost becomes meditative, allowing you to get deep into your creative process as you explore ideas. It’s all centered around elements (images, links and videos) and clusters, which are personalized collections for organizing saved elements. That fluid blend is complemented by the Infinite Canvas, as well as an AI-powered search tool and useful ‘Discover’ section.
