From bringing by kittens to play with at work to monitoring your sleeping habits, there’s an app for nearly every aspect of life. However, sorting through all the choices can be a bit monotonous, not to mention it can take forever to download them all. So, we’ve sorted out some of the best free apps – from personal finance to photography – that will leave you glowing with knowledge… or at least a great photo filter.
Personal Finance: Dollarbird
Dollarbird is a brilliant cross between a smart calendar app and a budgeting app. It’s also more approachable for the first-time personal finance app user because it doesn’t require syncing your bank account information. Users simply enter in their income and expenses to the calendar, and their balance will be calculated automatically. From there, conveniently set bill reminders, recurring transactions, and even track different credit or savings accounts. Goodbye confusing spreadsheets! Dollarbird’s color-coding system also helps easily identify spending habits based on specific categories – this spans weekly grocery expenses to monthly rent.
Daily News: Pocket
For all you news junkies out there, Pocket is the go-to app for saving your favorite articles. From breaking stories on CNN to guilty pleasure reads on BuzzFeed, Pocket makes it easy to save all of this content directly from your browser and into one convenience place. All saved articles can then be viewed at any time and on any device, even without an Internet connection – perfect for long commutes without Wi-Fi access. We also love that Pocket gets rid of ads in the articles you save, making for uninterrupted reading.
Health and Fitness: Breeze
While not everyone is a gym buff, it’s important to stay active in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle (or if you want to lock in that lower term life insurance policy rate!). Breeze makes tracking your steps effortless by collecting your daily motion data and storing it right on your phone, eliminating the need to wear a separate fitness band or any other wearable. The app focuses on three very straightforward, main goals for users: make better choices, form new habits, and become more active. If you’re looking for a straightforward fitness app to help motivate you on a daily basis, this is for you.
Brain Games: Lumosity
Chances are you’ve heard of Lumosity, given its 60 million users, and it deserves the hype. With 40+ different mini games to exercise your core cognitive abilities, it’s difficult to lose interest. Categories of games include memory, attention, speed, flexibility and problem solving. Exercising these mental skills is supposed to help improve memory and decision-making – hello, mid-afternoon work break. If you want to enhance your ability to focus, check out Lost in Migration. Players are shown a pack of birds all facing the same direction except for one. Using the arrow keys, players must quickly choose the direction that the opposite bird is facing. The quicker you answer correctly, the more points you score.
Photography: FxCamera
When it comes to creative photo filters, we just can’t get enough. Luckily FxCamera has 40+ options to choose from! The app’s most unique feature, however, is the Voice Picture, which lets users add audio recordings to their photos. Now you can send everything from singing selfies to talking memes to your friends and family. You can even share a gloating vacation picture to your coworkers with the sound of beach waves rolling in the background.
With so many free apps available to help manage and entertain your life, we hope these might serve as a useful addition to your smartphones. Share the wealth, and tweet us or leave a comment on Facebook with your favorites.
