App stores are crowded places these days, and because storage space on your phone is often at a premium, you’ll want to find and fill it with not only the best but also the most helpful apps out there.
Because they come and go quicker than the latest fashion trends, and digging through Google Play, the iTunes App Store, or any of the others is such a mission, a little nudge in the right direction is often very welcome. Here are the apps we think you need to check out this week.
One of the best things about Spotify is the social feature, where collaborative playlists, shared songs, and a feed of what your friends are listening to all appear. It’s great for connecting with friends through a shared love of music, but what about when you’re in the same room? Partify is the answer to that question. The new app localizes the music sharing experience, condensing it down and turning the sound system at your get-together into an exercise in democracy.
Partify turns Spotify into the house DJ and gives it the ability to take requests from the crowd. Browse through the entirety of Spotify’s music library and add songs to the collective queue to get them played. As tracks come through the speakers, people can upvote the track to give approval. Of course, as the host, you get the last say in case the choice of music isn’t to your taste.
When you’re just getting started with a job in a new field, there’s bound to be some questions you want to ask but aren’t sure on the best approach to take. Plus, when you’ve been in a profession for a long time, there’s plenty of venting you’d like to do but few safe outlets. Panel serves to plug those gaps, giving professionals a platform on which to ask the questions and share the information that they might otherwise not feel comfortable doing out loud.
Eventually, the messaging app well will run dry and mobile developers everywhere will weep. But for now, there’s still space to find a niche — and Chime Chat has carved out one of its own. Chime Chat is somewhere between Snapchat and Facebook Messenger. You can send short videos throughout the day to individuals or groups, checking in on friends and family with bite-sized clips. It creates an ongoing video conversation but is delivered more like a text than a live chat on Skype.
The better your phone understands your needs, the more you’ll be able to get done using it. That’s the idea behind Shifu, a smart to-do list and time management app. Instead of adding to your tasks by making you search for information, Shifu uses its predictive engine to bring the apps and information you need without you needing to ask. Over time, the app will get a better understanding of your habits and generate even better suggestions, helping simplify your life.
Genius is already a popular service on the Web and iOS and now it’s finally making its way to Android. The app that insists it will annotate the world made its start by adding liner notes and explanations to song lyrics, and that’s the primary focus of its mobile offering. Through it, you can find just about any song and read the lyrics, plus get crowdsourced context for what each line really means, to get a better understand of your favorite tracks.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.