# A list of apps that are useful to me. (And other phone details)

Edit: updated list [http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/nh3/update\_to\_the\_list\_of\_apps\_that\_are\_useful\_to\_me/](/r/discussion/lw/nh3/update_to_the_list_of_apps_that_are_useful_to_me/)

I have noticed I often wish "Damn I wish someone had made an app for that" and when I search for it I can't find it.  Then I outsource the search to facebook or other people; and they can usually say - yes, its called X.  Which I can put down to an inability to know how to search for an app on my part; more than anything else.

With that in mind; I wanted to solve the problem of finding apps for other people.

The following is a list of apps that I find useful (and use often) for productive reasons:

* * *

The environment
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This list is long.  The most valuable ones are the top section that I use regularly.  

Other things to mention:

**Internal storage - **I have a large internal memory card because I knew I would need lots of space.  So I played the "out of sight out of mind game" and tried to give myself as much space as possible by buying a large internal card.

**Battery - **I use anker external battery blocks to save myself the trouble of worrying about batteries.  If prepared I leave my house with 2 days of phone charge (of 100% use).  I used to count "wins" of days I beat my phone battery (stay awake longer than it) but they are few and far between.  Also I doubled my external battery power and it sits at two days not one (28000mA + 2*460ma spare phone batteries)

**Phone - **I have a Samsung S4 (android Running KitKat) because it has a few features I found useful that were not found in many other phones - Cheap, Removable battery, external storage card, replaceable case.

**Screen cover - **I am using the one that came with the phone still

I carry a spare phone case, in the beginning I used to go through one each month; now I have a harder case than before it hasn't broken.

**MicroUSB cables - **I went through a lot of effort to sort this out, it's still not sorted, but its "okay for now".  The advice I have - buy several good cables (read online reviews about it), test them wherever possible, and realise that they die.  Also carry a spare or two.

**Restart - **I restart my phone probably most days when it gets slow.  It's got programming bugs, but this solution works for now.

**The overlays**
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These sit on my screen all the time.

**Data monitor** \- Gives an overview of bits per second upload or download. updated every second.

**CpuTemp** \- Gives an overlay of the current core temperature.  My phone is always hot, I run it hard with bluetooth, GPS and wifi blaring all the time.  I also have a lot of active apps.

**Mindfulness bell** \- My phone makes a chime every half hour to remind me to check, "Am I doing something of high-value right now?" it sometimes stops me from doing crap things.

**Facebook chat heads** \- I often have them open, they have memory leaks and start slowing down my phone after a while, I close and reopen them when I care enough.

**The normals:**
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**Facebook** \- communicate with people.  I do this a lot.

**Inkpad** \- its a note-taking app, but not an exceptionally great one; open to a better suggestion.

**Ingress** \- it makes me walk; it gave me friends; it put me in a community.  Downside is that it takes up more time than you want to give it.  It's a mobile GPS game.  Join the Resistance.

**Maps** (google maps) - I use this most days; mostly for traffic assistance to places that I know how to get to.

**Camera** \- I take about 1000 photos a month.  Generic phone-app one.

**Assistive light** \- Generic torch app (widget) I use this daily.

**Hello** \- SMS app.  I don't like it but its marginally better than the native one.

**Sunrise calendar -** I don't like the native calendar; I don't like this or any other calendar.  This is the least bad one I have found.  I have an app called "facebook sync" which helps with entering in a fraction of the events in my life.  

Phone, address book, chrome browser.

**GPS logger** \- I have a log of my current gps location every 5 minutes.  If google tracks me I might as well track myself.  I don't use this data yet but its free for me to track; so if I can find a use for the historic data that will be a win.

Quantified apps:
----------------

**Fit** \- google fit; here for multiple redundancy

**S Health** \- Samsung health - here for multiple redundancy

**Fitbit** \- I wear a flex step tracker every day, and input my weight daily manually through this app

**Basis** \- I wear a B1 watch, and track my sleep like a hawk.

**Rescuetime** \- I track my hours on technology and wish it would give a better breakdown. (I also paid for their premium service)

**Voice recorder** \- generic phone app; I record around 1-2 hours of things I do per week.  Would like to increase that.

**Narrative** \- I recently acquired a life-logging device called a narrative, and don't really know how to best use the data it gives.  But its a start.

**How are you feeling?** \- Mood tracking app - this one is broken but the best one I have found, it doesn't seem to open itself after a phone restart; so it won't remind you to enter in a current mood.  I use a widget so that I can enter in the mood quickly.  The best parts of this app are the way it lets you zoom out, and having a 10 point scale.  I used to write a quick sentence about what I was feeling, but that took too much time so I stopped doing it.

**Stopwatch** \- "hybrid stopwatch" - about once a week I time something and my phone didn't have a native one.  This app is good at being a stopwatch.

**Callinspector** \- tracks ingoing or outgoing calls and gives summaries of things like, who you most frequently call, how much data you use, etc.  can also set data limits.

**Misc**
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**Powercalc** \- the best calculator app I could find

**Night mode** \- for saving batter (it dims your screen), I don't use this often but it is good at what it does.  I would consider an app that dims the blue light emitted from my screen; however I don't notice any negative sleep effects so I have been putting off getting around to it.

**Advanced signal status** \- about once a month I am in a place with low phone signal - this one makes me feel better about knowing more details of what that means.

**Ebay** \- To be able to buy those $5 solutions to problems on the spot is probably worth more than $5 of "impulse purchases" that they might be classified as.

**Cal** \- another calendar app that sometimes catches events that the first one misses.

**ES file explorer** \- for searching the guts of my phone for files that are annoying to find.  Not as used or as useful as I thought it would be but still useful.

**Maps.Me** \- I went on an exploring adventure to places without signal; so I needed an offline mapping system.  This map saved my life.

**Wikipedia** \- information lookup

**Youtube** \- don't use it often, but its there.

How are you feeling? (again) - I have this in multiple places to make it as easy as possible for me to enter in this data

**Play store** \- Makes it easy to find.

**Gallery** \- I take a lot of photos, but this is the native gallery and I could use a better app.

Social
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In no particular order;

Facebook groups, Yahoo Mail, Skype, Facebook Messenger chat heads, Whatsapp, meetup, google+, Hangouts, Slack, Viber, OKcupid, Gmail, Tinder.

They do social things.  Not much to add here.

Not used:
---------

Trello

Workflowy

pocketbook

snapchat

AnkiDroid - Anki memoriser app for a phone.

MyFitnessPal - looks like a really good app, have not used it 

Fitocracy - looked good

I got these apps for a reason; but don't use them.

**Not on my front pages:**

These I don't use as often; or have not moved to my front pages (skipping the ones I didn't install or don't use)

S memo - samsung note taking thing, I rarely use, but do use once a month or so.

**Drive, Docs, Sheets** \- The google package.  Its terrible to interact with documents on your phone, but I still sometimes access things from my phone.

**bubble -** I don't think I have ever used this

**Compass pro** \- gives extra details about direction. I never use it.

(ingress apps) Glypher, Agentstats, integrated timer, cram, notify

**TripView** (public transport app for my city)

**Convertpad** \- converts numbers to other numbers. Sometimes quicker than a google search.

**ABC Iview** \- National TV broadcasting channel app.  Every program on this channel is uploaded to this app, I have used it once to watch a documentary since I got the app.

**AnkiDroid** \- I don't need to memorise information in the way it is intended to be used; so I don't use it. **Cram** is also a flashcard app but I don't use it.

**First aid** \- I know my first aid but I have it anyway for the marginal loss of 50mb of space.

**Triangle scanner** \- I can scan details from NFC chips sometimes.

**MX player** \- does videos better than native apps.

**Zarchiver -** Iunno.  Does something.

**Pandora -** Never used

**Soundcloud -** used once every two months, some of my friends post music online.

**Barcode scanner -** never used

**Diskusage** \- Very useful.  Visualises where data is being taken up on your phone, helps when trying to free up space.

**Swiftkey -** Better than native keyboards.  Gives more freedom, I wanted a keyboard with black background and pale keys, swiftkey has it.

**Google calendar -** don't use it, but its there to try to use.

**Sleepbot** \- doesn't seem to work with my phone, also I track with other methods, and I forget to turn it on; so its entirely not useful in my life for sleep tracking.

My service provider's app.

**AdobeAcrobat -** use often; not via the icon though.

**Wheresmydroid?** \- seems good to have; never used.  My phone is attached to me too well for me to lose it often.  I have it open most of the waking day maybe.

**Uber -** I don't use ubers.

**Terminal emulator, AIDE, PdDroid party, Processing Android, An editor for processing, processing reference, learn C++ -** programming apps for my phone, I don't use them, and I don't program much.

**Airbnb -** Have not used yet, done a few searches for estimating prices of things.

**Heart rate** \- measures your heart rate using the camera/flash.  Neat, not useful other than showing off to people how its possible to do.

**Basis - (B1 app)**, \- has less info available than their new app

**BPM counter -** Neat if you care about what a "BPM" is for music.  Don't use often.

**Sketch guru -** fun to play with, draws things.

**DJ studio 5 -** I did a dj thing for a friend once, used my phone.  was good.

**Facebook calendar Sync** \- as the name says.

**Dual N-back - I **Don't use it.  I don't think it has value giving properties.

**Awesome calendar** \- I don't use but it comes with good reccomendations.

**Battery monitor 3 -** Makes a graph of temperature and frequency of the cores.  Useful to see a few times.  Eventually its a bell curve.

**urbanspoon** \- local food places app.

**Gumtree -** Australian Ebay (also ebay owns it now)

Printer app to go with my printer

Car Roadside assistance app to go with my insurance

**Virgin air entertainment app** \- you can use your phone while on the plane and download entertainment from their in-flight system.

* * *

Two things now;

What am I missing? Was this useful?  Ask me to elaborate on any app and why I used it.  If I get time I will do that anyway. 

P.S. this took two hours to write.

P.P.S - I was intending to make, keep and maintain a list of useful apps, that is not what this document is.  If there are enough suggestions that it's time to make and keep a list; I will do that.