We made it to another weekend everyone, congrats! That means it’s time to kick back, relax, and check out the picks from this week’s Apps of the Week roundup. We have an app that recommends streaming content, a Yoga instructor for your eyes (no, really), and an app for sending and receiving handwritten letters. And as always, we’ve selected a fun game for you to try.
Taste: Movie & TV Suggestions
I will continue to highlight content recommendation apps because, honestly, give me all the recommendations. I hate scrolling through the wall of TV shows and movies on [insert streaming service] and googling for reviews—just tell me what shows are good based on stuff I like. Taste aims to do just that. The app essentially has you rate movies and shows you’ve seen to calculate your interests, and then it serves you up personalized recommendations crowdsourced from other users with similar tastes. Rating is super easy with a ‘swipe to like’ mechanism, and you can even connect with a partner to find things to watch that you’ll both enjoy.
Eyesight Trainer: EyeYoga
Yeah you can’t name your app EyeYoga and expect me not to be intrigued. My eyes are going crazy right now just imagining it. Downward dog. Warrior 1. Child’s pose. Ok, that’s probably enough of that. Eyesight Trainer. You work out your muscles and your brain—why not your eyes? This app gives you simple but effective massages and exercises that it claims will bring you noticeable relief and improvement in your vision. I’m obviously not a doctor and I don’t think these folks are either, but I do know staring at these bright, glowing screens all day can’t be good for our eyes, so I’d like to think wiggling them around every now and then may help. The app only has 1 rating, and it’s for 1 star, but since they didn’t leave an actual review I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Lettre.app
Life before emails and direct messaging sounds so quaint, and simple. That was a little before my time, but it sounds so care and stress-free. Just writing your thoughts on a piece of paper and sending it out into the wind, with no real idea on when or if you’ll get a response. Well, Lettre.app wants to help you reclaim some of that magic with an all-new platform for slow and deliberate communication. Features include a unique handwritten experience, digital artwork in the form of unique, tradable and giftable stamps (OG NFTs?!), and the developers promise no spam or ads ever. The app is iPad-only, which I don’t normally like to highlight because it’s so exclusionary, but this one was just too interesting to ignore.
Compete – Minigame Showdown
Pass the time this weekend with Compete, a collection of fun mini games that test everything from your math skills to your reflexes, and even memory. The app features 10+ mini games including Click Speed, Reaction Time, Sequence Memory, Visual Memory, and Guess the Flag. You can play to beat your own high scores, work your way up the leaderboards, and even go head-to-head with friends. All of the games are playable without setting up an account, but you will have to create one to take advantage of the multiplayer stuff. About the only thing this game is missing is the ability to invite and play directly in the Messages app (if it can do that, I haven’t seen it). So yeah, check out Compete. Fun times.
App-related news and tips from this week
- Adobe adds new AI-powered features to Photoshop and Premiere Elements 2024
- How to use Smart Stack widgets on Apple Watch
- How to turn off AR reactions in FaceTime and other video apps
- The best AirPods Pro tips for iPhone and iPad