App Store Apps

You can now search over a million unique Stories on Snapchat

Snapchat users can now search over one million unique Stories on the ephemeral messaging service, the company said Friday.

“We’re rolling out Stories in Search starting today in select cities and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do,” said the company.

To find a Story that might interest you, simply enter a keyword in the Snapchat for iPhone's search field to instantly see relevant Stories.

Download Panols free via Apple Store app to create stunning panoramas for Instagram

Apple is giving away Panols for a limited time, a $1.99 savings, but only through its official Apple Store app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Created by Juan Arreguin, Panols allows you to share the panoramic photos taken with your iPhone, as well as other photos stored in your photo library, with Instagram users everywhere. Taking advantage of Instagram's profile grid, Panols showcases your panoramas to their full effect in the standard three-across display view.

You can edit the name, description and geolocation of all your photos and be assured that your original photo will remain intact as the app uses a copy for all edits.

Twitter stops counting @usernames toward the 140-character limit

Twitter announced Thursday that it's no longer counting user names in tweets, such as @idownloadblog, toward its 140-character limit. With this change, any user names for mentions and replies will no longer shorten the amount of characters you could include in a tweet.

Last year, the micro-blogging service began allowing users to attach photos, animated GIFs, videos, polls, quoted tweets and direct messages to tweets without the links counting against the 140-character limit.

Infuse 5.3 brings optimized playback performance, parental controls, Blu-ray disk images & more

Infuse by aTV Flash Black developer FireCore is a versatile, very powerful media player that lets you watch non-iOS optimized media file types without the need for manual transcoding or a helper app to do the heavy lifting via your computer. The app was updated on App Store to version 5.3.

Infuse 5.3 for iOS and tvOS comes with a completely overhauled high-performance playback core that's now now faster and better than ever before.

Other new features are available in Infuse 5.3 as well.

The app now accepts your Blu-ray disc images and folders and lets you restrict access to videos and settings with built-in parental controls. The release also packs support for ISO 9960 (Joliet) disc images, country-specific age ratings for movies and much more.

Apple TV Remote app gains support for iPad, lyrics, playlists, chapters & more

Apple's free app for controlling Apple TVs from anywhere in your home via your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch was just updated on App Store following a barrage of software updates that the company released for iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS earlier this morning. Bumped to version 1.1, the official Apple TV Remote app finally supports iPad natively and now lets you see music lyrics, browse playlists, navigate chapters and more.

How to use Wish List to track iOS apps and games

Wish List is one of the lesser-known features of App Store. Your Wish List is accessible in App Store on mobile and iTunes on desktop. As the feature's title suggests, you can add iPhone, iPad and iPod touch apps and games to your Wish List that you might want to explore or purchase later.

With this tutorial, you'll learn how to add, remove and downloads items on your Wish List on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC devices.

Speed up or slow down iTunes playback for podcasts, audiobooks, and music with Speed-Up

Still enjoying iTunes despite the beautiful mess it has become on macOS? If the answer is yes, perhaps listen up for this one. Every once in a while, seemingly low-key and low-price apps pop up in the market, claiming to have identified an imperfection or gap in Apple’s software, and in the next breath promising the fix for it. Some of these apps are superfluous to the user for the simple reason that the touted feature is already in place in Apple’s mothership software (in some shape or form), other apps are gimmicky or overly flawed.

Speed-Up for Mac firmly sits in the opposite camp, the one where ostensibly small apps are extremely wholesome and deliver on the promised goods. So what does it promise you ask? Put simply, to speed up or slow down your iTunes playback, an option otherwise notably absent on macOS. If this sounds surprisingly succinct or sober to you, that’s because it is.

Speed-Up treasures simplicity over bells & whistles, and is probably worth a look if you have ever caught yourself wishing for a speed lever in the thick of an Audiobook or Podcast session on your MacBook.

Instagram unveils blurred posts, Two-Factor Authentication now available to everyone

Facebook-owned Instagram is continuing to build a safer, kinder community for all its customers by introducing helpful features aimed at increasing user security and privacy on the service. Thursday, the company announced a pair of important updates in the form of a Two-Factor Authentication security feature, now available to everyone, and blurred posts aimed at reducing “unwanted experiences” in the app, a free download from App Store.

Apple acquires powerful automation app Workflow

Apple has acquired the powerful automation app Workflow, reports TechCrunch. The outlet received a statement from the developers, as well as Apple, confirming the deal, but the financial details are not yet known.

For those who aren't familiar with the app, Workflow is similar to the popular IFTTT service in that it allows you to create custom recipes to perform complex tasks. The app was designed by former jailbreak developers.