App Store Apps

Apple’s free app of the week: Power Hover

Apple on Thursday updated its App of the Week promotion with the game Power Hover. This means that for the next 7 days, you’ll be able to pick up the hit minimal, gravity-defying title on both iPhone and iPad for free—a savings of $4.

In Power Hover, players get to defy gravity and enjoy the freedom of controlling their own hoverboard. You must do your best to avoid various hazards and collect energy as you navigate your way through a desolate, robot-ruled world.

Pokémon GO Plus companion wearable accessory has been delayed until September

Pokémon GO Plus, a Bluetooth-driven wearable device that helps you catch 'em all without looking at Nintendo's Pokémon GO augmented-reality game on your smartphone, is now set to launch in September, not late-July as previously announced. Nintendo of America tweeted news of the delay earlier this week.

“The Pokemon GO Plus accessory will now be released Sept 2016 instead of the originally expected end of July launch,” reads the announcement.

Controlling what your Eevee evolves into in Pokémon GO

Eevee is an unusual Pokémon in the hit mobile game because unlike other Pokémon, it can evolve into three possible outcomes. Those three are Flareon (fire), Jolteon (electric), and Vaporeon (water).

Typically, when you evolve an Eevee, the outcome is going to be 100% random, but as the game publisher Niantic confirmed this week, there is a small cheat that you can use to actually control what your Eevee evolves into, and we'll talk about that in this tutorial.

Google app gains Forward button (seriously!), more reliable voice search & other new features

In addition to adding support for Accelerated Mobile Pages to Chrome for iOS, Google also this morning issued a refresh to its native search app on the App Store, which supports Google Now cards. Google 17.0 for iOS, a free download, packs in improvements to help you get things done more quickly in the app such as the addition of a Forward button (what took them so long, really?), a more reliable voice search, the ability to revisit recent pages for a full seven days and a few local search results improvements.

Chrome for iOS now supports Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages

Google today issued a small but important refresh to the Chrome browser for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch on the App Store. The updated software bumps up version number to 52.0.2743.84 and brings official support for Accelerated Mobile Pages that, similar to Instant Articles on Facebook, load in a fraction of the time of their non-accelerated mobile versions. Any news stories and articles from partner publishers that have a lightning bolt and “AMP” next to them in search results will load instantly when tapped on.

Did Microsoft just make the best camera app with Pix for iPhone?

Microsoft Pix, a smarter camera app that helps you take better pictures without extra effort, is now available for download from the App Store. Microsoft says its app is “a bit like having a professional photographer inside your camera” in that it uses advanced artificial intelligence, computational photography and video stabilization to automatically pick the right settings to help boost and improve your iPhone photography skills.

Grab Microsoft Pix from the App Store for free and let us know if it impresses you.

How to level up in Pokémon GO

Pokémon GO has quickly become one of the most popular mobile games for both the iOS and Android platforms within just the few weeks that it's been available to play.

Some players have been playing since day one, while others have only been playing for a few days. Nevertheless, there are two main goals in this game: catching Pokémon, and leveling up your character.

In this piece, we'll discuss what you can do to speedily level up your character without wasting any time.

Adobe releases viewing-only Lightroom app for Apple TV

Tuesday, Photoshop maker Adobe announced it's releasing Lightroom for Apple TV. A viewing-only app, Lightroom for Apple TV lets you instantly appreciate on your big screen TV any photos that are synchronized with Lightroom for mobile or uploaded via Lightroom CC on the desktop, mobile or web.

Your photos can be presented one by one or in a slideshow and you can zoom in on details using the Siri Remote. Separately, Adobe also released Lightroom CC 2015.6.1, which you can.

Viber for iPhone now lets you share, preview, delete and restore your stickers

Just like rival WhatsApp, the popular Rakuten-owned Viber messaging application pushed an update to its App Store app this morning, bumping version number to 6.2 whilst adding a few new features related to handling sticker packages within the app. You can now share sticker packages with others and preview stickers before sending one in a chat. And to preserve storage space on the device, there's now the option to delete sticker packages you no longer use. Grab Viber for free on the App Store.

WhatsApp for iPhone gains 3x bigger emoji, zooming during video capture and more

After launching a desktop Mac app in May, Facebook-owned WhatsApp today gave its iPhone application a little love with a new version now available on the App Store. WhatsApp 2.16.7 for iPhone includes three times bigger emoji when sent alone, a feature also found in iOS 10's Messages app. In this release, you can now zoom when recording videos within the app and select multiple chats to quickly archive, delete or mark as read.

Plus, thanks to under-the-hood tweaks chats now open a lot faster than before.

Google Maps for iOS refreshed with cleaner look, now highlights local areas of interest

Google today updated its mobile mapping application for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch with some rather useful visual tweaks. Google Maps 4.21 for iOS now highlights local areas that might interest you, adding multiple destinations to a route is supported in the new version and the typography of street names, points of interest, transit stations and other places has been improved to make them easier to read on smaller screens, among other changes.

Custom locations, breeding, trading, new critters & other perks coming soon to Pokémon GO

Pokémon GO is the biggest mobile game in U.S. history in terms of daily active users and Apple confirmed that the augmented-reality game broke an App Store record for most downloads during its first week of availability, but that doesn't mean its creators are resting on their laurels—quite the contrary.

As the game continues its global assault, Niantic Labs founder John Hanke teased at what's coming next to the app: custom locations, more monsters, the ability to add customizations to lures, trading characters, more ways to play with Pokéstops and Gyms and other perks.