App Store Apps

Abstract puzzler The Mesh goes free as Apple’s App of the Week

Apple on Thursday updated its weekly App of the Week promotion with a game called The Mesh. This means that for the next 7 days, you'll be able to pick up the popular puzzler for free for both iPhone and iPad—a solid savings of $2.

In The Mesh, players are tasked with combining numbered tiles to match target values and clear the board without running out of space. The game features beautifully-designed graphics and animations, and an incredible soundtrack.

Review: boost your sleep analysis with much improved Sleep++ 2.0

David Smith’s excellent Sleep++ app is my killer app when it comes to sleep analysis, a glaring omission from the Apple Watch. It's become second nature for me to open Sleep++ as I tuck myself in bed for the evening.

This native watchOS 2 app collects data from watch sensors to measure sleep quality and duration, which can then be reviewed in greater detail in a companion iPhone app and synced with your Health database.

The updated Sleep++ 2.0, now available as a free download in the App Store, takes sleep analysis to the next level with major improvements to its sleep analysis engine and new features such as better Health integration, an improved Night Detail view, night trimming and timezone support.

Vevo’s beautiful new Apple TV app brings 150,000 HD music videos

Vevo today began shipping a refreshed Apple TV app. Redesigned from top to bottom, it provides access to more than 150,000 music videos in high-definition and exclusive original programming. The revamped software upgrades the experience for users over the old app in many respects.

According to CEO Erik Huggers, Vevo wants to become the MTV for the digital age. “We continue to invest in what we believe is the premium platform for music videos and related original content,” he said in a media release.

Twitter rolls out a new timeline feature

Twitter's bird logo set against a transparent background

The pressure mounts on Twitter to re-ignite growth, which has virtually come to a halt as average users increasingly find the service too confusing and difficult to use. Today, the micro-blogging service unveiled yet another refinement designed to adjust how the timeline surfaces interesting content.

Similar to the “While you were away” timeline feature which released a year ago, Twitter will now put recommended, not the newest, tweets at the top of your timeline so that you never miss important updates from people you follow.

New Apple TV app TechTube helps you discover great tech videos

Folks in the market for a new Apple TV app that helps surface great content may want to check out TechTube TV. The app, which was released late last week, was designed to highlight videos that it believes folks will find interesting.

The video selections are geared towards techies, and feature everything from TED talks to device reviews. There is also a mix of science and 'how things work' videos—"the goal is entertaining, informative or intellectually stimulating."

Vine app gains 3D Touch, caption editing and post ordering features

Vine, a Twitter owned mobile application for short-form video sharing, has been updated in the App Store this morning with three new features. For starters, owners of the iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s plus can press Vine's icon on the Home screen to access a shortcut menu with a pair of options to make a Vine or jump into the Explore feed.

In addition, you can now edit your Vine’s caption for a brief period after you post and watch an account’s Vines in any order you want.

How to manage multiple accounts in Instagram

Instagram officially announced support for logging into more than one Instagram account at a time in its free iOS and Android apps on Monday, and many of you that use Instagram on a daily basis are probably wondering how you can get your hands dirty with the feature.

Although signing in with multiple Instagram accounts is a feature that is still currently rolling out to all users, it's possible to force your app to allow you to sign in with multiple accounts right now.

Once you get your Instagram app updated to the latest version and are ready to get started with using multiple user accounts in the app, you can follow this tutorial on how to manage all your Instagram accounts from the app.

IGN names Heroes Reborn: Enigma for iOS its Free Game of the Month

IGN has named Phosphor Games Studio's first person action-puzzle game Heroes Reborn: Enigma its free title for the month of February 2016, marking the first time the $4.99 game has gone free since its October 2015 debut.

The game has you playing as Dahlia, an evolved human with incredible powers. You must solve various puzzles and survive tests in order to escape captivity at The Quarry, a secret government facility.

Link your Spotify account with Shazam to enable full song previews & more

The Shazam app for iOS comes with the ability to link your Spotify account so you can stream the music you tag via Spotify directly from the Shazam app itself. A recent update to the app included a complete rewrite for this feature, so it's now more stable than ever before.

All you have to do is connect your Spotify account to the Shazam app, and the app will take care of the rest for you, allowing you to listen to full tracks in Shazam instead of just 30-second song previews.

In this tutorial, we'll be showing you how to link your Spotify account to the Shazam app in iOS.

1 Meter, Day One 2, OmniPlan 3, and more apps to check out this weekend

Hello friendly readers. This weekend's app list spotlight is the last article I'll be writing for iDB. I've had a wonderful time as a part of the team and will miss every one of the editors (I've already cried with them privately). I'll also miss the iDB readers' funny, snarky, and sometimes ornery comments (you know who you are). Thanks for listening to me express my love of all things app-related.

Now, on with the show. Check out this week's (and my final week's) list of apps and games.

AppRecs: a search engine that filters out apps with fake or questionable reviews

One of the things that can be annoying when using the App Store is when you are trying to find a good app and dozens of fake reviews push junk apps to the top of the search results when all you want is to find the best of the best. Since not all reviews are honest, it can be difficult to filter the good from the bad on your own.

To help combat this problem, a new web app called AppRecs has been created that claims to be able to filter good reviews from the bad. This way, you can skip everyone's junk reviews and junk apps and just see the best apps in the App Store that are truly worth checking out based off of honest reviews.