App Store Apps

Spotify updated with new sorting and filtering options, prompts for playlist duplicates

Monday, Swedish music startup Spotify has updated its app with the ability to search your downloaded music while offline. Today, Spotify has received another update which adds an additional few long-overdue capabilities.

Now live in the App Store, the new Spotify version 1.4 offers the ability to view your Play Queue on the iPhone, apply actions to your songs and playlists by taping the ellipsis icon, avoid adding duplicates to your playlists and more.

Jump past the fold for the full reveal...

Tinker app will make sure you stay productive

I’m the kind of person who needs constant self-supervision. I don’t work in an office and I am surrounded by my playthings. I regularly need to remind myself to get back to work because there is no one looking over my shoulder telling me to do so.

Tinker - Tweak Your Productivity is a goal minded productivity app that makes it possible for you to be on task, every minute of the day. Instead of creating long lists of things to do and trying to prioritize them, this app has you create duration-based goals that help you stay on track until your time is up. Read on for our app review of Tinker…

App Recap: a mid-week look at 8 must-have apps

If you're looking for a deal on one of the best calendar apps available for iPad, or interested in trying out a brand new Atari-inspired game, don't go anywhere. This edition of App Recap, which covers the best new, updated and discounted apps on the App Store, has a great selection of 8 must-have apps for iPhone and iPad. Wednesday was not an overwhelmingly busy day in terms of apps, but the list ahead should keep you occupied… 

Mobile-exclusive Civilization Revolution 2 now available on iOS

As promised, publishing label 2K Games and developer Firaxis today released Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution 2, a mobile exclusive game filed as the long-awaited sequel to the iOS and console port of the 2008 PC original, Civilization Revolution, which was a turn-based strategy game.

The game is now available in the App Store as a premium $14.99 download for the iPhone and iPad.

With new units, new technology, new buildings and wonders, updated 3D graphics and new historic events and battles available in the Scenario Mode, Civilization Revolution 2 is a no-brainer for true fans of Sid Meier's sim games...

Vine updated with Loop Counts, revamped Activity section and more

Twitter-owned Vine's mobile app hasn't received a lot of important new features lately as the team focused on making the web interface more functional and prettier.

Today, Vine announced a cool new feature addition: Loop Counts. Now available in the just-updated Vine for iPhone version 2.1, Loop Counts indicate how many times people have looped a video, including on Vine and in embeds across the web.

Vine also contains a cleaner feed with bigger videos and a revamped Activity section with new account milestones and more visual notifications and other perks...

Readdle’s Scanner Pro now half price to celebrate 6M downloads, iOS 8 app in the works

Scanner Pro, one of the best apps for quickly scanning and saving a digital version of a paper document, has passed six million downloads since its App Store debut in December of 2009.

It's a noteworthy milestone in my book given the software costs seven bucks and has thus far gone temporarily free only once, as Apple's Free App of the Week in January.

To celebrate the milestone, Ukrainian developer Readdle has temporarily shaved 50 percent off Scanner Pro's asking price, now available for a limited time for just $2.99...

Yahoo’s Mail for iPad picks up mail filters and personalized web features

Yahoo's Mail for iPad debuted in April of 2013 and has since been gradually picking up new features like multiple personal and Business Mail accounts, folder management, message swiping, support for Apple’s VoiceOver feature and much more.

Today, the software has received another boost as Yahoo announced it's bringing multiple features from the web interface to Mail for iOS, including news, search and snapshots of the weather, sports scores, stocks, popular videos and Flickr photos, now all accessible in one app...

Pebble 2.3 firmware now live with notification skipping with a double-click

Nearly a month into its most recent firmware update which has brought out a much-needed music volume control and Launcher item ordering, the maker of the Pebble smartwatch on Tuesday issued another firmware update while refreshing its companion iOS app with smaller changes.

The Pebble 2.3 software update brings improved Bluetooth performance and, more importantly, enables the ability to quickly skip to the next notification by double clicking, in addition to other tweaks...

1Password with Touch ID authentication and Safari Share sheet support shown off

A big part of what makes iOS 8 so great is how Apple is finally opening up its mobile operating system to developers, more than ever before.

Take Touch ID, for example. With a little help from the iOS 8 SDK and the new Local Authentication Framework, third-party apps can tap Touch ID to authenticate a user in a safe manner as fingerprint data is protected and never accessed by iOS or apps.

Brands such as PayPal have pledged to update their apps with Touch ID authentication when iOS 8 gets released for public consumption this Fall and now a beta tester has posted screenshots and a short video of Touch ID integration in 1Password for iOS, the popular password management program by AgileBits...

Apple announces iTunes U 2.0 with new creation tools and discussion feature on iPad

Apple on Monday announced a major new version of its iTunes U educational app with a number of new creation and discussion features for iPad. The new iTunes U 2.0 app, due July 8, will enable teachers to create, edit and manage entire courses directly on iPad for the first time, while students will get to take advantage of some interesting new collaboration capabilities, including the ability to start class discussions and ask questions right from their iPad...

The best apps for taking selfies

I actually hate the word “selfie.” It is one of those trendy words that has stuck around much longer than it was supposed to. It caught on, like a virus, and spread across the world. Even the President of the United States uses it.

I have to admit defeat here, and use the word to describe this list. We know you love to take pictures of yourself with a new outfit, a funny hat, or while eating a burrito. So, here is our list of best apps to take selfies.

Shutter stores every photo you take in the cloud for free

We’ve all been there. We are on vacation or at an event, snapping pictures or shooting video clips of our kids doing something funny, when we run out of storage space on our iPhone. There are plenty of options for saving pictures on social networking sites or in iCloud. However, we don’t necessarily want to share hundreds of pictures of the 5K we just ran on Facebook and Apple’s free iCloud storage is limited. Even Dropbox limits your free storage to 2GB.

Shutter by StreamNation aims to solve our storage needs by allowing users to take photos and video from within the app and automatically store content in an unlimited free cloud-based service…