Apps

Google Maps for iOS updated with shareable lists of your favorite places

Following its most recent update which brought out the ability to track how busy places are in real-time, Google today announced a new Lists feature on Google Maps for iOS that lets you keep track of your favorite places and easily share them with friends.

Beginning today, users are permitted to create custom lists of places, share their lists with others and follow the lists their friends and family share with them, all without leaving the Google Maps app.

AppCon lets you change your Home screen icons with images from your Photo Library

Anyone who might have a creative nature at heart will probably have a lot of fun with a new jailbreak tweak release by merdok called AppCon.

This tweak lets you customize your Home screen app icons with anything you want from your Photo Library, and more importantly, you can customize each app icon on a per-app basis, or you can make a complete picture out of the entire grid of app icons on a page.

Apple has finished filming Planet of the Apps

Apple has reportedly finished filming Planet of the Apps, an unscripted television show about apps and their talented creators, MacRumors has learned from a person familiar with the project. The Cupertino company reportedly built a real set near Hollywood in order to record the show and tore it down at the conclusion of filming.

The whole filming process was apparently “very stressful,” but “exhilarating”. It's unclear when the reality series will air, but it's believed that Apple plans on making it available to Apple Music subscribers at no charge.

Encode, ChitChat, Stabl and other apps to check out this weekend

Ready to settle in for the weekend? iDB is here to help with a new edition of our Apps of the Week roundup. This week's selections include a new app that helps you learn how to code, a new group messaging app, and an app that helps you discover new podcasts. And as usual, we've picked two great new games for you to check out.

You can now check detailed weather forecast on Facebook

You can now safely delete those weather apps on your iPhone as Facebook just launched a brand new weather forecast section in its iPhone and iPad app and on the web, powered by Weather.com.

An updated version of its earlier weather greetings in News Feed, this latest feature addition indicates that the social networking behemoth continues to seek out new ways to increase user engagement and boost the stickiness of its platform.

Premium entertainment network Epix launches Apple TV app with free trial

Premium entertainment network Epix today announced its new app for the fourth-generation Apple TV is now available for download on App Store. Similar in terms of features and appearance to their iPhone and iPad app, the Apple TV app permits owners of Apple's media-streaming box to watch live television, browse movie trailers, add videos to a queue, watch thousands of movies on demand and more.

Flibpoard 4.0 brings personalized Smart Magazines & more streamlined experience

Remember Flipboard, an iPhone and iPad app originally conceived as a news reader before it got rebranded as your social news magazine? If you still care about the app, you'll be pleased to learn they just announced a major new version with a more streamlined experience and personalized Smart Magazines tailored to your interest. Flibpoard users have created more than 30 million magazines since the app's inception in 2010.

The mobile Flipboard app currently includes news content and articles from thousands of publishers scattered across tens of thousands of different topics.

Microsoft previews Touch Bar support in Office for Mac

Microsoft was one of the companies mentioned during Apple's “Hello again” Mac event last October as working on implementing support for Touch Bar shortcuts in their productivity apps.

Today, the Windows maker launched a preview of Touch Bar shortcuts on the new MacBook Pro available across its suite of Office apps. Beginning this week, users on Microsoft's beta program, dubbed Office Insider, will be able to test the new Touch Bar support across Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook for Mac.

App Percent displays a percentage for app downloads and alerts you when they’re done

Some apps take longer to download from the App Store than others, and some take so long that you don’t have the patience to just sit there and watch them, you tend to start doing other things on your device until the download finishes.

App Percent is a new free jailbreak tweak by pxcex that might be of interest to anyone who downloads lots of apps or finds themselves in the aforementioned predicament, as it not only lets you see the download percentage in real-time, but it also lets you get notified when app downloads finish.

Facebook Messenger testing iOS 10 Messages-like chat interface redesign

Facebook is testing a redesign of the chat interface in Messenger for iPhone, which in some aspects resembles Apple's overhauled iOS 10 Messages app. The enhanced chat UI is currently being tested with a small subset of Messenger's user base, but there's no telling when, or if it might launch for everyone. I spotted Messenger's upcoming chat UI refresh on a friend's device. At the time of this writing, the Messenger app on App Store had version 103.0.

This tweak removes the “Share This App” option from 3D Touch app shortcuts

When Apple initially started adding support for 3D Touch to apps on the Home screen in iOS 9, there were some that supported the feature, and some that didn’t. Then came iOS 10, where Apple attempted to make the feature more 'useful' for apps that didn't utilize 3D Touch in creative ways by adding the “Share This App” menu option to those apps.

Because a lot of people don’t need or want to share their apps, and because it feels like unnecessary clutter to even have this menu option there in the first place, a new free jailbreak tweak called NoSharePlz by Olxios&Nico is now available in Cydia to remove it once and for all.

The best flight tracker apps for iPhone

To many of us, the airplane has become as normal a means of transportation as the train or bus. By extension, when a family member or close friend is up in the air these days, tracking their journey on our smartphones has turned into a popular way to vicariously keep an eye on them. Ultimately, regardless of who is boarding the plane, the perks of having information about a flight in the palm of your hand have been recognized by countless travelers, which has given rise to an almost indefinite number of flight trackers.

Giving all of these a fair shot is difficult, however a lot can be achieved just by compartmentalizing the vast array in what’s current versus what’s stuck in the past, or which apps offer additional value beyond the very rudimentary basics. In applying these filters, a large number of flight trackers already fall flat and surprisingly few worthy candidates remain standing.

We have weeded through that list to single out the best flight tracking apps available as of today. The four winners picked operate on notably different value propositions, proving that not all flight trackers are completely interchangeable. Find out below which one is the best pick for you.