Apps

Picky, Dashpop, Timebomb Messenger, and other apps to check out this weekend

Happy holidays everyone! It's been kind of a slow week in terms of news and app releases, but don't worry, we were still able to put together a solid list of apps and games for you to check out this weekend. The roundup includes an app that uses AI to pick out your best photos, a new todo list app with a fun twist, and a messaging client that lets you decide when your messages can be opened.

Cuttlefish tints 3D Touch menu backgrounds on the Home screen to match the app color

Those who use 3D Touch to access the Home screen menu shortcuts from application icons know its usefulness for getting to specific app actions quickly. On the other hand, all of the 3D Touch Home screen menus are pretty bland, and no matter what app you use the 3D Touch gesture on, the menu is always the same color.

A new free jailbreak tweak called Cuttlefish aims to change that by dynamically colorizing the menu background blur to match the dominant color of the application icon you’re using the 3D Touch gesture on.

Infuse 5 gains collections, 3D Touch actions, video deinterlacing, searching on Apple TV & more

Infuse 5 for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV [review] launched in the App Store a month ago with features like iCloud settings sync, Up Next, streaming from cloud-storage services, Split View and Picture in Picture multitasking support on iPad Pro, iPad Air 2 and other compatible iPad models and much more.

aTV Flash Black developer Firecore, the brains behind this versatile media player app, has now released 5.1 update for Infuse with support for a new Collections feature, search and video deinterlacing on Apple TV, 3D Touch shortcuts on iOS Home screen and more.

Viber launches instant video messages, chat extensions, redesigned emoji & more

About a month and a half ago, Viber rolled out Public Accounts as a new way to reach brands. Today, the messaging service pushed another update to its mobile app on the App Store. With Viber 6.5.5 for iPhone, you can now send instant video messages to contacts, share interesting online content with chat extensions without leaving the app, enjoy completely redrawn emoticons and add up to 250 participants to a group chat.

Instagram enhances Stories with stickers, Save Story option, hands-free shooting & more

Instagram is on a roll: hot on the heels of enabling a bookmarking feature, Boomerang montages, commenting improvements and disappearing media attachments in Direct, the popular photo-sharing service today announced additional features for your Stories. These include regular and holiday-themed stickers, text enhancements, hands-free video mode, the ability to save a Story video to iOS's Camera roll and more.

Darkr, Bookout, PRIMO, and other apps to check out this weekend

It's the weekend again, and once you get tired of playing Super Mario Run, you're going to be looking for other new apps and games to try. Never fear, iDB is here to help. In this week's Apps of the Week roundup, we have an awesome new black and white photo editor, a book-reading tracker, an app for buying things on-the-fly, and of course two new games for you to check out.

Instagram passes 600 million users

Aping Snapchat seems to have paid off in a major way for photo-sharing service Instagram as it announced passing a whopping 600 million users earlier today. The last hundred million Instagrammers joined the service in the past six months, said the Facebook-owned company.

Instagram infamously ripped off Snapchat Stories with its own Stories feature, which debuted in early-August.

Dropbox for iOS gains bulk renaming of photos, offline folders & recent save locations

Popular cloud-storage service Dropbox has refreshed its iPhone and iPad application on the App Store with three new features: bulk-renaming of photos, offline folders and recent save locations. In addition, the company announced a major infrastructure push enabling faster sync speeds thanks to several new proxy servers established across the globe, including accelerators in California, Texas, Virginia, New York, Washington, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Instagram launches Saved Posts, expands live video to all US users

Instagram today announced a new feature in the mobile app for iOS and Android: Saved Posts. As the feature's name suggests, this lets you save posts you’d like to revisit later (don't worry, only you can see what you saved). Simply tap a new bookmark icon underneath a post in your feed to save it to a new, private tab on your profile, labeled Saved. This feature requires Instagram 10.2 for iOS, a free download from the App Store.

You can now stream live video from Twitter app

Twitter today announced that users of its mobile app can now broadcast Periscope-powered live video. Why go live on Twitter? Because live video broadcasts “bring moments and events to life in a way that no other medium can,” said the popular microblogging service. This newly added feature requires an update to Twitter's mobile app, which is rolling out to everyone on the App Store today.

Snapchat update enables group chat, Shazam integration, sticker creation & more

Snapchat today updated its iPhone and iPad app on the App Store with a trio of new features. You can now engage in groups chats with multiple users at once, create your own stickers from within the app and even identify a song that's currently playing around you thanks to Shazam integration.

There's also a new Paintbrush tool in Snapchat 9.45 for iOS that will turn your snaps into artistic-looking images.