Apps

5 famous productivity apps from Readdle go half price in Christmas sale

Ukrainian developer Readdle doesn't do sales for its productivity apps often so we thought you should definitely know about their latest promotion.

In celebration of the upcoming Christmas holiday, five of their most popular productivity apps for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad are currently half price, or even less, for the next 48 hours.

The sale includes apps like Scanner Pro, PDF Expert 5, Calendars 5, Printer Pro and PDF Converter. The promotion starts today, Tuesday, December 22 and ends on  Friday, December 25.

VLC launches full support for iOS 9, watchOS 2, SMB and more

Cross-platform media player by VideoLAN, called VLC, has been rewritten from the ground up for watchOS 2. And on the iOS side, VLC comes with many new features.

VLC plays a variety of video/audio files in non-iOS-friendly formats without conversion, including MKV movies.

The app also includes support for multiple audio tracks with 5.1 surround sound and subtitle tracks. In addition, VLC for iOS has dropped support for iOS 6.1 and now requires an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with iOS 7.0+.

UPDATE: The post originally stated that VLC is now available on the new Apple TV. Regrettably, that announcement was an oversight on part of VideoLAN, which has since removed mentions of the Apple TV app from their release notes.

Viber revamps share menu, rolls out new media settings & support for Wink messages

Viber for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad was updated this morning in the App Store with support for auto-disappearing Wink messages while introducing a redesigned share menu, more detailed information in group chats, the ability to select how long your media is stored for and a few design enhancements to the app's introduction screens.

Viber, now owned by Japan's Rakuten, has received a steady stream of updates as of recently.

The service offers a nicely done watchOS 2 app for your wrist that lets you read and respond to messages with dictation, canned replies and stickers.

How to make a profile video in Facebook’s iOS app

Facebook recently began allowing users to set a short video as their profile picture on the service. Users can now take or upload a video of up to seven seconds to use as their profile video. These profile videos appear at the top of your profile, just like static profile pictures, but you can currently add a profile video only from the iPhone.

If you feel your Facebook profile is too static, here's how to spice it up with a profile video in Facebook's iOS app.

Facebook is rolling out Live Photos support

When Apple introduced Live Photos at its September 2015 iPhone 6s event it also announced an SDK allowing third-parties to implement support for them, while specifically saying that Live Photos would be coming to Facebook before year-end.

Following Tumblr's iOS app which was first to implement support for Live Photos, Facebook today started rolling out the ability to upload and view Live Photos from within their iOS app, TechCrunch reports.

Readdle’s Scanner Pro receives iPad Pro support and other enhancements in new update

Scanner Pro, a $0.99 document scanner for the iPhone and iPad by Ukrainian developer Readdle, was updated this morning in the App Store with several productivity-enhancing improvements and support for the iPad Pro.

You can now move and merge your scans, copy and paste pages within a document or between multiple documents, upload scanned documents to Box and much more.

Advanced iPad Pro and Apple Pencil support now available in Astropad’s iPad app

Astropad, an awesome app by former Apple engineers that basically turns the screen of your iOS device into a graphics tablet for the Mac, has received an important update this morning with expanded support for Apple's new 12.9-inch iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil. Coupled with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, Astropad is now truly a Wacom Cintiq replacement that’s wireless.

“We’ve spent significant time with iPad Pro and we’ve rethought, tweaked and tuned Astropad to make the most of this powerful device,” developers tell me via email.

Skitch for iOS, Clearly and Evernote for Pebble to be discontinued on January 22

Evernote earlier in the week announced discontinuing Skitch for iOS, Windows, Windows Touch and Android. Skitch is a free app for annotating and marking up photos and documents. On OS X, Evernote will continue to offer and support Skitch, a free download in the Mac App Store.

In addition, the company also plans on winding down Clearly, a browser extension for simplifying online articles to make them more readable, as well as Evernote for Pebble.

Skitch, Evernote for Pebble and Clearly will be provided in the App Store by January 22, 2016, after which they will no longer be available for download.

Cartoon Network’s Attack the Light game goes free as Apple’s App of the Week

Apple on Thursday refreshed its weekly App of the Week promotion with a new game called Attack the Light - Steven Universe Light RPG. You can find the title, which is based on the hit Cartoon Network show, in the App Store for free for the next 7 days.

The game is of the roleplaying adventure variety, in which you must help Steven Universe and the Crystal Gems capture missing monsters. Throughout your journey, you'll encounter various puzzles and tactical challenges that will help your character level up.

Facebook Messenger gains Photo Magic feature, per-chat customization and more

Less than twenty-four hours after rolling out Uber integration within Messenger, Facebook today announced a brand new update that enables per-chat customization and other enhancements for the popular messaging platform.

And as promised, the application now provides the Photo Magic feature to users in more countries following its recent soft-launch on Android in Australia.

Billed as an easier way to privately share photos with friends, Photo Magic taps into Facebook's advanced face recognition algorithm to automatically recognize people in your photos, offering to share them via Messenger.

Rockstar brings Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories to iPhone and iPad

GTA fans rejoice! Rockstar Games has ported another title from its popular franchise over to iOS. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is now available in the App Store for iPhone and iPad, for $6.99.

Liberty City Stories follows former-wise-guy-turned-hit-man Toni Cipriani as he returns home to Liberty City. During his absence, the city became overrun with political corruption, drug trafficking and union strikes, and it's up to Toni and the Leone family to get things back under control.