Apps

How to enable and use Secret Conversations in Facebook Messenger

iPhone screen showing Facebook Messenger app with an encrypted secret conversation

With secret conversations in Messenger, Facebook offers support for end-to-end encryption, giving you peace of mind knowing that a third party cannot decipher any sensitive messages with friends and family. These encrypted chats rely on a device key that ensures only you and the recipient can see the message.

You can verify the device key to confirm that the messages are end-to-end encrypted, set a timer to have secret messages disappear from the conversation, and so forth.

In this article, we show you how to set up and use end-to-end encrypted secret conversations in Facebook Messenger.

Dropbox Paper app now available in the EU

Paper, a new productivity app from cloud storage experts over at Dropbox, launched in public beta in the United States a month ago. After a slight delay, Paper is now available to customers in the European Union. With the free Paper app (not to be confused with Facebook's experimental Paper app), you can collaborate on projects, get updates, make edits and respond to feedback right from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Yahoo releases Newsroom for iOS app with curated stories, personalized feeds & more

It's business as usual for the struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo which today released a brand new free of charge iPhone and iPad application, called Newsroom. The app provides curated stories and news content relevant to you and sports built-in social sharing features, personalized feeds and more. The 96.9-megabyte download requires an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with iOS 9 or later and is available at no charge from the App Store.

Apple’s free app of the week: Flowing

Apple on Thursday updated its App of the Week promotion with the app Flowing. This means that for the next 7 days, you can get the popular meditation and mindfulness app for free on both iPhone and iPad—a solid savings of $3.

For those who aren't familiar with Flowing, it's a health and fitness app that promises to help you upgrade your sleep, focus, and productivity. Its features include guided meditation, 3D parallax scenes, and customizable white noise.

Skype for iOS updated with Siri, Phone, Contacts and Lock screen integrations

Microsoft today announced availability of freshly updated Skype for iOS apps. Bumped to version 6.25, both Skype for iPhone and Skype for iPad now include SiriKit support that lets them integrate with Siri so you can call people and send messages using just your voice. The apps also take advantage of CallKit, which allows VoIP Skype calls to behave like normal cellular calls with fullscreen contact images on the Lock screen and integration with Phone's Recents and Favorites on iSO 10 devices.

Adobe updates Lightroom for iOS with support for iPhone 7 Plus dual-lens camera & more

iOS 10 provides new APIs allowing third-party photography apps to capture and edit raw image data in the DNG format, and Lightroom for iPhone and Lightroom for iPad are among first apps to implement photo capture in the highest possible RAW quality. Earlier this week, Adobe released updates to Lightroom for iOS to help users take advantage of the new iPhone 7 camera’s raw shooting capabilities, including support for the iPhone 7 Plus's dual-lens camera.

MacID update brings improvements for iOS 10, watchOS 3, and macOS Sierra

An important update for the popular MacID utility for iOS and macOS has been released this week with improvements for iOS 10, watchOS 3, and macOS Sierra.

The utility is known for its ability to let you securely unlock your Mac with the Touch ID sensor on your iPhone or iPad, but it also has built-in features that let you unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch over Bluetooth or with a Tap to Unlock gesture on the trackpad.

Spotify’s new continuously updated playlist combines your favorites and new music

Spotify, the #1 music streaming service, today announced a new playlist updated daily with tracks that users mark as favorites as well as new music.

Now available in the updated mobile Spotify app for iOS and Android, Daily Mix differs from Spotify's existing Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists which get refreshed each Monday and Friday, respectively, in that Daily Mix won't be a complete refresh of songs each time the playlist is updated.

Apple begins removing outdated apps from the App Store

In keeping true to its promise, The Great App Store Purge is now underway as Apple recently began removing old, outdated and seldom updated apps from the App Store, as first spotted by French blog iGen.fr. “We noticed that your app has not been updated in a significant amount of time,” reads Apple’s message to affected developers.

To keep their apps alive on the App Store, Apple is demanding that developers submit updated versions for review within 30 days.

Blend, Quicky, Bynd and other apps to check out this weekend

This week's edition of our Apps of the Week roundup features some great apps and games for you to check out this weekend. We have an easy wallpaper-maker, a productivity app for shortcuts, a one-stop-shop for all of your news and social feeds, and of course two awesome new games that you won't want to miss.