Apps

Google Calendar can intelligently find time on your schedule to work on your personal goals

Yesterday, Google announced a cool new feature to mark the tenth anniversary of its online calendar service: Google Calendar will now scan your calendar intelligently to find the time on your schedule to work on your personal goals.

According to Google, the updated Google Calendar app lets you add a personal goal to your calendar.

These can be things like “run three times a week” or “hit the gym every day except weekend”. After parsing your natural language input, it'll schedule time automatically for you and help you actually stick to it.

Trigraphy photography app picks up new effects, gains albums and document support

Trigraphy by Nixes, a beautiful app for turning your photographs into low-poly artwork, was refreshed in the App Store earlier this week with a few new tricks. Bumped to version 2.1.2, the software gained two new effects alongside an effects bundle and other perks.

For starters, it's now possible to open images in Trigraphy from other apps because the app has gained its own Document Provider extension.

The built-in gallery now supports albums and users can change how images are saved and how 4K assets are handled, which should fix problems related to 4K download.

Airmail gains iPad and Touch ID support, adds tons of new features in latest update

Airmail, the popular Mac email client, has made the leap to the iPhone back in February.

As of today, this powerful email application is available with a native interface on iPads, with full support for iOS 9's Split View multitasking mode, wireless keyboards with fully customizable shortcuts, Touch ID, the ability to draw sketches within the app and much more.

“Never before has e-mail been so powerful and productive across your Apple devices,” developers told me via email. “Use the extended screen real estate to compose and communicate like never before.”

The refreshed iPhone and iPad app is available now in the App Store at no charge for existing users.

BBC releases iPlayer Kids app

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Tuesday announced a kids-friendly version of its iPlayer video-streaming app, called iPlayer Kids. Available in the UK App Store at no charge, the ad and In-App Purchases free software offers kids a safe environment to watch all of BBC Children’s world-class content in one place.

These include over 10,000 episodes being made available this year alone, including both new and old CBeebies and CBBC favorites such as “Wolfblood”, “Blue Peter”, “The Dumping Ground”, “Topsy & Tim” and “Go Jetters”.

Google optimizes the layout of Now cards in native search app for iPad

Google on Monday pushed a small refresh to its native Search app for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad in the App Store. Bumped to version 14.0, the software features an optimized layout of the Now cards to make better use of the iPad's screen real estate.

“Updated structure for Now cards on iPad, designed to keep your content organized and better surface the info you need most,” reads a line from Google's release notes accompanying the 65.4-megabyte download.

3D Touch tips and tricks for the stock Videos app

In this day and age of YouTube streaming and on-demand video, the stock Videos app feels a little outdated and way too limited in terms of features though it gets the job done.

With the Videos app, you can watch movies, televisions shows and music videos that you bought or rented from the iTunes Store, as well as enjoy your personal clips synchronized from iTunes on your computer.

On the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, using the Videos app is a little more engaging thanks to 3D Touch. In this tutorial, we'll let you in on 3D Touch shortcuts and gestures that are available  in the Videos app.

Upmind, Tweetcat and other apps to check out this weekend

Looking for some new apps and games to try out this weekend? iDB has you covered with our latest Apps of the Week post. This week's list includes some great titles such as the language-learning app Upmind, and Espresso Chat, which offers a new take on group messaging. We also have two new games that you won't want to miss.

Making more sense of the fitness data your Apple Watch collects with Activity++

Developer David Smith has expanded his lineup of ++ apps for the iPhone and iPad (Pedometer++ and Sleep++) with the addition of Activity++, an iPhone app designed to help you make the most from your Apple Watch fitness data.

But wait, why on Earth would you need another app when the built-in Activity app's rings provide an at-a-glance overview of your Move, Exercise and Stand goals?

Microsoft’s Hub Keyboard now available on iPhone

Microsoft's Hub Keyboard is now available for the iPhone. No, it's not the Windows Phone keyboard that's being ported to Apple's handset. It's an iOS version of the Hub Keyboard that landed on Android in February.

Like other third-party software keyboards, Hub can be easily installed on your device once downloaded. Just navigate to Settings > General > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard, and select Hub from the subsequent list.