Apps

Google brings custom snooze times and other perks to Inbox by Gmail

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 31, 2015

Inbox, a gesture-heavy, sleek looking email client for the iPhone by the Gmail team born out of Google's acquisition of the Sparrow app, is getting new features later today.

Among them: custom snooze times for your messages. Normally, Inbox lets you snooze messages you don't necessarily need to act right now using its built-in snooze options: Evening, Tomorrow, Next Week and Someday.

But sometimes a message wants to be snoozed until a specific date and time. This is now possible thanks to new features letting you customize your morning, afternoon and evening Snooze times in Inbox, Google said Tuesday. This new feature, along with other enhancements listed further below, is rolling out to Inbox later today.

Kids under 13 can now have Facebook presence with new Scrapbooks feature

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 31, 2015

Facebook on Tuesday announced a better way for parents to organize photographs of their toddlers and kids under 13 on the service, the Scrapbook.

Rolling out in the United States across Facebook's mobile apps for iOS and Android, in addition to the desktop interface, this optional new feature actually allows children under 13 who are not normally permitted to create a Facebook profile to have an official presence on the service, sans the actual profile.

Facebook's internal survey has found that 65 percent of the parents who share pictures of their children on the service tag their partner in these photos to share them with their partner’s friends.

Google+ Photos now appear in Drive, Auto Backup for images and videos available in iOS app

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 31, 2015

The search giant Google announced yesterday it is adding support for Google+ Photos to the Drive app on iOS, Android and the web. “Starting today, the photos and videos you keep in Google+ Photos will also be available in Google Drive,” said the company.

In addition to storing your photos and files together in Drive, the refreshed Google Drive for iOS app has introduced a new Auto Backup feature to ensure that your Camera Roll photos and videos are safely backed up in the Google cloud.

Facebook updates Messenger with third-party app support

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 28, 2016

After announcing support for select third-party applications inside its Messenger service last week, Facebook on Monday issued a refresh to the mobile messaging app which officially enables third-party integration.

Now available free in the App Store, the update puts a new button in the chat interface of Facebook Messenger. Tapping it brings up a sheet where you can browse and download supported third-party apps that extend Messenger's functionality, like apps for sending and receiving animated GIFs and more.

You can now create logins directly in 1Password’s iOS extension and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 27, 2016

Developer AgileBits on Monday refreshed its freemium password-manager utility, 1Password for iOS, with a much smarter extension that allows you to create logins and other items without switching to the main app.

1Password 5.3 is also packed with a dozen other goodies, including enhanced Dynamic Type support, a fixe for the broken Zoom Mode on the iPhone 6 Plus, a new Large Type option, tags in bubbles, the ability to switch time zones and much more.

Vine upgrades video quality to 720p

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 13, 2018

Vine, a service for sharing short 15-second looping clips, announced on Friday that it is finally upgrading video quality from a rather paltry 480p resolution to a more acceptable 720p.

“We’ve been working on technical upgrades that support Vines in higher quality,” the Twitter-owned company said. The 720p format offers a resolution of 1,280-by-720 pixels whereas the 480p standard tops out at 640-by-480 pixels.

Meerkat 1.1 gains better search, in-app streaming alerts and other enhancements

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 30, 2018

Meerkat, an app which kicked off the live broadcasting craze by letting you stream live video from your iPhone to all of your Twitter followers at once, has released its first major update since its App Store debut a little more than two weeks ago.

The app is now more stable and user friendly and comes with nearly a dozen improvements related to searching, following other people, getting notified about their activity, discovering new streams and more.

Tangent named Apple’s new Free App of the Week

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 27, 2019

Tangent, an innovative iOS app by Pixite which lets you add geometric shapes, patterns, textures, frame overlays and other effects to your photos, has been named Apple's new Free App of the Week in the ongoing App Store promotion which runs weekly.

Highlighted in the New & Noteworthy section in more than a hundred countries, Tangent was previously Editor's Choice in the App Store and was on the App Store Best of 2013 charts.

Regularly a $1.99 value, Tangent is now available at no cost until next Thursday. With this app you'll be well equipped to do some crazy edits to your photos so I'd grab Tangent immediately if I were you.

Twitter releases live-streaming app Periscope

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 26, 2015

Ever since Twitter shut down Meerkat, the popular live-streaming app that cleverly uses Twitter existing account and social graph infrastructure, it became clear that the micro-blogging startup was about to launch a similar service of its own.

Indeed, on Thursday the company announced immediate availability of Periscope, a live-streaming video service it acquired back in January.

The free iPhone app, like Meerkat, allows users to start live-streams from their device in an instant.

Instagram releases photo collage app Layout

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 28, 2019

Facebook-owned Instagram on Monday announced a brand new mobile application called Layout, dedicated to making interesting photo collages.

Layout from Instagram is rolling out today for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices. The app will be available as a free download in the App Store. Currently only available for iOS, Layout will be available for Android in the coming months.

Apple reportedly doing away with antivirus apps in the App Store

Cody Lee ∙ March 19, 2015

Apple has decided to eliminate the category of anti-virus and anti-malware products from the App Store, according to security firm Intego. The company announced this week that Apple informed them of their decision after pulling their app 'VirusBarrier for iOS.'

"To be clear, this wasn’t an action directed specifically at Intego, we were one of several companies affected by Apple's decision," writes Intego's Jeff Erwin. Erwin adds that users will continue to get virus definition updates, but there will be no more updates to the app.

Swifty helps you learn to code in Swift directly from your iPhone

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 24, 2018

Want to learn to code in Apple's new programming language, Swift? There's now an app for that, too! Swifty for the iPhone and iPad may be the best introduction to programming you've ever used.

Created by develop Johannes Berger, not only is the iOS app a great insight into Apple's new programming language for third-party iOS and OS X development, but a comprehensive guide which will tech you Swift basics and coding with more than two-hundred interactive lectures.