iPod Touch

Unicorn sipface and coffee “emojis” are cool, but Starbucks’s iPhone keyboard needs more work

Apparently, software keyboards for the iPhone have become a must for brands. Earlier this morning, Microsoft released Word Flow for iPhone, its gestural Windows 10 keyboard with one-handed typing and predictive text input.

And now, Starbucks has jumped on the bandwagon and released an iPhone keyboard of its own.

Available for free from the App Store, Starbucks Keyboard lets you add a little personality to your emails, texts, social media posts and more with branded “emojis” like Frappuccino blended beverages, iced tea, coffee and even a purple unicorn sipface.

It's a nicely done app that shows potential, but I dislike the fact that they're advertising it as an emoji keyboard because these things are more of stickers that get pasted as image attachments.

Microsoft’s Word Flow keyboard launches with one-handed mode, gestures, themes and more

After releasing an iOS edition of its Hub Keyboard last month, Windows giant Microsoft on Monday launched an iOS port of its predictive text Windows Phone keyboard, called Word Flow. The free of charge iPhone app brings many advanced features that speed up typing, like a cool one-handed mode, gesture based typing, predictive text input, custom themes and more. The Word Flow keyboard is available at no charge in the App Store.

Snapchat’s Face Swap now works with your own photos, paid Replays no longer available

A small but important update has appeared for Snapchat's free of charge mobile application in the App Store. Bumped to version 9.29, the app's expanded the utility of its popular Face Swap feature which now works with images from your Camera roll.

Face Swap is apparently a new craze. With this feature available in Snapchat in the form of a Lens, users can easily face swap with their friends. And with today's update, they can swap their face with someone else's photo stored in their Camera roll.

Facebook launching group audio calling on Messenger with support for up to 50 participants

A year after it rolled out the ability to place and receive VoIP audio calls on Messenger, Facebook is now introducing a new VoIP calling feature with support for up to fifty people on a single group call. Group calling currently supports standard VoIP audio calls, but Facebook did tell TechCrunch that “group video calling is definitely a use case that a lot of our people might be interested in at some point”.

Revisit the places you’ve been with Foursquare’s new history feature (bonus: Photos extension)

Since launching in 2009, there have been over nine billion check-ins on Foursquare across the globe. Celebrating its seventh anniversary, the startup pushed an update to its mobile application on the App Store which includes a handy new history features.

Similar to location history on Google, the updated Foursquare app makes it simple for users to browse any place they've been and checked into via a new History tab.

In addition, Foursquare now has its own Photos extension which makes it super easy to share a photo as a tip, right within the context of the Photos app.

Readdle’s Calendars 5 slashed to $0 as Apple’s new Free App of the Week

Calendars 5, one of the best iOS calendar applications out there with a built-in event and task manager and native Google Calendar sync, has been slashed to zero bucks as Apple's new Free App of the Week. The $6.99 universal productivity app is now available at no charge on the App Store until next Thursday. This marks the first time Calendars 5 has gone free in years following Readdle's two-day promotion back in May 2014.

84 percent of devices are now using iOS 9

iOS 9, Apple's latest and greatest edition of the mobile operating system powering the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, is currently installed on 84 percent of device, according to the freshest stats posted on Apple's official App Store dashboard for developers.

In less than a month, iOS 9 adoption rate has climbed from the eighty percent mark, a figure Apple officially shared during its March 21 'Let us loop you in' media event, to 84 percent—a cool four-point gain.

SwitchHUD makes it easy to toggle between iPhone volume modes

The two most commonly-used volume modes in iOS are the ringer volume and media volume. The ringer volume controls the volume of text tones, ring tones, and notification sounds, while the media volume controls the volume of your music and videos.

The only problem is, iOS likes to default to the ringer volume all the time, unless you have media playing. If you do, that's the only time the volume buttons will actually change the media volume level.

If you don't like that solution, then hold on to your seats, because we're going to be showing you a new free jailbreak tweak called SwitchHUD, which takes volume switching to the next level by letting you manually toggle between the two at any time with an Activator action.

Marquee lets you have long, scrolling folder names in iOS

If you've ever had a folder name that was too long for iOS to display, then you probably had an atrocious-looking folder title like the one above; cut off, and ended with an ellipsis.

Unfortunately, the way stock iOS handles longer folder names makes it nearly impossible to tell what the entire folder title is.

That's why a new free jailbreak tweak called Marquee is going to appeal to those of you with the desire to have longer folder names on your Home screen.

Privacy-enhanced Viber for iPhone lands with end-to-end encryption, hidden chats and more

Two weeks after rival WhatsApp announced that chats on its platform are protected from eavesdropping with end-to-end encryption, the popular messaging app Viber on Tuesday released a privacy-enhanced edition of its iPhone and iPad app.

Bumped to version 6.0, messages you send and receive through Viber are now protected with end-to-end encryption, as indicated by the new padlock icon, and you can also hide away specific chats.

Have you seen Pinterest’s new-look iOS app yet?

Pinterest today announced a completely overhauled iPhone and iPad application—“our fastest, cleanest app yet”—that lets you focus on more Pins than ever before. The app, used by more than a hundred million people around the world, is a lot faster than the previous version it replaced, with your Home feed now loading up to three times faster.

The refreshed application is now rolling in the App Store so check back later if the new version isn't immediately available where you live. The Android edition of Pinterest and its web-based counterpart are next on Pinterest's list to tackle, though they wouldn't commit to a firm release dates for these.