Mini Metro - A Beautiful Subway Strategy Game

Mini Metro is a management game that has a simple and fun interface. You manage a large city, and you need to make railways that connect stations together and transport passengers around to prevent overcrowding. Its available for all major platforms, including iOS, Android and desktops.

Airserver - Mirror Your Phone to Your Computer

AirServer is an app for iPhone and iPad that lets you mirror your iPad or iPhone's screen to your PC or Mac. After quickly installing a program on your Windows computer or Mac, you simply need to scan a QR code with your iPhone or iPad, and then you'll start mirroring your devices screen to your computer.

Overcast - A Simple Podcast Player with Powerful Features

Many people listen to podcasts that cover a wide variety of subjects, from technology to comedy and everything in-between. Overcast is a podcast app for iOS that allows you to listen to your favourite podcasts offline or online on your iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch.

Manage Your Subscriptions with Outflow

Many apps work on a subscription basis now, many of which are some of the largest and most popular apps and programs. However, one of the problems with app subscriptions is that it is quite difficult to track when subscriptions on various apps run out. I pay £0.79 a month for iCloud, which is a very low price, and I often forget about buying it. However, when I add my Evernote and Todoist Premium subscriptions, domain names and more, the price really adds up. It's difficult to track when all of these things expire, as they are all based across different platforms, with different expiration dates, and different prices. It's a struggle to get on top of all of these different subscriptions.

Outflow is a great solution to this problem - you can easily add apps, and then see how long until you need to pay for that subscription again. Outflow allows you to get notified based around your subscriptions renewal date, so you won't forget to pay it again. Outflow has many more features, and is a great choice if you want an app to track your expenses.

PDF Expert 6 - Edit PDFs Like Word Documents, New Design & Much More!

I reviewed PDF Expert 5 around a year ago, and I was really impressed with it. The Readdle team have released a new major update for it, PDF Expert 6, which boasts a new design, better search, and the ability to edit PDF text, images and links as if they were a Word document - something that I haven't found on any other program, whether that is on desktop or mobile.

LiquidText: Powerful PDF Annotation

PDFs are one of the most used file types, and they often come with limitations. They are difficult to annotate, to change and to highlight, and generally to work on. However, LiquidText solves those problems.

LiquidText is an iOS app that allows you to annotate and work on a PDF alongside a 'workspace', a dedicated area where you can drag in excerpts, comment on them, and much more. You can also comment directly on the PDF itself, highlight it, link between pages and many more features.

If you find yourself working with PDFs a lot, LiquidText may be the app for you.

Transmit - Access Your Servers on the go

Transmit is an app for iOS that allows you to upload files and images to FTP servers, Amazon S3, WebDAV and multiple other servers across the internet.

DevonTHINK Go: Your Knowledge at Your Fingertips

DevonTHINK Go is a powerful tool for managing large text databases made up of text files, images, web clippings and PDFs. Think of it as a mix between file manager and research database, allowing you to save your images, web clippings and PDFs in the same place you have written up your essay draft.

iCab Mobile - A Powerful Web Browser for iOS

Safari is iOS' default browser, however it's not the best. It doesn't handle downloads very well, as well as missing many features such as plugins, full screen and many more. However, iCab Mobile solves these problems. It has features such as plugins and an advanced download manager that will attract over people using Safari and other iOS browsers.

Notes Plus - Take Notes on your iPad

Notes Plus is a handwriting app for iOS that allows you to take handwritten notes using your Apple Pencil or your stylus on your iPad. It offers multiple features such as different ink colors, different paper types and many more.

TextTool 2 - Transform Your Text

TextTool is an app for iOS that is a powerful text editor with lots of options for text transformations. TextTool is somewhere you write text, edit it and then move it to another app. It’s not somewhere where text lives, but somewhere where text can be manipulated and then moved over to the app you want to save it in.

Bear Notes - Write beautifully on iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Bear Notes is an app that uses markdown to give you a clean and beautiful writing experience on your iPad, iPhone and Mac. It uses markdown and allows you to sync your notes between devices, with a beautiful look.

Opera Neon - The Next Generation Browser

Opera Neon is a radical reimagining of a web browser by Opera, a well known tech firm that make the Opera browser. It installs in a small package quickly and cleanly, and looks like running free circular bookmarks on your desktop, with tabs being circles to the side.

Opener: Open Links in Apps

We all know the reality of opening links in iOS - its difficult to open links in the app that you want to open that link in, not the app that iOS wants you to open it in. For example, if you use Tweetbot instead of Twitter, there is no way to set that as the default Twitter app. If you want to open links to Twitter you find across the internet, you can only open it in Twitter. The same happens with opening YouTube links in ProTube, instead of the official app and so on.

Opener fixes this - its a handy app that allows you to open links in the apps that you want, not the apps that iOS wants you to open them in. If you find that you want to view links you find around the web in the apps that you use, Opener is for you.

My Favourite Apps of 2016

2016 has been a pretty big year - I’ve found that my iPad has been replacing my Windows laptop, and that I’ve discovered that I can do lots of things on my iPad that I thought that I wasn’t able to. It’s become my primary device - I often find myself doing my homework on it, as well as programming and even gaming on it.

As I've been using my iPad more, the apps and workflows that I've used have been refined, and I'd like to say perfected, but I'm always finding new and quicker ways to do things. I find myself only using my computer for blog posts, when I want to do a lot of programming, and for occasional gaming. My iPad has become my primary platform, and it certainly meets up to the role well.

Most of this list is iOS apps, but quite a few of them are Mac and Windows apps too. The web apps at the end work on any platform.

Self Control - Block distracting websites

If you've been looking for a distraction blocker for your iPhone and iPad, look no further. With Self Control, you can add any sites that you want to block to your blacklist. You can block all of those sites if you want, are just a few of them. It's a great way to save time, and stop browsing Reddit when you should be doing coursework.

Linky: Post to Twitter and Facebook with Simplicity

Linky is an awesome share extension app that allows you to quickly and easily share quotes, websites and anything you find on the internet quickly and easily to your Twitter or Facebook accounts.

PCalc - An Advanced Calculator for Apple Devices

PCalc is a great calculator for your Apple devices, from your Apple TV to your Apple Watch. It's easy to get going with, but also comes packed with advanced functions. It also has a ton of themes that you can choose from, which include simple to complex, and modern and retro.

Todoist - A Powerful Task Manager

Todoist is a great task manager across all your devices, from your Windows computer to your Apple Watch. I'll be taking a look at the features of Todoist, along with what the premium tier of Todoist can offer.

Pennies - Personal Money, Budget & Finance Manager for iOS

Pennies is a great app for tracking your budgets, whether large or small. It's especially great for students to track their often tight budgets.