mobile appsA few weeks ago, I was scrolling through Reddit just before bed and saw a question asking users to post their favorite underrated mobile apps.

I’m always a big fan of conversations like these because I never fail to learn about products I didn’t know existed.

Of course, there was a wide array of apps mentioned.

And that gave me the idea for this week’s #SpinSucksQuestion.

What’s the most useful app on your phone and why? Is there a little known app you couldn’t live without? Is there one that keeps your entire life organized or maybe just keeps your sanity intact on busy days?

I’m so happy with all your answers.

My phone storage, however, is not.

Make Your Life Easier the Mobile Way

There are so many organizational apps, it can be hard to weed through them.

Thankfully, our community is the best app recommendation engine around!

We didn’t know this before, but Ozan Toptas might a bit of an appaholic. He certainly had a lot of app-licable answers for our #SpinSucksQuestion:

I’m known as the “there’s an app for that guy” on my team, so I have scores to recommend:

  • CamScanner – the best smart phone scanner I’ve seen. It is not beautiful, but it works amazingly well.

  • Evernote – everyone knows about it, I guess.

  • InoReader – for reading those (RSS/Atom/whatever) feeds. A good alternative to some of the better known apps in this area.

  • Airtable – did you ever dream about a database that works as easily as a spreadsheet? Yeah, me too. This is the answer to those dreams. It does budgets, it does content calendars, it does workflows, and it work wonders.

  • Otter.ai: everyone needs transcripts. Otter is an amazing tool with a great free tier and uses AI for transcription. 

We had another vote for Airtable from Adena J. White:

Airtable, as Ozan Toptas mentioned, is fantastic. There are so many pre-made templates to keep you organized, and you can also upload existing spreadsheets. It’s the best.

I’m a mother of a nine-month-old, so two of my most-used apps right now are Baby Tracker and Tiny Beans. Baby Tracker helps us keep up with our child’s feedings, diaper changes, and sleep schedule. We also use it to record his growth and other milestones. Tiny Beans is an awesome photo-sharing app so you can share moments with select people. Those you invite can like and comment on posts, and it has a calendar interface where you can look back at what pictures you uploaded on what day.

I’ve used Chuck to manage my email when it gets out of control. It makes it easy to bulk delete.

Stay Current and Organized

Joseph Thornley turns to Feedly for news that’s curated and relevant to his needs:

Feedly brings my curated news sources to me with a single click. I look at it first thing in the morning and last thing at night—and at fallow times in between. Never miss of piece of news that’s important (which is different from viral.)

Mary Barber likes AnyList to keep her family organized, but it sounds like the app could also be useful at work:

AnyList. I use it to create a grocery shopping list. It’s flexible and has sharing. That means my kids and spouse can add things to the list and even do the shopping! If it’s not on the list, I’m not buying it!

Rachel  Michelson put her votes on a few different mobile apps, but we did notice she mentioned Slack, which we love:

Castro is the podcast app that I have settled into (although I’m still on the hunt for a unicorn podcast app). Been using Focus Booster as a way to stay focused and tracking time spent. Also Slack, and Goodreads.

Christopher S. Penn’s favorite is Google Lens.

With Google Photos AI, I can identify things in images or copy text right out of images.

What’s Your Favorite Mobile App?

If you didn’t get a chance to answer the Spin Sucks Question on our Slack channel, tell us about your must-have apps in the comments down below. (We still have a tiny bit of mobile storage space left.)

And if you’re not part of our Slack channel, we’d love to have you join! It’s a great community with a bevy of wonderful people in the communications industry.

And now, over to you in the comments!

Whitney Danhauer

Whitney is living in Central Kentucky with her husband, Michael and her daughter, Evie Rose. She's an avid reader, an even more avid movie watcher, and loves nothing more than a well-placed pop culture reference. By day she writes about all things communications for Spin Sucks, by night she writes about whatever she wants. Her first novel, Good Riddance, was released in October of 2015.

View all posts by Whitney Danhauer