Preferably lesser known but game-changing apps that are able to be bought one-time and put all others to shame.

To help clarify your thinking, which apps have produced such an outrageous level of value (regardless of one-time cost) to the extent you believe it should be #1 in its category, not necessarily #1 app ever.

We’ll do a seperate thread for Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, etc but let’s stick to iOS for this one. Thanks Lemmings!

  • MeMyselfandIronMan@lemmy.world
    58·
    9 months ago

    Vinegar. It’s a safari extension that changes the YT player into the stock iPhone one and skips ads. Well worth the one time purchase!

    • M500@lemmy.mlEnglish
      13·
      9 months ago

      Omg! I’m downloading this now. I already use YouTube via safari instead of the YouTube app.

    • Craig@lemm.ee
      6·
      9 months ago

      Just bought it too! Thanks for the recommendation! I got the bundle with baking soda, have you used that as well?

        • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
          2·
          9 months ago

          I thought Craig was just being weird, but the Fizzy Water bundle includes Vinegar and Baking Soda, a companion app that makes a similar change to (allegedly all) other sites that have custom video players.

          EDIT: I’m now realizing Craig said that, like, four times. What the fuck, Craig.

    • M500@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      Omg! I’m downloading this now. I already use YouTube via safari instead of the YouTube app.

    • Craig@lemm.ee
      1·
      9 months ago

      Just bought it too! Thanks for the recommendation! I got the bundle with baking soda, have you used that as well?

    • Craig@lemm.ee
      1·
      9 months ago

      Just bought it too! Thanks for the recommendation! I got the bundle with baking soda, have you used that as well?

    • Craig@lemm.ee
      1·
      9 months ago

      Just bought it too! Thanks for the recommendation! I got the bundle with baking soda, have you used that as well?

  • macarthur_park@lemmy.world
    39·
    9 months ago

    Seek by iNaturalist

    The app uses AI to identify the species of plants, animals, insects and fungi. In video mode you scan around something you want to ID as the AI narrows it down to the species. Then you can take a pic. The app keeps track of each unique species you’ve found (along with your photo of it). There’s also badges and achievements for identifying different numbers of species, if you want to gamify your nature sightseeing.

    It’s basically real life Pokémon. Oh and it’s completely free.

    • Squeezer@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 months ago

      Sounds great, have just downloaded. Does it outperform the recognition of iPhone photos for plants etc?

      • MintyAnt@lemmy.world
        5·
        9 months ago

        Iirc the only main downside to all these apps is that you get a single answer, when it’s usually more complex than that.

        Seek/iNaturalist are great. I prefer the report style of iNaturalist and how it gives me a list of options, which I can use to try and narrow it down.

        E.g. if I take a pic of a flower that looks like a dandelion, it could be a common dandelion, or hawkweed, or burnweed… and of those there are a dozen sub species. Knowing which one is native is really important.

        Tldr yes

  • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
    35·
    9 months ago

    Paprika. It downloads saves and organizes recipes from just about any website, bypassing annoying ad floaters and, magically, paywalls. I use it constantly. It’s a one time purchase for all your devices. Does shopping lists too, if that’s your thing.

    • TheOgreChef@lemmy.world
      3·
      9 months ago

      RecipeBox is another good one that has a recipe search function and a grocery list function that connects to your recipes and populates what you need directly from the recipe itself.

    • anolemmi@lemmi.social
      2·
      9 months ago

      Ooh I dug through recipe apps a while back, I ended up using Pestle. It’s pricier than Paprika but I prefer the Pestle UI. Both good apps with similar feature sets, just providing another option.

      Paprika - $5 Pestle - $20/yr or $40 lifetime

  • mitchell@lemmy.ca
    19·
    9 months ago

    As a student of life I have to mention Anki. At its core it’s a flashcard app out of the box but it’s almost infinitely more powerful than that if you dig deep.

    I paid 35 CAD for it in 2019 and I’ve used it every single day since. The amount of knowledge I’ve committed to memory is truly priceless, and I’ve even gifted this app to several friends.

    NB: AnkiMobile, not the free knockoff AnkiApp. It’s open-source and actually free for computers and android devices, and iOS/iPadOS app purchases are the only way the developer makes money.

      • Gutless2615@ttrpg.networkEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        So I’m using a FOSS spaced repetition app alternative to Anki called Memoet. Self hosted and it does everything I want. Might I recommend using chat gpt to help make cards? You can easily generate tables that can be copy pasted into a csv which (I’m assuming anki) can be imported as cards

    • Bronzie@sh.itjust.works
      7·
      9 months ago

      I bought the original on my iPhone 4 and still have it in my purchase history, but when I download it on my iPad today it’s full if ads and limited lives….

      What am I doing wrong?

      Edit: it’s called Angry Birds Classic now if that makes a difference

  • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
    111·
    9 months ago

    AnyList.

    My wife and I have subscribed for years now because it literally never fails to sync and is easy to use. We have a ton of lists including grocery, hardware, trips, camping, and so on. It’s also our meal planner and recipe library.

  • cheese_greater@lemmy.worldOP
    8·
    9 months ago

    VoiceDream and SpeechCentral are amazing text to speech apps that turn your documents (PDF, txt, ePub, Mobi, AZW3 into audiobooks that let you read by highlighting and adjusting the speed etc.

    I don’t know if VoiceDream can still be bought on iOS but I know SpeechCentral is almost as good and it can be bought one-time.

  • Krakova@kbin.social
    91·
    9 months ago

    As someone who watches a fairly wide variety of tv shows, “next episode” has been the most useful app on my phone for me. It helps so much for knowing what to subscribe to and when. Only sub when my favorite shows come out and catch up on the rest then. I’ve also discovered some new shows through their upcoming and trending lists (which is more of just a bonus and not why I got the app to begin with). It’s probably the only app I would give my full recommendation for anyway.

    • June@lemm.ee
      2·
      9 months ago

      Oh shit, the might be what I need to finally unsubscribe from the last few streaming services I pay for and fully hit the high seas.

      eta: downloaded it and spent the last 30 minutes perusing and bought the app. Looks great.

    • Thisfox@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      9 months ago

      Does it work for Australian shows, or is this an American Only method? Can’t find the answer on their page, so I am guessing it is not for us.

      • Krakova@kbin.social
        1·
        9 months ago

        I have seen some Australian and British shows listed, but I can’t tell you if they have a lot of them (I kind of doubt it). I only know that it’s very on top of US shows at least.

  • sparemonkey@kbin.social
    7·
    9 months ago

    Glazba. It’s a music player that allows for playing files in various formats, including FLAC. Song files can be uploaded to the phone through the app via web browser over Wi-Fi, or it can play music files stored on any of several cloud-storage services. Considering that I’ve ripped my entire 1000+ CD collection to FLAC, and considering that my collection contains a number of albums not available through streaming services, this app has been quite useful.

    • Zoolander@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      If you’ve set up a Plex library, PlexAmp can also play FLAC files but it can also stream them so they don’t actually have to be downloaded to the phone. It does have that option, though, if you want to play them offline.

  • June@lemm.ee
    5·
    9 months ago

    YNAB - it’s subscription based but is the best budgeting app I’ve found. Keeps me honest with my money, and when I was married was amazing for keeping us synced on our shared spending budgets.

    • cheese_greater@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      9 months ago

      Also check out MoneyStats, its like a one-time payment complete forecasting app like Kualto/Dollarbird but way better. No subscription and it syncs using your iCloud but you can also manually export all the data.

  • qooqie@lemmy.world
    51·
    9 months ago

    I’ve got three.

    1. For those that like reading articles the built in news app is actually quite good and even has daily crosswords with more puzzles to follow. I used up the free trial and went to paid because I liked the app so much.

    2. Less of an unknown, but if you like OSRS the mobile app is actually pretty great and since OSRS could run on a potato it doesn’t lag at all.

    3. For people wanting to learn Asian languages the hello apps are really good. I’ve been using HelloChinese for awhile now and it’s built and populated with native speakers. Duolingo is weird with its syntax for Asian languages so this one is much better imo.

    • BennyInc@feddit.de
      4·
      9 months ago

      I started hunting for the news app, until figuring out that Apple still hasn’t launched it in Germany. 🤷‍♂️