At the time of writing this article there are now 3,408 approved apps for Apple Watch and the number is increasing daily. With so many to choose from it’s difficult to know where to start. We present here our tried and tested apps – 10 apps that we now can’t live without – a bit of an exaggeration, but you know what we mean!
1 – Twitter (Social Networking app)
Twitter is beautifully simple and engaging on the Apple Watch. The small screen suits the 140 character limit perfectly. We prefer using Twitter on the watch than on any other device. You can view tweets, mentions and favourites and check trends really easily. It’s dead easy to deal with notifications and simple to follow someone who has just followed you. Also recommended: Facebook and Instagram
2- C1 (Music Recognition)
You might see this as blowing our trumpet because we developed it… but hey, we love it! We use it all the time! It’s way better than going through the embarrassment of talking to Siri and letting the world know how uncool you are because you don’t recognise the song that’s playing. And it’s a lot cleaner and far more beautiful than Shazam. C1 has basically one function – to tell you what music is playing. It also gives you related videos, artist info and stores all your searches in history. If you are a C5 user you can then play the song on your stereo system or on the TV using DLNA / Chromecast. Find out more here.
3-Dark Sky (Weather app)
There is a weather app that comes bundled with Apple Watch but it’s very cluttered and we didn’t enjoy using it as it was too complicated. In Dark Sky everything is stripped right back and you are left with just the basic, important information like temperature, a basic written forecast and the all-important rainfall prediction for the next hour or so. It’s very accurate- 90% of the time we found it to be telling the truth!
4-Calcbot (Calculator)
We can’t believe that Apple didn’t include a calculator! Obviously, they are all far too clever in California to need such basic things. There is not really much to say about Calcbot except that it’s an excellent calculator. They’ve also thrown in unit conversions for temperatures, weight, lengths and more. Very handy for us thickos!
5- Currencies and Exchange Rates
Very handy when you are travelling as you can instantly check exactly how much money you are really spending. You can convert 160 different currencies into the currency of your choice. All you have to do is to tell Siri to “Launch Currencies”. Simples.
6-Quote of the Day (Inspiration)
We all need a daily dose of inspiration and the dose provided by Quote of the Day is highly shareable and quotable! We love the way you can quickly add a gorgeous image to a quote and share it with your friends. It’s so stylish! You can also save your favourites in a personal gallery and look through them when you are having a really bad day.
7-Night Sky Pro (Stargazing)
Night Sky Pro has long been a favourite app of ours. Come on, how cool is it to point your device to the sky to see what stars, planets and constellations you are looking at? Awesome fun! With the Apple Watch app you get live push notifications for ideal stargazing times. You can check out the stargazing clock and see exactly what’s around you. The interface works surprisingly well on the watch format and is simple to use. It’s also educational and virtually impossible to put down. We love it! Very impressive when you are dining out under the stars with friends.
8-Breaking News
Well, it’s not a fun app because news is hardly ever fun these days, but it’s very handy and you can tailor it to suit you, for stories that break near your location/country for example. Sources of news are trustworthy and delivered the moment they break.
9-Ticker (Stocks and Shares)
We like a little flutter now again – we’re not serious investors but do like to keep an eye on the markets. This stocks portfolio manager is pretty cool for investors on the move. It’s dead easy to view your stocks lists and portfolio. We like the feature that allows you to resume your viewing where you left off. So if you check out a particular stock on your Apple Watch, you can view exactly the same screen when you pick up your iPhone hours later.
10- Boiled Egg Timer
This is superb! We’ve never been able to get our eggs cooked perfectly, but with this app we’ve finally succeeded! You can select the size of your egg, define how runny or firm you’d like the yolk and then do whatever you like until the app alerts you. The interface is clean, simple and bright. This is one app we certainly can’t do without – not now that we’ve enjoyed such yolky perfection!
Other recommended apps that we didn’t include in this list are the airline ones – we use the British Airways one (because we always fly British Airways whenever possible) but there are loads of good airline apps out there. They let you see a summary of your next flight, flight number, departure time, flight status and even the weather at your destination.
