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rekomande · 6 years ago

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Digital photo frames are the perfect gift idea for parents and grandparents because they make it easier to enjoy their children’s, grandchildren’s and other family pictures. However, updating pictures to the frame is usually not convenient; most of the time, the only way to do this is to use a USB or a SD card, or to connect the frame directly to a computer. Grandparents and technologically-challenged relatives struggle with this; and this cannot be done remotely.

Pix-Star Wi-Fi frames addresses this issue in a very smart and simple way, by using photo-mails. Pix-Star provides users with multiple convenient possibilities to transfer pictures to the device, the easiest one being to send pictures as an attachment by email (photo-mails) to the frame’s own and dedicated email address. It’s as simple as that!

Instantly receive photos from those you love from anywhere in the world using photo-mails!

This frame is part of the Pix-Star’s desire to make photo sharing easier and to bring generations together through easy technology. Now, no matter where your photos or the photos of your friends and family reside, you can be certain you will be able to access them. Sharing pictures is now easier than ever.

Pictures are taken everyday, most are shared on social networks or forever doomed to stay on a digital camera or computer. Thanks to the connectivity and ease of use, Pix-Star brings generations together and helps reduce the feeling of loneliness and distance.

EASY TO CONFIGURE, EFFORTLESS TO USE, WITH POWERFUL FEATURES AND A FREE,UNLIMITED STORAGE ONLINE ACCOUNT

The Pix-Star PXT515WR04 FotoConnect XD 15 inch is the biggest in the family of easy-to-use Wi-Fi and email photo frames from Pix-Star. With the ability to receive and send photo-mails directly from the frame, a computer becomes unnecessary. No monthly fee is required. Configuring the Pix-Star frame’s Wi-Fi connection is quick and easy and can be done using a few buttons on the compact remote control. Turn on the frame and ensure it is located within reach of the network you want to connect to. The Wi-Fi network configuration is automatically detected and all you need to know is the network password if your Wi-Fi network is encrypted. There is absolutely no software to install. Once configured the frame works without the need of a computer. It displays beautiful 1024 x 768 resolution photos on a big 15-inch screen. The new Pix-Star PXT510WR04 FotoConnect XD 15 inch LED LCD displays bigger and better images with crisper, brighter and more natural colors. Its 4:3 ratio display is perfectly suited for most digital camera photos as they appear in full screen… No more black strips! It has a 4 GB internal memory, which can store up to 15,000 pictures (may vary depending on picture type). Enjoy the best shots of your family in full screen and full resolution!

SHARING, RECEIVING AND SENDING PHOTOS HAS NEVER BEEN SO EASY!

Send pictures directly to the frame by email!

Pix-Star invented the concept of “the frame with an email address” several years ago. Since then, it has been the easiest way to share pictures with friends and family directly from the frame. You can also directly send pictures from one frame to another frame!

You can visit www.pix-star.com to register your frame within minutes. Choose a personalized email address for the frame and you are ready to send, receive, share and enjoy pictures on your Pix-Star! Friends and family can now email photos directly from their computer, Smartphone, tablet, or Pix-Star frame to your frame.

For instance, your brother takes a selfie in front of the Eiffel Tower with his Smartphone. He just has to send it to your Pix-Star email and the picture will arrive on your frame within seconds. Even better, you can send your brother’s selfie directly from your frame to your Mum’s frame. There is little excuse now to not share your daily life with loved ones.

The frame checks for new incoming photo-mails AUTOMATICALLY and an icon is displayed on the screen to inform you when a new photo is received so that you can open it. A sound notification can be added (configurable). You can also tell the frame to automatically accept incoming photo-mails. Grandma won’t need to learn new skills or touch anything to see your photos!

You can instantly share your photos for free with friends and family who appear in your contact lists. Customize your contact lists directly on your frame or from your account at www.pix-star.com. Send pictures to your friends, to their Pix-Star frames, or to any email address, so others can see what you see. Connecting with distant friends and family through the magic of pictures has never been easier or faster.

Are you worried about spam or unwanted pictures coming to your inbox? The security of your frame and its email address is protected by an advanced email filtering system. Options can be easily configured in your Pix-Star web account.

NO TOUCHSCREEN, NO FINGERPRINTS TO WIPE OFF!

Enjoy your photos in full screen, full resolution with no fingerprints. This frame has a small remote control and buttons on the back of the frame to complete all tasks without touching the screen. The remote control has been simplified and optimized to use only a few buttons to control the whole unit to make it even easier for anyone to use it.

SIMPLICITY AND EASE OF USE

Your frame is really easy to use and has an intuitive interface for easier navigation even when you have thousands of photos stored on it. It allows you to organize your pictures so you can display only your external web albums, only your local albums, or a ‘Play All’ feature, which groups all your photos in the same slide show. As soon as photos are added to your frame, they are automatically resized into a 1024 x 768 format to fit perfectly in the 15-inch high quality display. The LCD screen will present your best shots in a 4:3 aspect ratio and photos will be rotated to their proper orientation automatically.

This frame is perfect for those loved ones who are slightly “tech” challenged. Once configured, the frame runs on auto-pilot, accepting photos, automatically rotating, forecasting weather, playing slideshows, and easily bringing joy to so many people.

FREE AND EASY REMOTE MANAGEMENT FROM THE WEB + MANAGE UP TO 25 FRAMES FROM 1 ACCOUNT!

Each frame comes with a FREE online personal account with unlimited storage for your pictures. It allows you to remotely monitor your frame. Thanks to this dedicated online account, you can help Grandma and Grandpa configure their frame or put new pictures in their account for them. When you login to your personal Pix-Star account from your computer, you can:

ADD, DELETE albums or pictures

CUSTOMIZE your slideshows

MANAGE your contacts and security parameters

CONFIGURE your frame’s parameters

Moreover, it’s also possible to manage all your family’s Pix-Star frames from one SINGLE account! At Pix-Star we call this a “Multi-frames account”. There will be ONE UNIQUE email address created for all the frames (in addition to their unique individual email address they already have) and then you can ask your friends and family members to send pictures to this Multi-Frames account’s email address, the photo mails will be dispatched automatically to each frame!

Same for web albums, when you create a Pix-Star web album or link one of your Facebook, Google + or other online albums inside the multi-frame account they get automatically to each frame account.

Also, each frame keeps its personal email address when being part of a multi-frames account. It means that you can still manage individually and send pictures to a particular frame even if it belongs to a multiple frame account!

ACCESS YOUR PICTURES FROM THE LARGEST SELECTION OF ONLINE PICTURE STORAGE PROVIDERS!

Pictures can be added by email, an SD card or a USB stick, but Pix-Star also has the option to link your frame with online albums. Pix-Star offers superb and comprehensive support for the largest number of online picture storage providers. For instance your Pix-Star frame can display your albums from Facebook or your friends’ albums.

We currently offer access to more than 20 providers and our team is always adding new providers. Here are some of the online picture storage providers you’ll be able to access with your Pix-Star: Google +, Facebook, Dropbox, Smugmug, Shutterfly, FlickR, OneDrive, Photobucket, just to name a few. You can also access pictures from Photo RSS feeds.

Moreover, your Pix-Star frame updates these albums automatically 3 to 4 times per day to automatically detect when you ADD or REMOVE pictures from the provider’s website.

Pix-Star syncs with more online albums than any other frame!

UPnP – DLNA SUPPORT ALLOWS EASY ACCESS TO PICTURES STORED ON YOUR LOCAL COMPUTER AND LOCAL NETWORKS!

Pix-Star has always been about accessing pictures wirelessly from different sources.

In addition to accessing your pictures stored in your online personal account, you can now use your Pix-Star to display photos stored on your local network, on your PC (Windows 7 and above), Macintosh (additional software required) or any compatible NAS server. You no longer need to copy or transfer pictures to the frame: you can easily browse through your Pix-Star menu, find your device in the list, click PLAY, and your photos will begin to display in streaming mode.

MORE THAN A PHOTO FRAME, A COMPANION OF YOUR DAILY LIFE!

Our latest version takes the frame to a new level of entertainment with several hundreds web radio stations, weather forecasts, games for the brain and reminders. Pix-Star is much more than a connected digital photo frame: it assists elderly loved ones, friends, and family in their daily lives.

PLAY WEB RADIO STATIONS AND LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC!

Listen to your favorite music or stay informed with news stations. Pix-Star offers you the possibility to listen to several hundreds of web radio stations from all over the world. If we don’t have a station pre-programmed, just fill out a request online in your Pix-Star account and we will try to add it.

If you want to play your favorite music while you enjoy your photo slideshows just plug in your USB stick of SD card and the frame will play the audio files. For even better audio quality or louder music you can plug in your own portable speaker (USB or jack).

WEATHER FORECASTS

Your frame can display 3-day forecasts for cities and countries of your choice, a great tool to keep friends and family up to date on the weather where you live. If your city is not on our list just send us a request and we will try to add it for you.

GAMES FOR THE BRAIN

If you’d like a break from viewing photos, have fun while training your brain through the brain training games! The frame is pre-loaded with games such as Sliding Puzzles, 2048, Sudoku, Mine Sweeper, etc…

Moreover, very few Grandparents use recreational high-tech products because they are too complicated. Thanks to its ease of use, Pix-Star wants to make the games accessible and useful. Indeed, with these simple entertaining games we hope it will contribute to help our lovely elderly friends and family to keep their brain fitness and mental acuity longer.

ALERTS AND REMINDERS

Never miss an appointment thanks to the frame’s reminders. One time event? Daily alarm? Birthday? Doctor appointment? Meeting? A bell will ring and a notification will be displayed on your frame at the time you set.

This is even more important for seniors because with old age or some sickness such as dementia, Alzheimer’s disease… forgetfulness can be very annoying. The elderly can very easily schedule reminders and alarms on regularly basis or not on the frame. This way, both seniors and their relatives can feel relaxed because Pix-Star will help them remember appointments and activities.

PLAY SLIDESHOWS YOUR WAY!

At Pix-Star we believe that watching pictures should be a delight. That’s why we offer you the ability to customize your slideshows in many ways.

Through your online personal account, you have the ability to create slideshows with the pictures of your choice – even if they come from different sources.

If you want to be surprised when watching your pictures, slideshows can be configured to play photos in different orders such as ‘normal,’ ‘random,’ ‘newest first,’ ‘oldest first,’ or even a ‘repeat recent pictures’ mode where recent pictures are repeated more often in the slide show. Transition time can be adjusted with many predefined values and you can select between many transition effects. You can also rotate pictures. You can easily copy pictures to the frame’s local memory using an SD card or a USB stick (with our smart auto-resize feature).

Here some parameters you can customize to “slideshow you way”:

Play Mode

Normal mode

Repeat recent pictures (this mode populates the photo list in order to play the latest pictures more frequently) of the last day, 2 days, 3 days, week or month.

Only latest pictures (this mode will display only the latest available pictures) of the last day, 2 days, 3 days, week or month.

Transitions

Horizontal Sliding, Vertical Sliding, Rotations, Zoom in, Flip, Fading, Ken Burns Effect, Boomerang, Wheel Clockwise, Wedge, Multi 1, Multi 2.

Display Mode

Normal mode (show one picture at a time, keeping the picture’s size ratio)

Collage 4 pictures (display a collage formed by 4 pictures)

Collage 5 pictures (display a collage formed by 5 pictures)

Smart Fill (auto fill the screen, stretching the picture if necessary, only when the picture ratio is close to 4:3 to avoid too much distortion.

Sorting Mode

Alphabetical mode

Newest first

Oldest first

Random

Intervals (between each pictures)

2 seconds, 3 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours or 12 hours

POWER CONSUMPTION

With a power consumption of less than 10W. With the AUTO POWER ON/OFF feature (auto sleep mode) you don’t have to unplug your frame before going to sleep or worry about wasting energy. From the frame’s settings you can schedule the times when your frame will automatically turn on and off. Emails will still be received even when your frame is off for the night or weekend.

PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

Display size (diagonal): 15 inches – 38.1 cm Display type/backlight: LCD/LED Display brightness/contrast: 250 cd/m2 (600:1) Dimensions (mm): 370x280x30 Display area (mm): 304×228 Display resolution (pixels): 1024×768 Aspect ratio: 4:3 Image file format: JPEG, JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF (including animated GIF) Memory: 4 GB Card support: SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC USB port

PACKAGE CONTENTS

Pix-Star Digital Photo Frame Remote Control AC Power Cord (worldwide compatible, input voltage from 100V up to 240 V) Quick Start Guide User Manual

Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Receive pictures directly on your Pix-Star frame from the Internet with its dedicated email address at NO EXTRA CHARGE Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Receive pictures directly on your Pix-Star frame from the Internet with its dedicated email address at NO EXTRA CHARGE Send pictures from your frame to individual or groups of email addresses directly from the frame Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Receive pictures directly on your Pix-Star frame from the Internet with its dedicated email address at NO EXTRA CHARGE Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2, 2.4 GHz only, 5GHz not supported), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Wi-Fi enabled (WEP/WPA/WPA2), 4 GB internal memory (15,000 photos), supports USB and SDHC memory cards Receive pictures directly on your Pix-Star frame from the Internet with its dedicated email address at NO EXTRA CHARGE Send pictures from your frame to individual or groups of email addresses directly from the frame Access more than 20 online providers and view pictures from web albums, including Picasa, Facebook, Flickr, Smugmug, and more and Receive daily updated weather forecasts for a selection of countries and cities

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enterinit · 6 years ago

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What’s new in Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18282

What’s new in Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18282. Windows Light Theme

Ever since we introduced the ability to choose between light and dark in Windows 10, we’ve heard feedback asking for a truer separation between the two options. When you select Light under Settings > Personalization > Colors, the expectation is that the system color would be lighter too. And it didn’t do that before – the taskbar and many other things stayed dark. Now, if you choose Light under Settings > Personalization > Colors, all system UI will now be light. This includes the taskbar, Start menu, Action Center, touch keyboard, and more. When you update to this build, your system color won’t automatically change to the new light system color. This is because we want everything to be exactly as you left it before you did the update. We’re leaving the choice up to you! If you had light mode selected prior to the update, this is what Color Settings will look like after updating: To try the full light experience, just click the “Choose your color” dropdown and select Light. As part of this work we’re also adding a new default wallpaper! Showcased above, you can use it on your PC today by going to Settings > Personalization > Themes and selecting “Windows Light”. This will also change your PC to be light themed. We look forward to hearing your feedback on the new light system color experience. However, please note that we’re still working on “lightening up” different pieces of the OS and refining the experience. For example, the OneDrive icon in the notification area (system tray) is white making it hard to see when you are using the light system color. Expect us to refine this experience. Bringing window snip to your modern snipping experience When we started this journey, we asked for your feedback and two requests shone above the rest: Add a delay snip option Add window snip mode Delay snip was the first on our list, and we added it with app version 10.1807. We then addressed a few more of your requests with app version 10.1809*, and today are really excited to announce that window snip is on its way to Insiders too! Start your snip via your preferred entry point (WIN + Shift + S, Print Screen (if you’ve enabled it), directly from within Snip & Sketch, etc.), and select the window snip option at the top, and snip away! That selection will be remembered the next time you start a snip. Currently the window snipping experience is available for 50% of Insiders, as we want to ensure a smooth rollout – we’ll let you know once it’s live for 100%. *This app update is now starting to roll out to people on Windows 10 version 1809! Please note that the borders feature is currently only supported on 19H1 builds, and like window snipping is currently only available for 50% of Insiders. Improving your modern printing experience You’ll notice a few differences once you update to today’s build: First and foremost, the modern print dialog now supports light theme! Second: In order to improve clarity, we’ve updated a number of the printing options to now include icons to help you easily and quickly identify the one you’re looking for. We’ve also added a line of description to some of the dropdown settings. This can be seen in the Pages example below, and in other settings if you click More Settings at the bottom of the print dialog. Finally: If you have a long printer name, it will now wrap rather than being cut off. If you have any further feedback in the printing space, please don’t hesitate to tell us! You can log feedback for this in the Feedback Hub under Devices and Drivers > Print. Updating Windows Update Based on customer feedback, we’re introducing two important new features to provide more control over updates: Pause Updates: We’re making the Pause Updates feature easier to find by surfacing the existing option directly on the ‘Settings > Update and Security > Windows Update’ page. Just like before, when Pause is enabled, some updates, like Windows Defender definition updates, will continue to be installed. In addition, Pause can be enabled for either a pre-defined number of days or until the specific day (day selector is available on Advanced options page).

Intelligent Active Hours: Setting your active hours will let Windows know when to avoid rebooting your device. However, we understand some of our users have shifting productivity schedules and remembering to adjust Active hours can be a challenge. Now, Windows can automatically adjust active hours for you based on your device activity. Just go into ‘Settings > Update and Security > Windows Update > Change active hours’ page to turn this setting on and know that reboots will not disrupt your productive time. Display brightness changes when going to battery power We’ve heard your feedback about a specific case where a display can become brighter when transitioning from a battery charger to battery power. For 19H1, we’re modifying the display brightness behavior so that this can no longer happen. If a person adjusts their display brightness, that brightness will now be remembered as their preferred brightness whether they are on battery or connected to a charger. This new behavior results in a more consistent and battery friendly experience. This does not affect battery saver mode settings; if a person has opted into lowering the screen brightness in battery saver mode, their display will still dim when the battery is below the threshold selected. Please use Feedback Hub to tell us what you think! You can file the feedback under the category “Device and Drivers” and subcategory “Display and Graphics”. Narrator Improvements Narrator Verbosity Improvements: We are improving the amount of information you hear while interacting in Windows and you will see these changes filter in throughout future builds. In the current release we have a new Narrator Setting entitled “Hear advanced information about controls when navigating”. When this feature is off you will not hear the advanced information previously spoken on controls. In addition, Tooltips will not be read by default. Use the Narrator Advanced Information command (Narrator + 0) to read a tooltip on a given item. In addition, you will notice that some control information will now begin to speak in a more consistent manner. Checkboxes and radio buttons will be the first controls with this new behavior. More consistent reading experience: Narrator text reading commands (previous/next for character/word/line/sentence/paragraph/page) can now be used to scan a full window from top to bottom. It is no longer possible to get the “not on explorable text” error and only when you reach the boundary of the window will you receive “no next/previous text.” Also, the views options are now consistent whether you are within text content or not. For example, you can now use the views option to search for a link anywhere within the active window. Read by Sentence Braille support: The new read by sentence commands are now available via a braille display by pressing dots 2-3-4 or 2-3-4-7 in command input mode. Note, we are still working on fixing a couple issues. Narrator character phonetic reading optimization: In a previous release, Narrator received support for reading characters phonetically. That is, reading out “a Alfa, b Bravo, c Charlie” while navigating “abc” by character. Since then, we have received feedback that you didn’t want to hear the phonetic information announced automatically. Instead, this should be an on-demand feature, to be called upon only when you needed it. In this release, we will no longer announce the phonetic information automatically. As you navigate by characters, this information will be omitted. If you need the phonetic information to disambiguate characters, you can issue a command to hear the phonetics. Use the keyboard command of Narrator key + Comma twice quickly. If, for example, you are using the Standard Keyboard layout with the default Narrator key setting of “Caps Lock or Insert”, you would issue the command of Caps Lock + Comma (or Insert + Comma), where the Comma key is pressed twice quickly while depressing the Caps Lock (or Insert) key. If you need to hear phonetics for a string of characters in a sustained fashion, the phonetics can be read out continuously as you move forward or backward through a range of characters with the Read Next Character command (Narrator key + Period) or Read Previous Character command (Narrator key + M). However, in this mode, you will only hear the phonetics announced and not the characters themselves (e.g., “Alfa Bravo Charlie”). To stop hearing the phonetics, press any other command (e.g., Left arrow, Right Arrow, Tab, etc.) or re-issue the Read Current Character command (Narrator key + Comma). Subsequent reading of next and previous characters via Narrator key + Period or Narrator key + M will return to reading just the characters, without phonetic information. If you prefer the original character phonetic reading behavior, a setting has been added for you to toggle on the automatic reading of phonetics. The OneDrive flyout now supports dark theme In case you didn’t hear last week, OneDrive is rolling out an update so that the OneDrive flyout will now be dark if you have dark mode selected in Settings!

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#Windows #Windows10 #WindowsClient #WindowsInsider

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luxus4me · 7 years ago

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MakeUseOf Directory http://j.mp/2HANC4N

Had enough of Google and want to switch away from it for good? These are the best alternatives for all the major Google programs and services.

Since its debut in 1997, Google has consistently launched new apps and services that change how we use technology. Most of them are really good too, and so you end up using Google apps by default for several needs.

But all of these free services do cost something: privacy. Google is notorious for collecting and storing data on you. So if you’re concerned about privacy Concerned About Privacy? How To Keep Google At Arm's Length Concerned About Privacy? How To Keep Google At Arm's Length Concerned about Google's data collection policies in light of all privacy issues? It might not be a bad idea to keep Google away from your Internet activities. But just how can you do that? Read More , it’s a good idea to switch from Google services to their best alternatives.

1. Ditch Google Search, Use DuckDuckGo

Duck Duck Go is all about privacy while giving you as good of a search experience as Google does. You actually won’t miss Google Search if you switch, and in fact, you’ll find exclusive DuckDuckGo features 6 Cool DuckDuckGo Features You Won't Find on Google 6 Cool DuckDuckGo Features You Won't Find on Google In a world ruled by Google, at least where search is concerned, it’s sometimes hard to imagine a worthy alternative. DuckDuckGo is one website that is trying to offer such an alternative. If you’ve been... Read More that Google doesn’t have. The keyboard shortcuts alone are reason enough to use it.

Gmail has long been the best email service you can use, but there has been one good contender since Microsoft revamped Outlook.com.

The new Outlook.com is packed with features The New Outlook.com Is Here: Everything You Should Know The New Outlook.com Is Here: Everything You Should Know Microsoft has overhauled Outlook.com. If your account hasn't been migrated yet, it will happen by the end of this year. Have a look at what's new in your Outlook.com inbox. Read More and accomplishes almost everything Gmail offers. In fact, some of its unique built-in features are better than what Gmail gives you 7 Outlook.com Tricks Everyone Needs to Know 7 Outlook.com Tricks Everyone Needs to Know We bet you didn't know about these Outlook web app features! We'll show you the best ones hidden in plain sight. Time to replace your desktop email client? Read More , like the ability to make alias emails and how it helps you achieve inbox zero.

3. Ditch Google Maps, Use Here WeGo

This is one service where Google is still far ahead of any competitors. Waze, Maps.me, Apple Maps, and other map services do the basics well but aren’t as feature-filled as Google Maps. For now, the best alternative 6 Google Maps Alternatives and Why They Matter 6 Google Maps Alternatives and Why They Matter Google Maps isn't the only free map application on the web. These Google Maps alternatives bring useful features and helpful information to help you go around your world. Read More is Here WeGo. The maps are as accurate as Google’s own, and live traffic information is updated as regularly too.

Google’s Docs, Sheets, and Slides make an excellent productivity suite, but why use those when you can get the original office suite, Microsoft Office, for free? Docs and Word are both as good, but when it comes to Excel Online, Microsoft’s offering is miles ahead of Google. And there are plenty of other reasons to use Office Online Don't Pay For Word! 5 Reasons You Should Use Office Online Don't Pay For Word! 5 Reasons You Should Use Office Online Office Online is the free and cloud-connected version of Microsoft Office. Limitations are compensated by features, useful even to users of desktop Office. Best of all is its Read More , including the fact that it works with Dropbox too.

5. Ditch Google Drive, Use Dropbox

Google Drive gives you more free space than Dropbox, but don’t forget, Dropbox has been doing this for a lot longer than Google has. Plus, it’s a company with only one job: cloud storage Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. OneDrive: Which Cloud Storage Is Best for You? Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. OneDrive: Which Cloud Storage Is Best for You? Have you changed the way you think about cloud storage? The popular options of Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive have been joined by others. We help you answer which cloud storage service should you use. Read More . That’s a little more reassuring than someone like Google or Microsoft, who have diverse interests.

Google Alerts is excellent to track any word popping up on a new page on the internet, especially in news. There are two excellent alternatives 10 Alert & Notifier Websites to Keep Track of Stuff You Might Otherwise Miss 10 Alert & Notifier Websites to Keep Track of Stuff You Might Otherwise Miss Read More for this. Talkwalker Alerts is a free service that mimics Google Alerts, and even offers an RSS feed. But if you don’t mind paying, Mention is better at monitoring news as well as social media. In fact, it’s better than Google Alerts.

7. Ditch Google News, Use Yahoo News

Google News doesn’t make news of its own, but aggregates articles from various publications. Ideally, you should switch to a proper news organization to read news that is censorship-free Top 5 World News Websites Guaranteed Free From Censorship Top 5 World News Websites Guaranteed Free From Censorship Is there no place for the reader to turn for unbiased news? The short answer is an emphatic yes. These five popular news websites are free from censorship. Read More . But if you want a similar experience as Google News, then Yahoo News is the oldest and best alternative news aggregator The Best Alternatives to Google News That Help You Stay Current The Best Alternatives to Google News That Help You Stay Current While Google News is convenient and easy to use, there are other ways to get your mainstream, niche, or even personalized news, delivered to you on your desktop or on the go. Read More , while also adding its original articles into the mix.

8. Ditch Google Calendar, Use Fruux

If Microsoft hadn’t bought and shut down Sunrise, that would be the best calendar around today. But now that it’s gone, Fruux is the perfect Google Calendar alternative Time Management Gets Easier with 8 Google Calendar Alternatives Time Management Gets Easier with 8 Google Calendar Alternatives When you have a ton on your plate every day and need a way to visualize and manage your time more efficiently, one of these calendars might be the answer for you. Read More . It’s cross-platform, works mostly like GCal does, and integrates with other sites and apps too. This actually lets you use a single calendar for events from Outlook, Gmail, Facebook, and other services. Not bad, eh?

I never thought I’d see a day where some app is better than Google Translate, but you need to check out Microsoft Translator to believe how good it is. This is one app which you should switch to right now, whether you hate Google or not. And hey, it works really well as an add-on for Microsoft Edge 10 Best Microsoft Edge Browser Extensions You Should Try Today 10 Best Microsoft Edge Browser Extensions You Should Try Today The latest Windows 10 Upgrade finally brings browser extensions to Microsoft Edge. We have examined the handful of extensions available and show you which ones are worth your time. Read More too.

10. Ditch Google Chrome, Use Opera

If you’re still using Google Chrome, you need a reality check. Forget about alternatives like Edge and Firefox, every Chrome user should make the switch to Opera. It’s pretty much like using Chrome, but better, since it comes with several useful built-in features like VPN and battery-saving mode. Plus you can install Chrome extensions on Opera, so you won’t miss out on your favorite add-ons. I switched and I’m never going back I Switched From Chrome to Opera and I’m Never Going Back I Switched From Chrome to Opera and I’m Never Going Back Any browser works. There's only one reason to pick one over another: it's more in line with how you like to browse the web. And you might prefer Opera, too. Read More .

11. Ditch Google Domains, Use Flame Domain

Google Domains lets you buy and register domains, manage them, add email, and even turn them into short URLs How To Make Short URL's on Your Domain with Google Apps How To Make Short URL's on Your Domain with Google Apps Read More . But you don’t necessarily need Google Domains to do all that. There are plenty of sites which let you do all this, but try out Flame Domain for an interface and experience similar to Google’s. Plus, it works really well with Google Apps.

12. Ditch Google Sites, Use Weebly

You don’t need to be a web developer to make your own page with Google Sites Make Your Own Free Multipurpose Web Page With Google Sites Make Your Own Free Multipurpose Web Page With Google Sites Read More . But there are other (and better) website creators for non-coders, like Weebly. Just check out some of these awesome Weebly web pages 9 Weebly Websites That Actually Don't Suck 9 Weebly Websites That Actually Don't Suck Weebly offers uber-simple, drag-and-drop website creation and free web hosting. Not all sites end up looking well-designed. But let's look at some of the best examples of Weebly websites. Read More to see the possibilities with this free website creator.

13. Ditch FeedBurner, Use FeedBlitz

Since Google bought FeedBurner, the RSS creator for sites, webmasters have been looking for good alternatives. FeedBlitz should be your first stop. It gives you everything FeedBurner does, including automated newsletters and statistics. It’s not free, but you will pay only as much as you use. The pricing is sensible in that it increases only as your subscriber base increases. And importantly, you aren’t charged extra for features like mailings, funnels, and lists. If you absolutely don’t want to pay, then check out these free FeedBurner alternatives 3 Free Alternatives to Google's Feedburner 3 Free Alternatives to Google's Feedburner Read More .

Google Groups let you create private discussion groups 10 Ways To Make The Most Of Google Groups 10 Ways To Make The Most Of Google Groups Once Google Groups was on the cutting edge of online social interactions. Social media is now the elite. With an upgrade recently, Google Groups has come out to create an identity of its own. Read More . It’s the same concept as Facebook Groups or Mobilize, but both these alternatives give you many more features. You will get instant messaging, analytics, event management, and other such abilities that are essential to managing a large group. Unfortunately, to use Google Groups, Facebook Groups, or Mobilize, you need to register for an account on their respective sites. Sigh…

The new Google Photos is the best photo management app Get Free Unlimited Photo Storage & More with Google Photos Get Free Unlimited Photo Storage & More with Google Photos If you aren't using these hidden Google Photos features, you're really missing out. (Hint: There's free and unlimited photo storage!) Read More around. Nothing else matches up, but the only one to come close for a regular user is Amazon Prime Photos, which offers similar unlimited photo storage How to Share Unlimited Photos With Your Family on Amazon Prime How to Share Unlimited Photos With Your Family on Amazon Prime Amazon Prime has a new feature called the Family Vault that lets you share unlimited photos with your family! Here's how to take advantage of it now. Read More and sharing. All you need is an Amazon Prime account, so it’s not technically free. But hey, why would you not have a Prime account anyway?

Are You Scared of Google?

It’s convenient to use Google for all your needs, but don’t forget, this is a corporation. How much do you really trust it with your data and private information? It’s advisable to diversify your needs across several apps than under one brand.

Are you scared of what Google would do with your data What Does Google Know About You? Find Out and Manage Your Privacy and Security What Does Google Know About You? Find Out and Manage Your Privacy and Security For the first time, search giant Google is offering a way for you to check the information it has about you, how it is gathering that data, and new tools to start reclaiming your privacy. Read More , or do you trust Google to do the right thing?

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toptechbank · 7 years ago

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Best Apple Watch apps for your smartwatch in 2017

The Apple Watch is onto its third generation now, and the aptly-named Apple Watch 3 is proving pretty popular – so that’s why you’re probably here checking out the new apps (and, let’s be honest, you’ve probably just got it as a new gift).

In fact, it’s one of the best smartwatch options out there, and now we’re at the third generation it’s getting to a particularly accomplished option.

The number one question we hear from new Apple Watch owners is “Well, what apps should I download first?”

To make answering that query easier, we devised a thorough list of the best Apple Watch apps. With the right choices, your new digital timepiece will become so much more.

Before you get into that though, remember to head into the Apple Watch main app on your iPhone – that’s where you’ll see a list of the apps already installed on your phone that can be transferred to your new Watch. (If you see any you like the look of here, you’ll need to download them to your iPhone first).

Make sure you tag the apps you want on your watch – and disable the ones you don’t, as that will take up valuable space you can use to add music onto – especially great if you have the Apple Watch 3 LTE version, and an Apple Music subscription.

See our review of the Apple Watch Series 3 below.

New this week: Transit

Transit

Free

Transit is mainly for American users, but its city coverage extends to more than 50 non-US cities including London and Paris too. It’s a public transport app, and it works on a simple and largely accurate assumption: when you use the app, you’re in a hurry.

That means instant information for departures on nearby routes and a Take Me Home button that tells you how to get home as quickly and simply as possible. In a single screen it offers directions, details of the station, the next three departures and the number of the service.

Public transport tends to bring out the best in designers – think the simple genius of the London Underground map or the colorful signage on the New York subway – and that’s definitely the case here.

Transit makes excellent use of color and typography to provide all the information you need in a very effective way.

It may only shave a few seconds off your travel time, but if you’ve ever harbored dark thoughts when someone at the gate in front of you is wasting time you’ll know that for commuters, every single second counts. If you spend a lot of time traveling, you’ll save a lot of time with Transit.

OneNote

Free

If there’s one thing the App Store isn’t short of, it’s note-taking apps. But it’s worth taking a look at OneNote, especially if you work across a range of Mac and PC devices, because as it syncs via Microsoft’s cloud, it’s a very good cross-platform app with particularly well-designed iPhone, iPad and Mac apps to organize pretty much everything.

We use it for shopping lists, to-do lists, random scribbled ideas in the wee small hours and anything else we think we might need to refer to later, and unlike some rival cross-platform services it’s completely free. Microsoft hopes you’ll like it so much you’ll embrace Office, which is available for a very low price as part of a premium OneDrive plan.

Microsoft has become rather good at keeping its Watch apps simple, and OneNote is no exception: tap the cross icon to dictate a new note, or tap a notebook or note to see its contents.

And that’s pretty much all it does – and that’s all it needs to do, because any watch screen is poorly suited to complex tasks. We’d much rather have speed and simplicity than any ill-conceived bells and whistles.

Misfit

Free

The Misfit app is designed to connect to the firm’s various wearable health monitors and third-party devices from the likes of Swarovski and Speedo, but it’s a useful Watch app in its own right too even if you don’t have any other wearable devices.

It can use your Watch’s sensors to track activity, but the USP here is its integrated workouts for people in a hurry. When it was first introduced it was called Misfit Minute, but it’s since been renamed to plain old Misfit.

Inside the app there are workouts designed to last 1, 4 and 7 minutes respectively, covering strength training and cardio. One minute doesn’t sound particularly strenuous but you’ll be surprised: the app appears to be haunted by the ghost of a particularly sadistic circuit training coach, and you’ll definitely feel the seven-minute workout across your body.

The app also tries to motivate you during your workout – “Pain is weakness leaving the body” and that kind of thing – and it promises that no two workouts are alike, although realistically if you get bored during a one-minute workout you might need more motivation than any app can offer.

Epicurious Smart Timer

Free

The food site Epicurious isn’t scared of technology: it attempted to make a recipe app for Google Glass (although that didn’t quite work out). Its Watch efforts are much more successful, with the Watch doing what watches do best: timing. Think of it as an egg timer that can do more than eggs.

Using the app is simple. Choose the kind of food you want to time, such as a roast chicken or a steak, and tell the app how heavy it is and, where appropriate, how well done you want it to be. The timer lets you know when to flip or remove it from the heat.

It then tells you what to do, so for example in the case of your steak you’re urged to let it rest for five minutes and then slice across the grain. You’ll also see photos so you can compare what your food looks like with what it should look like.

It’s not the most comprehensive app around, but it isn’t supposed to be: it’s designed for relatively inexperienced cooks and the 40-odd items it does know about cover all the basics. If you’re unsure of cooking times or just easily distracted, it’s a great app to have.

Night Sky

Free

Night Sky is one of those gee-whiz apps that you use to show off your iPhone, and the introduction of a complication to let you know if the International Space Station was overhead was cute in a geeky way.

But the arrival of watchOS 4 has given the developers plenty of new toys to play with, and that means Night Sky is now one of those gee-whiz apps you use to show off your Apple Watch.

With this version of the app, your Watch now gets the same Sky Tracking features as the iPhone app has: you can now raise your wrist and identify the stars, planets and constellations around you.

There’s a time travel feature too, so you can track how the various heavenly bodies will move. It’s enormously clever and very impressive, and the main iPhone app isn’t bad either, as its Sky View knows of 115,000 celestial objects and enables you to increase or decrease light pollution, explore animated 3D models and customize notifications.

If you sign up for the $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 monthly premium subscription you get access to worldwide sky tours that you can save for future use – for example if you’re planning to visit a particular location in the near future.

V for Wikipedia

Free

We know what you’re thinking: surely it should be W for Wikipedia? V was formerly known as Viki, but had to be renamed due to a trademark issue. No matter what it’s called, it’s a really useful Apple Watch app: it brings relevant Wikipedia content to wherever you are.

For example, you might want to know the history of a public landmark, or to discover what’s nearby. V presents the information in a clear and straightforward manner, it uses dictation and 3D Touch to good effect and it uses Handoff for longer entries that are better suited to your phone’s larger screen.

The developers have clearly thought about how people would actually use the app: you can call up V from a complication, use voice search to find a place, bookmark it with 3D touch and pick it up on the iPhone later. That simplicity means it’s an app you’ll actually use rather than one that’ll gather digital dust in your apps list.

It’s exceptional on the iPhone too, taking the rather dull design of Wikipedia and replacing it with something much more pleasing. No wonder it’s picked up awards including a Gold German Design Award and Apple’s App Store Best of 2016.

Cardiogram

Free

Your Apple Watch monitors your heart rate every five minutes, which is clever. But what do the numbers actually mean, and are they actually useful? Cardiogram wants to explain, and to do something important: help fight one of the most common kinds of heart arrhythmia, atrial fibrillation (AF).

Its Apple Watch app uses an algorithm that can identify the tell-tale signs of AF, something that’s treatable but that often goes undiagnosed.

Cardiogram isn’t just about detecting AF, as important as that is. It wants to make your health data useful, so it can tell you whether you’re sleeping properly (assuming you’re able to wear rather than charge your watch overnight), whether your resting heart rate is low enough, how well your heart recovers after exercise, and what makes your stress levels spike. It’s a workout tracker too.

The data the Watch app generates is best experienced on your iPhone, where the app provides crucial information and trends in the form of clear and colorful graphs. In the future it will know how to recognise more medical conditions too.

The potential is enormous: by combining (anonymous) data from thousands of Apple Watch owners, Cardiogram’s developers hope to use Big Data to help people live better, longer lives. How’s that for ambition?

MySwimPro

Free

This is a tale of two apps, depending on which version of Apple Watch you have. If yours is a first-generation model then it’s a useful but limited way to track your swimming stats: the first-gen watch shouldn’t be submerged, so you shouldn’t wear it while swimming.

However, if you have a second-generation Apple Watch (Apple calls it the Apple Watch Series 2) then you can take it into the pool – and that makes MySwimPro a much more useful application. You can log your workouts while you’re still in the water, and you can also follow the app’s workouts to set goals and monitor your heart rate during your swim.

Once you’ve dried off you can pick up the iPhone or iPad app, which syncs data from your Watch and enables you to see your progress in much more detail: miles swum, hours spent swimming, top times for specific distances and so on.

You can share your triumphs online, or you can just watch videos showing how other swimmers do particular types of workout. It’s probably overkill if you only do the odd couple of laps at the gym swimming pool, but if you’re serious about swimming it’s worth wearing on your wrist.

Just Eat

Free

Proving that you should never underestimate our basic laziness, Just Eat created an app for people who couldn’t be bothered using the telephone to call for a takeaway. Now, it’s added an app for people who can’t be bothered reaching for their iPhone to open the Just Eat app.

One day historians may look back on this as one of the key steps in the downfall of western civilisation. Then again, easy pizza!

The Just Eat app is UK-only – if you’re in the US, try the Domino’s Apple Watch app instead – and it enables you to choose, order and pay for takeaways from the comfort of your wrist thanks to Apple Pay integration.

You can also choose to collect instead of having the meal delivered, but let’s be honest: if you can’t be bothered getting your phone you’re hardly going to want to go outside to collect your food – although if you’re driving it’s handy to order a pickup with a few taps.

The main iPhone/iPad app is much more attractive and informative, but when it comes to ordering regulars from your favorite local takeaways it doesn’t get much easier than having Just Eat on your wrist.

A Tiny Game of Pong

$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99

Sometimes the titles do all the work for us: yes, A Tiny Game of Pong puts a tiny game of Pong on your Apple Watch.

If you’re not familiar with Pong, perhaps because you aren’t really, really old, it was one of the first video games and was released in November 1972. The fact that it’s still playable – and quickly becomes frustratingly difficult – just demonstrates what a classic game it really is.

If you’re new to Pong, the gameplay is very simple: there are two paddles, one of which you control with the Digital Crown, and there’s a ball, which you try not to miss when the other paddle hits it towards you. The more times you don’t miss, the better your score. And that’s pretty much it.

There’s an in-app purchase that unlocks extra colors, which you can also unlock by posting about the game on social media, and there are high score tables that work via Game Center. But ultimately what you get is exactly what the title describes: a tiny game of Pong.

Yahoo Weather

Free

Dark Sky and CARROT Weather get all the reviews, but Yahoo’s weather app is a lovely thing on the Apple Watch.

It takes the same colorful, minimalist approach as the iPhone/iPad app, with screens showing trend lines for temperature, precipitation and wind speed, along with sunrise and sunset times and where the sun is right now, whether it’s going to rain and what the temperature highs and lows will be.

You don’t get the right-now weather warnings of Dark Sky or the sass of CARROT, just a clear, easy to understand and really well-presented set of predictions.

It’s not all sunshine and flowers, though. The host app is pretty big – 137MB, which is on the large side for a weather app, given that the UK Met Office app is 80MB and Dark Sky 20.8MB – and the accuracy of the weather forecasts seems to depend on where you live.

US users seem very happy with it, but UK users say it’s a little pessimistic: while it rains a lot in Britain, it doesn’t rain quite as often as Yahoo Weather says it will.

Then again, it’s better to warn of rain and be pleasantly surprised than to predict good weather when the skies are about to open.

Workflow

Free

Workflow is an absolutely fascinating app, recently acquired by Apple. If you’re familiar with OS X’s Automator it’s a bit like that but much more user-friendly and focused, and for iOS. And if you’re not, you’re going to like it a lot.

Workflow essentially turns your iPhone or iPad’s features into LEGO. You can take bricks from app X, combine them with bricks from app Y, and have a new toy to play with.

For example, you could create a workflow that takes your most recent photos and saves them to Dropbox, or a workflow that offers one-tap information on where the nearest coffee shop is, or that tweets the song you’re listening to. It’s absolutely brilliant and now it’s available on your Watch.

As you might expect, Workflow on the Watch doesn’t offer any creation tools: it’s purely a launcher in Watch form, allowing you to call up your workflows with a tap.

You might have a workflow to give you directions home from wherever you are, or to calculate a tip in a restaurant, or to read out your messages. It’s the kind of app you can’t imagine using, and then you use it and can’t imagine going without it.

Twitterrific

Free / In-app purchases for full feature set

There are lots of reasons to love Twitter, but there are lots of reasons to find it annoying too. Promoted tweets filling your timeline, people talking about subjects you couldn’t care less about, people retweeting people you couldn’t care less about, Piers Morgan… wouldn’t it be great if you could have a Twitter without all of those things? Don’t look to the official app for that any time soon. Go for Twitterrific instead.

Now in its fifth incarnation, Twitterrific on iOS is a superb Twitter tool. The Watch features require a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 in-app purchase to work fully, and they’re worth paying for: you can track your stats, be notified about direct messages, favorites, new followers and other action, use Handoff to start replies on your phone, compose tweets via dictation and block idiots instantly.

We’d recommend keeping notifications to an absolute minimum unless you only follow a few people – Twitter can be incredibly noisy when you follow and/or are followed by lots of people – but the Watch app is a great way of staying on top of Twitter while you’re out and about. It also reduces the risk of picking up your phone and thinking “while I’m here I’ll just check…” and losing hours to trivia.

Keynote

Free

If you deliver a lot of presentations tied to a computer or iPad you might watch Apple keynotes with envy. Wouldn’t it be great if you could stride around the room like that, surreptitiously tapping a button to move to the next slide instead of hovering over your hardware?

There are plenty of electronic clickers to do just that, but why get another bit of hardware you’ll probably lose when you can control Keynote from your Apple Watch?

Don’t expect speakers’ notes, views of upcoming slides or other presentation app goodies: the Watch app is designed simply to play presentations and move to the next slide when tapped. Everything else happens on devices more suited to editing: your phone, or your iPad.

And provided there’s decent Wi-Fi or you’re close enough to the presenting iPad or iPhone for Bluetooth it works really well. It’s surprisingly functional-looking for an Apple app – it isn’t remotely pretty, and looks like it was designed in a tea break – but then how much design do you really need when you’re using your Watch as a clicker?

Do you prefer Office to Apple’s apps? Microsoft has a PowerPoint app for the Watch right here.

AeroPress Timer

$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

You can’t get much more hipster than this: an Apple Watch app for the AeroPress coffee maker, enabling you to use a gadget costing hundreds of dollars to work out how to make a cup of coffee.

But while it’s easy to mock it’s actually a really useful and well-designed app, assuming of course you have an AeroPress. It’s the kind of thing that watch apps excel at: it does one thing, and it does that thing very well.

AeroPress Timer’s thing is to help you make the perfect cup of coffee. The app features coffee recipes from the 2014 AeroPress world championship, and takes you step by step through the process for each: how much coffee to use, when to stir, when to steep, and when it’s time to take a sip of your masterpiece.

It’s not just about fancy award competitors either: the app also includes the instructions you need to make standard recipes, two cup recipes and to improve your brewing prowess in general.

If you’re the kind of person whose eyeballs are vibrating with caffeine by lunchtime, you’re going to love the convenience of having everything you need to hand. Or rather, on your wrist.

Pennies

$3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

Pennies was a recent Apple Editor’s Choice, for good reason: it’s a very simple and effective budgeting app that allows you to get on top of your spending without having to spend too much time doing so.

You can set weekly, monthly, bi-weekly, bi-monthly, one-off and custom budgets, track in multiple currencies – great for holidays or business travel – and on the Watch, all you need to do is record how much you’ve spent against a particular budget, so for example if you have a shopping budget you’d tap it, tap Spend, and then enter the total.

The app then recalculates the amount you’ve got left, and if you wish you can have it displayed as a permanent Complication on the Watch face.

Pennies isn’t interested in what you’ve bought; just what budget it should be allocated to. As the developer puts it, “it’s all about keeping things easy and flexible so you can get on with having fun, spending what you want, and saving money at the end of the month.”

If like us you find personal finance a mix of tedium and terror, Pennies might be the app that helps you take control of your cash.

Deliveries

$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

Is there anything more annoying than missing a delivery of something you’re really excited about? Yes: there’s missing a delivery of something that you really need to have in a hurry. Deliveries can help ensure that neither of those things happen to you.

It supports stacks of services including UPS, FedEx, US Postal Service, DHL, TNT, Canada Post, City Link and Royal Mail, can track packages, can add delivery dates to your calendar and can record past deliveries in case you need to refer to them later.

It’s unnecessary for the odd package, but it’s useful if you do a lot of online shopping or if you’re in the middle of a project, such as furnishing a flat.

On the Watch the app acts as a ready reminder of what’s in and what’s incoming, so for example it’ll show you if an item has just been delivered as well as the ETA of any other outstanding deliveries.

There’s a Complication too, which works particularly well on the Utility watch face and shows you the most recent delivery. If you have the macOS version of the app too you can automatically sync between Mac and mobile via iCloud or the developer’s own cloud sync service.

Clicker

Free

We’ve described the iPhone as the Very Hungry Caterpillar of tech, munching its way through entire product categories as stand-alone devices become iOS apps. We’re often delighted by the simplest things, and Clicker is one of those things.

It’s a replacement for those hand-held clickers people use to count things, and it’s appropriate for counting people, days, laps, drinks or anything else you might want to quantify.

To use it, just tap on the screen and tap again when you want another click. Haptic feedback means you don’t need to look at the watch, and you don’t need to have the clicker display all day: when you’re ready for a new click you can pull it up from its Complication. You can record up to 2,147,483,647 taps.

And that’s pretty much it: there are only two other options: subtract, to remove a mistaken click, and reset, to start again.

It’s hardly a must-have but it’s actually very handy, so for example we’ve seen users tracking how often they smoke during the day or how many glasses of water they’ve had. We wouldn’t recommend using it for counting sheep, though – or at least, not on the first-generation Apple Watch, whose battery isn’t really up to working nights.

Elevate

Free

We’re not convinced by the supposed science of brain training – it’s a sector that makes bold claims based on very flimsy evidence – but there’s no doubt that spending time learning or practicing useful things is better for you than mindlessly swiping through trivia on Twitter.

Elevate claims that its brain training app will “improve critical cognitive skills that are proven to boost productivity, earning power, and self-confidence”, and it does so by setting little tasks for you: choosing the correct meaning of words, calculating percentages and so on.

Correct answers earn points, and you can track your progress on the main iPhone/iPad app as well as on your Watch. The Watch’s small screen means the games you get are very simple ones, but that works well when you’re on the move.

The app is free and lets you play 4 mini-games. If you want to access the full selection of 40+ Elevate games you’ll need your iPhone or iPad and a subscription to the premium membership package, which is $4.99/£3.99/AU$7.99 per month or $44.99/£34.99/AU$69.99 per year.

If you could do with a boost to specific skills – working out restaurant tips, perhaps, or improving your vocabulary – then you might feel that’s well worth the money.

CARROT Fit

$3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

You may know CARROT from its weather app, which combines Dark Sky-style weather forecasting with sarcasm and lies. But CARROT wants to make you unhappy in many other ways – and what’s better for a sadistic AI than being in control of a fitness app?

Enter CARROT Fit, which takes a somewhat unusual approach to motivating you to get healthier and lose weight.

CARROT promises to “get you fit – or else”. To achieve that it offers a dozen punishing exercises (more are available via in-app purchases) accompanied by threats, ridicule, bribes and the occasional compliment.

It’s rude, crude and much more entertaining than trying to complete the rings on Apple’s own activity tracker, and we’re pretty sure it’s the only fitness app that rewards progress with cat facts. But there’s a proper fitness tracker in here too: it’ll track your steps and weight loss, remember your workouts and add data to Apple’s health app.

Most of the personality is in the main iPhone app, but the Watch alerts include such cheery prospects as “seven minutes in hell”. If you find getting fit or losing weight a little bit tedious, CARROT might be the, ahem, carrot that you need to get motivated.

Knock

$5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99

Passwords are essential, but they’re also rubbish. The ones you can remember are easy to guess, the ones that are hard to guess are equally hard to remember, and if you do passwords properly it can be a pain to enter complicated strings of text and characters when you’re in a hurry.

Wouldn’t it be better if you could prove your identity to your Mac with your Watch? That’s exactly what Knock does.

Knock is a simple idea brilliantly executed. Provided your Mac is of relatively recent vintage – an Air from 2011 or better, a MacBook Pro or iMac from late 2012, a 2013 or later Mac Pro and so on – you can use Knock to automatically unlock your Mac or Macs by tapping the Apple Watch app.

It’s connecting via Bluetooth Low Energy – hence the reliance on relatively recent Macs; older ones don’t have Bluetooth LE – which uses tiny amounts of energy, so you don’t need to worry about the app killing your Watch’s battery any more than usual, and it works instantly if your Mac isn’t in sleep mode.

It may seem quite pricey for such a simple app, but think about how much time you spend locking and unlocking your Macs in a year.

Note that you may not need this if you have a recent Mac running macOS Sierra, as there’s a similar feature built in, but Knock is compatible with slightly older Macs too.

Buy Me A Pie!

$24.99/£23.99/AU$38.99

When we first got an Apple Watch we thought we’d use it for everything, but years later we’re still using Post-It notes when we go to the supermarket.

That’s mainly because list apps are often overkill for something as straightforward as a shopping list – so can the excellently-named and quite expensive Buy Me A Pie! app finally persuade us to leave the sticky notes at home?

User reviews certainly think so: it’s had nearly 3,000 ratings, averaging four and a half stars.

On the iPhone the app offers flat design and color coding, which by necessity has to be adapted for the Watch: the colored lozenges of the iPhone app are replaced with little colored lines beside items.

But the key feature here isn’t the appearance: it’s synchronization. Buy Me A Pie! syncs across all your iOS devices, so your partner could add an item to your shopping list on their iPad and have it automatically sync to your Watch along with a push notification.

It supports location-based reminders, stores multiple lists and has a learning function that automatically stores unfamiliar items in the app’s dictionary for future use. It’s very good at what it does, although it’s rather pricey if you only do the occasional big shop.

Happier

Free

Mindfulness, the art of focusing on being present and aware in the world instead of being constantly distracted by things and thoughts that don’t matter, isn’t something you’d associate with the Apple Watch. If you aren’t careful with your notification settings your Watch pings away merrily all day, interrupting countless trains of thought.

But the Happier app hopes to use the Watch to make you feel better, not more harassed.

The app itself is free, but it’s designed as a gateway to paid-for mindfulness courses. If you don’t go for them you can still take advantage of the app, though. You can tell the app how you’re feeling – we suspect “meh” is the most-used option – and it then responds with uplifting quotes to help you feel a bit more optimistic.

It can pop up to remind you to take a meditation break, and you can dictate a positive thought to a private journal or to the Happier community. That’s not as daft as it sounds: there’s some evidence that keeping a journal of positive things can boost your mood over time.

Just be careful what and how you share: one iTunes reviewer says that they were able to locate their private journal with Google.

Tamagotchi Classic

$3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

Readers of a certain age will remember Tamagotchi, the infuriatingly addictive electronic pets that took over the world in the late 1990s with their incessant demands for care and attention.

And now they’re back! Back! BACK! And this time, they’re on your wrist – which is fitting, because Tamagotchi is apparently a portmanteau of the Japanese words for egg and watch. If you’ve never used your watch to raise a virtual pet, here’s your chance.

This app is the Tamagotchi L.i.f.e Gen1, and it uses the Apple Watch in several ways: when your Tamagotchi wants your attention it’ll pop up on your wrist, you can monitor your Tamagotchi’s health, and you can carry out care actions – such as feeding it a meal or making it go to the toilet.

There are two modes to choose from: toy mode, which recreates the originals, and App Mode, which adds special colors. The app also enables you to put multiple Tamagotchi into a gallery, where you can then take pictures of them, and save said digital snaps to your Camera Roll.

It’s spectacularly pointless, of course, but it’s also pretty cute and faithful to the original toys – so it’s an app for rose-tinted spectacle wearers as well as for people who’ve never encountered Tamagotchi before.

VLC Remote

$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

As you’ve probably guessed, this app is a remote control for VLC. If you’re not familiar with those initials they belong to one of our very favorite apps, the VLC media player.

It’s a kind of Swiss Army Knife for playing or streaming music and video, and it’s available on iOS and on desktop computers too. We love it for many reasons: it’s fast, it’s free and it can read media formats most of us forgot ever existed.

The remote app solves a simple problem with computer media playback: if you’re on the sofa you probably aren’t anywhere near the computer that’s got all your media files on it.

It works with VLC on Mac, Linux or Windows, automatically finds any running copy of VLC on your local network and enables you to control the on-screen action with your phone.

The Watch app reduces that to bare bones: it gives you volume and transport controls, shows cover art and offers additional options – repeat, shuffle, audio on/off and subtitles on/off – via Force Touch.

If you’ve made VLC the heart of your home entertainment, this app should save you from wearing a path in the carpet between computer and couch.

TripIt

Free / in-app purchases

Whether you’re a road warrior or an occasional holidayer, keeping track of the various aspects of your trip can be a pain. TripIt solves that by pulling all your travel-related documentation together.

All you need to do is send your travel confirmation emails – flights, hotels, car hire – to TripIt and the app will automatically organize them and tell you the information you need when you need it.

If you use Gmail, Outlook.com or Yahoo mail you can get TripIt to monitor your mailbox automatically, which makes things even easier. If you’re in the US, it even tells you when it’s time to head for the airport.

The phone app stores your itinerary and key documents, and the Watch app lets you know what’s important right now – so if you’re about to board a flight you’ll see the flight number and departure time, if you’re checking in you’ll see a booking reference and so on.

Things get really clever with the Pro subscription ($48.99/£38.99/AU$77.99), which adds live flight notifications, seat tracking and alternative flight finding should your plans change.

That’s probably unnecessary for most people, though: the free version of the app includes all the essentials you need for any kind of travel.

Lose It!

Free / in-app purchases

If your Watch strap is feeling a little more snug than it used to, this app may be the answer: it’s designed to help you achieve your weight loss goals “without the unsustainable gimmicks, fad diets, restrictive foods, on-site meetings, or large price tags of other weight-loss companies.”

It tracks the calories you’ve consumed and the goals you’ve set, focuses on nutrition as well as overall calorie intake, works happily with other fitness apps and trackers and provides an online peer group where everybody encourages each other to achieve their ideal weight.

It also enables you to set exercise goals and focus on general wellness, so it’s not just about losing weight.

The Apple Watch app doesn’t replace the phone app completely – for example, you’ll need your phone handy if you want to use the barcode scanner to automatically record what you’re eating, and the team-based features such as group challenges are phone-based – but it’s a great way to focus on your goals, monitor your progress and keep your motivation no matter how sorely tempted you may be.

The program is $39.99/£29.99/AU$62.99 per year but you can explore the app for free without signing up.

Outlook

Free

Microsoft earned well-deserved death stares from many Watch users when it bought and retired the excellent Sunrise Calendar iOS app, but its Outlook app is worth adding to your wrist.

It’s from the new, interesting Microsoft, not the staid bore of old: it works well, looks great and won’t crash your watch.

Outlook is a combined email and calendar app that connects to Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Outlook.com, Hotmail, MSN, Gmail, Yahoo and iCloud, and its main claim to fame is the focused inbox: instead of showing you everything emailed, it shows the most important stuff only and learns by watching your swipes.

It’s particularly good in a corporate environment, where its talents cope admirably with endless meeting requests, time changes and backside-covering email traffic, enabling you to prioritize things that matter and forget about things that don’t.

That doesn’t mean it’s only for corporate types, though. Outlook is a really, really good email app and boasts a useful Complication that enables you to see what’s next on your schedule from the main Apple Watch display. If you have a busy life, a busy inbox or both it’s a very useful app to have on your arm.

Mount Burnmore

Free / in-app purchases

Fitness fanatics look away now: for those that find exercise really boring, and their get up and go often gets up and goes while they stay sedentary. Mount Burnmore could be the answer to that lethargy: it turns fitness into a game.

The concept is quite clever. Mount Burnmore depends on “active energy”, which it pulls from the Health app: the more calories you’ve burned, the more active energy you have in the game.

When you have sufficient energy you can attempt to solve the game’s puzzles, which involve finding routes around the titular mountain, collecting in-game items and smashing things with a pickaxe.

There’s a Complication that enables you to see your progress without launching the full game, and the app makes good use of the Digital Crown to help you navigate around larger levels later in the game. There are also leaderboards to compare with other players and in-game challenges to win freebies.

It’s bright, breezy and a bit brash, and we suspect it’s best suited to older children rather than grown-ups – although if you do give this one to the kids you might want to disable in-app purchases, as they can be used to buy in-game items.

ExxonMobil Speedpass+

Free

This one’s US-only for now. It’s a way to pay for fuel and car washes with your Apple Watch via the magic of Apple Pay, and it syncs with Ford SYNC 3 so you can use voice commands in the car too.

You can use it in 10,000 participating Exxon and Mobil stations across the US, and it’s capable of more than just payment: the app records sales for electronic receipts and enables you to manage your loyalty points as well.

It’s really straightforward to use, assuming you’ve got funds in the bank. Just roll up to the pump or automated car wash, pull up the app and tell it which pump you’re parked at. Use the app to approve payment to that pump and then double-tap your watch’s side button to pay with Apple Pay. As soon as you do that, you’re free to pump all day long.

You’ll see more apps like this over time, as many manufacturers are looking into mobile payments, so – for example – Jaguar and Shell in the UK have an Apple pay app for their customers, and fuel companies are keen too: in addition to ExxonMobil, Chevron’s also experimenting with Apple Pay.

Babbel

Free / in-app purchases

Sometimes the best way to learn new things is to have fun, and that’s particularly true of languages: we can’t remember a taught word of the languages we rote-learned in school, but we can remember all the swear words and rude ones our peers snickered about on the bus home.

Babbel takes a more mature, but no less effective, approach to language learning, using data from the check-in service Foursquare to tell you about nearby words you need to find and translate on its Watch app. For example: you might learn the foreign word for a type of drink when you’re at a coffee shop.

The main iPhone app is more formal but still concentrates on real-world language, so you’re more likely to learn how to ask if somebody’s married or if they want some wine than tell them that your aunt’s pen is in the garden.

It’s proven to be effective and has more than a million subscribers, making it one of the most popular language learning tools around.

Just watch out for those in-app purchases, though: each language pack costs money, but some cost a lot more than others.

Sleep Watch

$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

Sleep tracking is an area where the Apple Watch lags due to its charging requirements, and while the second generation Watch does last longer, you can’t keep it on for a week i the vein of some dedicated fitness trackers.

That means any sleep tracking app has to overcome that obstacle, and in the case of Sleep Watch that means making sure you’ve still got 65% battery left at night and Power Reserve off.

You may need to get into the routine of a pre-bed charge if you want to use the app regularly… so decide now if this is an app that could be one of your ‘best’.

Is it worth it? It is if you think your sleep is subpar, as that can make it hard to concentrate and damage your health.

The app is very good at differentiating between deep, restless sleep and cheese-fueled tossing and turning, and version 2’s new trends feature enables you to see if there’s a pattern emerging that suggests a possible cause. The app also tracks your sleeping heart rate, and again you can see if there are trends emerging there.

It’s a clever app but it’s up against the Achilles Heel of the Apple Watch: little smartwatches can’t have big batteries. But if you don’t mind establishing a new charging routine it might just help you sleep a little better more often.

Activity Tracker

Free / In-App Purchases

This is an interesting one: the pitch is that Activity Tracker doesn’t require you to have a wearable device, but it also boasts about the Apple Watch app that enables you to track your progress.

It’s designed for the iPhone 5S onwards and uses that device’s motion coprocessor to track your progress – even if you have a second generation Apple Watch, which has its own GPS tracker. That means it’s an alternative to Apple’s own Activity app, rather than something bringing features Apple doesn’t already offer, and you’ll still need to take your phone with you.

The main iPhone app is pretty and makes it easy to see your key stats, and the Watch app can help motivate you by showing your steps, burnt calories and distance travelled. The parent app also enables you to set weekly goals and track your progress against them.

The main app is free, but there’s also a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 unlock that adds weekly and monthly activity visualizations and the ability to import data from or export data to another iPhone.

It can also pull in data from Apple’s own Health app, which is useful if you’ve been filing your fitness data in that for some time.

Free

Yes, we know you might have heard of this one and it’s technically not an app… but did you know that Siri in the Apple Watch became a lot more powerful in the March 2017 watchOS 3.2 update?

That’s because Apple has opened Siri up to third-party developers, so instead of asking Siri to send a message and seeing the Messages app open, you’ll be able to ask Siri to send a WhatsApp message instead.

This is important because previously Siri could only work with Apple’s own apps. Now s/he can talk to third party apps too. You’ll be able to ask Siri to call you a cab, to start and stop workouts, to make payments… apps such as Spotify aren’t currently invited to the Siri party, but we’d expect Apple to open its voice assistant up further in the not-too-distant future.

Don’t expect Siri support to appear in everything overnight: the developers need to add it to their apps, but the list of imminently-compatible apps includes a whole host of exercise apps such as Fitso, mySwim Pro, RunGo, Seven, Slopes, Streaks, Zones, Zova and the forthcoming Ace Tennis.

Other apps with Siri support include the aforementioned WhatsApp and Lyft in the US.

Beoplay

Free, requires hardware

This app might be free, but it’s designed to work with some reassuringly expensive hardware: it’s from B&O, makers of high-end speakers and headphones such as the really impressive BeoPlay H4 Bluetooth headphones, and it’s for their hardware and nobody else’s.

If you’re fortunate enough to own the right cans or speakers then there’s lots here to like: good design and usability, really easy wireless pairing, the ability to link two identical speakers in stereo or ambient modes and audio presets for different kinds of content or listening environments.

One of the great features of this phone-based control, though, is what B&O calls Tonetouch, which uses your phone’s touchscreen to control the overall sound and make it warmer or brighter, more relaxed or more exciting, and to customize it according to the particular device you’re listening to.

That control isn’t available on the Beoplay Watch app, but you can access your saved Tonetouch presets from it.

The app works with the BeoPlay A1, A2, S3, H5, H7, H8, H9, M5 and Beolit 15, although you may need to update the software before they’ll play nicely with it. Where appropriate the app will also provide access to headphone settings such as noise cancellation and battery status.

Drafts

$5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99

On the face of it, and by face we mean Apple Watch face, Drafts doesn’t seem to offer much for six quidbucks: it enables you to dictate text and save it for later. But it turns out that it does an awful lot…it just does it in a really simple way.

On the iPhone, Drafts is designed to make it easy to capture ideas, thoughts, to-dos or anything else.

It has an email-style interface for easy navigation and it enables you to send your Drafts to a whole bunch of other apps and services: email, message, apps in your Share sheet, social media and so on.

It supports Markdown for easy formatting, and it hooks into the iMessage app to provide stored “snippets” of text and/or emoji for instant replies.

Bringing Drafts to the Watch makes it even faster. Tap on the microphone icon to capture and it does just that – but it also enables you to add to existing drafts using either your voice or the Scribble input, which means it’s brilliant for those moments when you think of something really clever to write or something you’d missed from your to-do list. It’s the kind of app you’ll quickly learn to love.

Strava

Free / in-app purchases

Strava is one of the most popular running and cycling apps around, but it’s always required you to have your phone or a non-Apple smartwatch to track your travels and record your vital statistics. Not anymore.

If you have an Apple Watch 2, the Strava Apple Watch app can use its GPS to record your run without requiring you to strap a phone to anything. The interface isn’t as pretty as the iPhone app’s interface, but when you’re running or cycling that doesn’t matter: the information you need is presented cleanly enough and the app is simple and straightforward to use.

The main app is free and offers essential features including distance, pace, speed, elevation and burned calories, and there’s a premium service for $5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99 per month or $59.99/£54.99/AU$89.99 per year that offers more detailed post-exercise analysis, live performance feedback and personalized coaching – although not through the Watch.

However, if you’re someone who uses the premium features like Beacon on the main app, you might not find Strava on the Apple Watch to your liking compared to using it on the phone.

Hours

Free / in-app purchases

Many of us need to track the time we spend on specific tasks, but the team behind Hours rightly point out the three big pitfalls of time tracking: we forget to start tracking in the first place, forget to stop when we change tasks, or just forget to stop the timer(s) altogether. Hours hopes to address that by making it really, really easy to start and stop and switch.

The iPhone app is a very beautiful thing, with a visual timeline that makes it easy to see what you’ve been up to. The Watch interface is much simpler, but just as effective: you can see the list of tasks with a timer icon for each, and if you tap on a task you can add a verbal note as well as starting or stopping the timer.

There’s a Complication for instant access, and the app will prompt you from time to time to see if you want to keep the selected timer running.

The standard version is free and ideal for self-employed or freelance types, but the $7.99/£5.99/AU$12.99 upgrade to Pro adds multi-device synchronization, web access, reporting and data visualizations, team creation and management, and online backup, which means it’s a great team tool too.

Spark

Free

There’s no shortage of apps promising to make email fun again, and Spark is one of our favorites: on our Mac and on our iPhone it does a superb job of showing us what we want and hiding what we don’t.

The Apple Watch app is as well thought-out as its siblings, with the ability to use Messages-style quick replies as well as emoji and dictation. It’s quite possible to reply to most everyday emails without reaching for your iPhone, although the option to Handoff is there if a message is too long to bother scrolling through on your wrist.

The main selling point for Spark is its Smart Inbox, which groups messages from multiple accounts into personal, notification and newsletter categories. It then displays how many unread messages you have for each category in the Watch app’s home screen.

You can pin messages for quick access, and you can snooze them to hide them for a specified period of time. We find ourselves using that last one a lot: messages we can’t process properly on our wrists are quickly snoozed so they’ll resurface when we’re back at our Macs. If you have to handle a lot of email Spark is a massive time saver.

MultiTimer

Free

Your Watch has a pretty good stopwatch app, but what happens when you need to time several things that happen at the same time?

Workouts involving high intensity training are the most obvious application, but you might need to time a marinade here, a slow cook there, a bit of boiling over there and some roasting over there, or time a presentation, test, exercise or video recording.

Whatever the scenario, MultiTimer can handle it without getting complicated, erring firmly on the side of simplicity.

With MultiTimer you can run multiple timers simultaneously, getting reminders when it’s time to do something, and the period can be from seconds to 100 hours, which should be enough for most situations. The app runs continuously in the background and takes up hardly any system resources: it’s just 20MB in size.

The main app displays multiple timers at once and has a Today widget for easy access, but the Watch version takes a more streamlined approach: timers appear in list format, and you tap on the list item to see the timer for it.

Hailo

Free

If you aren’t already familiar with Hailo, it’s a high-tech way to hail a taxi cab. It started in the UK but it’s also available in Ireland, Spain and Singapore, although if you’re in the US you’re out of luck for the time being. For US readers we’d recommend the Uber app, which uses the Watch’s maps to great effect.

In some respects Hailo is the anti-Uber, because it’s designed to put you in touch with taxi drivers rather than self-employed Uber contractors. If you’re in one of the countries that Hailo covers, it’s beautifully simple and feels suitably Dick Tracy-esque: when you want a taxi, you just tap on your location and then tap on the big yellow button to call a cab.

It allows you to pay from the app too, and there’s no need to work out a tip (if you want to leave one): the Watch app can calculate the right amount for you. While you wait for the cab to arrive, you’ll see its ETA in real time.

It’s a good example of developers keeping the Watch features to the absolute minimum: you get everything you need without unnecessary bells and whistles.

Overcast

Free + IAP

If you love to listen to podcasts and you don’t already have Overcast, you’re in for a nice surprise: it’s a superb app, and its Watch integration is particularly well thought out.

In addition to the usual controls and lists of shows and episodes, it gives you quick access to two really useful features: Smart Speed, which can make the podcast play more quickly without turning into Alvin and the Chipmunks; and Voice Boost, which can make indistinct speech noticeably clearer and compensate for podcasters who can’t pick a single spot in front of the mic.

If you’ve ever strained to hear something only for the host to move closer to the mic and nearly blow your eardrums out, you should be rushing to the App Store already

Overcast is free, or $9.99/£8.99/AU$12.99 without the ads. We’d recommend going for the ad-free version, because while the advertising isn’t too invasive this is an app that’s been put together by people who really care about the end user experience, and paying for the full app is a great way to ensure that they’ll keep on caring.

$3.99/£3.49/AU$5.99 monthly subscription

A reliable and secure password manager is a must-have in these days of security breaches and hacks, and 1Password is one of the best. And it turns out that it’s also one of the best password managers you can use on your Apple Watch.

Our favorite apps don’t just port entire iPhone apps across. They think about what you’re actually likely to need on your wrist, and do that instead. In the case of 1Password that means you choose the pieces of information you want available on your Watch, so for example you might want details of a few logins, one credit card and a couple of notes, or perhaps the PIN codes for everyday locks.

If you’ve ever frantically scrolled through an iPhone app or contacts list to try and find the PIN for a bank card you don’t use very often, the appeal should be obvious.

Where 1Password gets particularly clever is in its support for team and family accounts, so you can share sets of information with everybody who needs it. And if a site you use has been compromised, 1Password will alert you to change your password. It’s great stuff, and comes with a glowing recommendation from Apple.

$2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49

Sometimes it’s hard to remember everything, especially when you’re traveling. What level did you park the car on? What’s the hotel room number? What did you change the combination on your locker to this time? Say hello to Cheatsheet, which is designed to remember the things you probably won’t.

It’s important to stress that Cheatsheet is not a secure app: it’s not designed to store any sensitive information. What it does instead is make it really easy to jot down all the little bits of information you might need during the day, from registration plates to flight numbers, bus routes, clothes sizes and bike lock codes.

It has 160 icons you can use to label each bit of information for easier identification, and you can add, edit and delete bits of information without having to open the phone. If you wish, you can use a Complication that shows your top memory-refreshing nugget of information right on the Watch face.

The main app is offered free, but if you want to use it on your Apple Watch you’ll need the Unlock Everything in-app purchase, which is currently $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49. If you’re constantly juggling, looking for or misplacing Post-It notes and scribbled-on scraps of paper, this app might just change your life.

Free

You know you’re living in interesting times when one of the best apps for an Apple device comes from Microsoft. But Translator is superb.

We refer to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy in another entry, and Microsoft Translator is the closest we’ve come to its Babel Fish – a fish you stuck in your ear to translate the universe’s many languages.

Translator sits on your wrist rather than in your ear canal, but it does much the same thing. Speak into your watch and you’ll see the translation, and it remembers recent translations on Watch or phone so you can find them again easily. You can also pin translations for instant access to essential words or phrases.

It gets even better if you use it on your phone, because it can translate in real time as you message somebody. You’ll see your typing with the translation in the same bubble, and it can even handle simplified Chinese and Arabic script.

The amount of thought that’s gone into Translator is obvious. Want to translate a sign? Point your camera at it. Want to have a conversation in a language you don’t speak? The phone display splits with your words facing you and the translation facing them.

Free

If you don’t have a dedicated fitness tracker but fancy being able to track your sleep patterns, Sleep++ can help. It turns your Watch into a sleep monitor, using its motion detection to track your twists and turns as you have that cheese-fueled nightmare again.

Using it is simple: tell the app when you’re going to bed, tell it when you wake up in the morning – and the resultant reports can be eye-opening.

Your sleep is broken into blocks according to quality and movement, so you can see whether you’re restless at particular times.

There is a downside to all of this, and that’s the Watch itself: you can only track your sleep if you keep the Watch on, and clearly you can’t do that and charge it at the same time. That’s a particular issue for the first-generation Apple Watch, which doesn’t have a brilliant battery life – and the newer Apple Watch 2 isn’t a whole lot better.

We found that the answer was to pop the Watch on charge while we breakfasted and showered, but sometimes that didn’t give us enough juice for a full day’s wear.

If your Watch usage means you already struggle to make it through the day before running out of juice then you might want to skip Sleep++, but if you’ve got battery life to spare it’s a fascinating insight into what happens when you’re asleep.

$3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99

We like to personalize our technology: we can’t be the only ones who’ve caught ourselves saying “thanks” to Siri. But while digital assistants can be sassy if you ask them the right questions, apps tend to be rather less interesting.

Except for CARROT Weather, which often appears to be channeling Marvin the Paranoid Android from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

CARROT uses the same weather data as the fantastic Dark Sky app, but presents it rather differently: a typical update might say “It’s a beautiful, sunny day!” and then add “Ha ha, just kidding. It’s raining.”

You’ll either find this highly amusing or intensely annoying. We think it’s funny: who can resist an app that urges you to ��bask in the glorious warmth of the partly-obscured sun”?

CARROT doesn’t just have personality, though. It also has radar and satellite weather maps, a time machine with up to 70 years of historical weather data to look at, and forecasts for right now, the next 24 hours and the next 7 days.

The basic app costs $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99, but to unlock some of the Watch features you’ll need an annual Premium subscription, which is currently $2.49/£2.29/AU$3.49. This unlocks the half-hourly updates and the option to customize the Watch complications.

$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99

One of the most useful things about the Apple Watch is that it enables you to do things without having to take your phone out of your pocket or bag. Just Press Record brings that handiness to voice recording, enabling you to capture bright ideas, rambling monologues or memos when you’re out and about.

The interface is just a big red button with a picture of a microphone on it, and as you might expect you tap it to start recording. The phone app can transcribe your recording to turn it into text – which means your recordings become searchable by keyword – and it recognises formatting commands such as “new paragraph” and “comma”.

To use it is to feel like you’re living in the future: we remember when dictation and transcription required a powerful PC and endless patience, and now you get much better results with a watch. Isn’t technology brilliant?

In addition to its recording and transcription features, the app syncs automatically via iCloud, so you can access it on all your devices – including macOS, for which there’s a separate app – and it uses the Watch’s own local storage so that you can record even if your phone isn’t currently connected.

Free

The best apps are those which the developers have thought: “what watch-based features would actually be worthwhile?” and TripAdvisor definitely falls into that category: while the iPhone app is a veritable feast of information about absolutely everywhere, the watch app is much more focused.

To take a typical example, imagine you’re hungry. Tap on the app, tap restaurants, and the first thing you’ll see is a list of restaurants within 1km of your current location.

The key data is right there: the star rating, its rank in the local area, and what kind of food it does, so you can see immediately if the place offering easy cuisine is more likely to serve salmonella than smoked salmon.

Tap on the listing and you get a map, individual reviews and a photo gallery from users, not the establishment itself. There’s also a Save button, so if you like it you can add it to your favorite places.

When we say it’s focused we mean it: other than restaurants, the only options are Things To Do and Hotels. TripAdvisor clearly thinks that if you want to use other features, like damning a diner or praising a pie shop, you’ll do that in the iPhone app. And it’s right.

$2.99/£2.29/AU$4.49

Getting Fantastical 2 up and running on your watch can be time consuming, but it’s worth it: one of the very best iPhone calendar apps around develops even more powers when you add its app to your watch.

You can also add it as a complication, which means you’ll see details of your schedule right there in the watch face.

To actually make it work you’ll need to install Fantastical to your watch and then open the iPhone app, not the Apple Watch one. This is where you specify what information should be sent to the watch, and the options are extensive.

You can choose from events, calendars, reminders and lists, include a map of the event location, show end times and specify how reminders should appear, and you can even specify what should happen if you tap on the Fantastical 2 complication on your watch face.

It’s that kind of thought and attention to detail that makes us love the app so much.

The best thing about Fantastical 2, though, is that it understands you. Force Touch the app, tap on Add Event and Siri starts listening.

It knows what you mean by “lunch with Dave”, automatically putting the appointment at 12 noon, and it knows that if you say “to-do get dinner on the way home” you’re adding an item to a to-do list. Siri’s voice recognition performs brilliantly when it’s limited to such a specific set of instructions.

Free

eBay’s a strange old thing these days. What started off as a haven for Pez collectors is full of high street retailers and no-name knock-off factories, professional power sellers and the usual bunch of con artists.

Browsing all of that on a watch would be absolutely horrible, which is why the eBay app doesn’t do that.

What it does do is concentrate on the ways an Apple Watch app can actually be useful in online auctioning. It pings you when an item in your Watch List – as in items you’re watching, not a list on your watch – is coming to a close, it pings if you’re outbid while an auction progresses, and it lets you know when your auction purchases are en-route.

It’s particularly great for those occasions when you don’t want to miss out on a great bargain but you can’t bring out your phone, such as when you’re attending the birth of your child, defusing a fiendishly complicated bomb or hiding from a jealous husband or wife.

Being able to stick your watch into silent mode and surreptitiously update your auctions is an absolute godsend in any situation where poking at your phone would be considered rude.

$3.99/£2.99

Dark Sky is the first app we put on any new Apple device, and the Apple Watch is no exception. In fact, we think Dark Sky is at its most useful when you’re wearing it on your wrist.

What Dark Sky does seems very simple, but is actually very clever. It tells you what the weather’s going to do – not in a vague sense, but as in telling you that it’s going to bucket down in ten minutes and that the storm won’t stop for an hour.

That means it’s the perfect app for anybody who’s thinking about going outside for any reason, or who’s already outside and really ought to be getting inside in a big hurry.

In more dramatic climates it alerts of dangerous weather such as storms, and you can set it to notify you of specific kinds of weather that you select in the companion iPhone app.

We use it to decide if now is a good time to walk the dog, if it’s time to get the kids back to the car or if we really shouldn’t be going out dressed like that; you might use it when you’re hiking or biking, or doing any other activity that could be affected by changes in the weather.

If you used Dark Sky in the early days of the Apple Watch and found it painfully slow and unresponsive, give it another go: the current version runs on the watch, not on the phone, and the difference in performance really is dramatic.

Free

You’ve probably noticed something of a trend in our favorite apps: they tend to approach their mission by asking what useful things the watch can do rather than trying to cram an entire phone app into that tiny screen, irrespective of whether that’s sane or useful. Yelp is a great example of an app that gets it right.

When you open it you’ll see just four icons: Restaurants, Bars, Coffee & Tea, and Hot & New. Tapping on the one you’re interested in then shows you a list sorted by distance, with the all-important star ratings and average cost listed on top of a photograph. Tap again and you’ll get the opening hours and a map, and of course you can read the reviews too – that’s what Yelp is all about.

It’s particularly good for the kind of venues and experiences popular among bright young things in big cities, (the most committed Yelpers), but the database is truly enormous and doesn’t turn into tumbleweed whenever you venture into the countryside. Yelp’s app is very good for finding places in unfamiliar towns, or unfamiliar places in towns you know very well.

Free

“Wouldn’t it be great if you could read an entire newspaper on a screen the size of a postage stamp?” said no-one, ever. That hasn’t stopped people from trying, often with terrible results. So all credit to The Guardian, which has taken a completely different approach that actually works. It’s a news app, but rather than tell you everything it only tells you a little bit.

Rather than deliver a newspaper, The Guardian’s watch app only wants to do one thing: to show you something interesting every time you look at it. In practice that means the app is looking at your preferences in the larger iPhone app and showing you one story that it thinks you’ll be interested in.

You’ll see a headline, a small photo and a synopsis, and you can either Force Touch to save the item to your reading list, or use Handoff to open the full item on your phone.

Trust us, it’s a lot more useful than it sounds. Provided you’ve personalized the main app, the one-shot suggestions do generally fall into the “hmm, that’s interesting” category, and we think it’s a much better approach than some other apps that give you half a headline for a whole bunch of stories.

Free

Some people bought their Apple Watch to track their fitness. Others, like us, hoped we’d be able to control every appliance by shouting at it. That dream hasn’t quite been achieved yet, but in the meantime we can command our Philips Hue lights with the power of Siri, or access pre-installed lighting effects with the tap of the wrist.

Hue is Philips’ HomeKit-compatible bulb system, enabling you to create light recipes that you can save for easy access. It’s based around a hub that connects to your wireless router, allowing control via phone, tablet or watch.

If you plump for the colored bulbs or colored lightstrips you can mix and match the colors and brightness by mood or activity, so you might have warm whites for reading, soft pastels for dining and something spookier for watching horror films.

The Watch bit of the app isn’t the most straightforward to set up – once installed you need to create its widgets using the Hue app on your phone – but once you’ve done that you can then tap on the appropriate icon to call up its settings.

And because the Hue setup is HomeKit compatible, it also integrates with Siri. The novelty of asking Siri to turn the lights on or off or to call up a particular ‘light scene’ never really wears off.

Free

Foursquare’s mission has changed somewhat over the years: what started off based around location check-ins and “king of the castle” bragging had to change when Facebook promptly copied the idea.

Robbed of its raison d’être, these days Foursquare has separated the check-ins from the venue recommendations. Foursquare City Guide’s job is to find decent bars and restaurants wherever you are in the world (if you still want to be the mayor of wherever, that’s the companion app, Foursquare Swarm).

The main interface of City Guide has five tappable areas: Search, Favorites, Food, Coffee and Nightlife.

Tapping on the appropriate option takes you to a list of venues, but instead of just filtering by distance the app also filters by Foursquare user ratings – so a rating of 9.5 that’s 500m away will appear below a 9.7 that’s 100m further.

The list gives you the name, price bracket, average rating and distance for each venue, and if you tap on a venue you’ll see reviews, photos, maps and other key information. The big selling point here is Foursquare’s global reach: it’s a really good app for travellers who don’t want to spend their time in the hotel bar or eating in faceless chain restaurants.

Free / £2.99 to remove adverts

What makes a good watch app? We think it’s one that tells you exactly what you need to know, when you need to know it, without fuss or fluster.

And that’s what UK Bus Checker does. From the no-nonsense name onwards, it’s a fine example of a focused app – and it’s so good we’re adding in here even though it’s only of use to Brits.

Open up the apps and you’ll be staring at four icons and your location, with Favorites showing your saved stops, Nearby the stops around you, Journeys enabling you to plan a trip, and Get Home finding the best way to get you there from here.

We use the Favorites one a lot, because it offers real-time data so you know if the number 60A is running late again or if you’ll need to sprint to the bus stop. It includes mapping and points of interest too, so you can use it to find a coffee shop when you’re on foot.

The only real downside to UK Bus Checker is that it’s only as good as the data supplied to it, and unfortunately if – like us – you live in an area where the buses are operated by the devil himself and driven by his henchmen, that data isn’t always accurate.

But you can say the same about the signs on the bus shelters – that’s the bus company’s fault, not the technology.

Free

Do your colleagues do much thinking outside the box? Do they talk about “going forward” with projects or “surfacing” information? Is the oldest person in the building still in their mid-30s? Then you’re probably all too aware of Slack, the corporate communications system that’s replaced email and instant messaging for more than a 1.7 million daily users.

We’re kidding, but only a little bit: Slack has become the go-to communication platform for tech and media businesses and start-ups. The iOS app provides a fully-featured Slack experience with file sharing, social media integration and powerful search and archiving features, while the Apple Watch app doesn’t.

That’s entirely deliberate, because if your Watch app tried to cover all the different interactions in a typical Slack team it’d be pinging away so often your Watch would run out of power before your second cup of coffee (and do be careful – Slack on the wrist does munch the battery of your smartwatch in our tests).

What the developers have done instead is focus on what you want a watch to do, which is to notify you only of the things you really need to know about. That means the same push notifications you’ve set for your iPhone, direct messaging and incorporating Handoff so you can move from watch to iOS without losing your train of thought.

$9.99/£7.99/AU$14.99

If you aren’t already familiar with Tweetbot 4, it’s the best Mac and iOS Twitter client bar none. This is why it can charge $9.99/£7.99/AU$14.99 for an iOS app and people gladly pay it, and it’s worth checking out on the Apple Watch too.

Tweetbot doesn’t unleash the Twitter firehose onto your wrist – we can’t think of anything guaranteed to kill your battery more quickly – but it does give you exactly the information you need when you aren’t looking at your phone.

The developers have rightly assumed that if you have your phone to hand you won’t be using the watch instead, so they’ve concentrated on making an app for when you can’t or don’t want to pull your phone out of your pocket or purse. And that’s clever.

Its Activity pane shows you what’s happening in your feed, so if somebody’s followed you or replied to you or tweeted you then you’ll see it in Activity. Tapping on the item opens the appropriate tweet or user page, and with tweets you’ll see icons for a quick reply, a retweet or a like.

If you push into the screen using Force Touch you get an offer to create a new tweet, and both it and the reply option use Siri for dictation, because on-watch typing would be frankly horrible – and you can dictate a direct message or follow/unfollow accounts from the app too.

Free

If you’ve tried Twitter or Facebook on the Apple Watch you may well think that social networking doesn’t really work on such a small device, but Instagram begs to differ. The Facebook-owned photo sharing service concentrates on the basics and does them very well.

Like most Watch versions of iPhone/iPad apps the Instagram app is limited compared to its bigger sibling; for example you can’t use it to take photos with your phone camera and upload them from the Watch, with snapping and uploading remaining a job for your iPhone.

What the app does do is show a shortened version of your Instagram feed, offering the most recent posts from people you’ve chosen to receive notifications about. (You can change that list in the iPhone app).

Instagram works surprisingly well on your wrist. You can swipe through photos to view or like them, see recent comments and likes on your own photos, and send emoji replies to people’s posts.

It’s great for a bit of time-wasting when you’re out and about, and it’s compatible with Handoff so you can effortlessly switch from Watch to iPhone when you want to use a feature the Watch app doesn’t have.

$9.99/£7.99/AU$14.99

The apps we tend to love the most are the ones that solve real-world problems, and PCalc falls into that category. Yes, it’s a fantastically useful calculator and scientific calculator, but much more importantly it prevents fisticuffs in restaurants.

That’s because of its handy bill splitter. Simply tell it how much the bill comes to, how many people are paying and how big a tip you want to leave, and the Watch app calculates how much each person should hand over. It supports watchOS 3’s Scribble feature too, so you don’t need to dictate or tap on a tiny keypad if you’ve downed that second bottle of wine. Alternatively you can use the Digital Crown to enter the figure in the tip calculator.

That’s not all the Watch app can do, though. It includes a converter for distances and other measurements, and if you Force Touch the app you’ll see a Send To iPhone icon as well as the clear and undo buttons.

And on the iPhone the main app is a great tool for serious calculating (and quick sums: there’s a mini-calculator if you Force Touch the app icon). It’s not the cheapest calculator app, but it’s worth the money.

$2.99/£2.49/AU$4.99

One of the Apple Watch’s most impressive features is the remote camera option, which enables you to use the Watch’s display as a viewfinder and shutter button for your iPhone.

It’s as useful for looking in awkward places as it is for snapping selfies, but that usefulness only applies if you stick with the default Camera app – or if you use a Camera replacement such as ProCamera, which has its own remote shutter app for the Apple Watch.

The ProCamera Watch app offers more options than the standard Apple one, with easy selection of photo, lowlight mode, HDR or video and the option to set a timer too. But the real draw here is the main iPhone app, which offers a range of image formats, RAW and UHD shooting, filters and effects and easy social media sharing.

Some of its best features require in-app purchases – Lowlight Plus and vividHDR are $2.99/£2.49/AU$4.99 each – but that’s still not much when you consider the kind of money you’d spend on real camera kit.

The app has just been updated for the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus too, with a clever option to switch between the iPhone 7 Plus’s two lenses and Wide Color Capture on both models.

Free or $6.99/£4.99/AU$10.99 for ad-free version

Shazam was a genuine gee-whizz app when it debuted on the iPhone, and it’s even more impressive when it’s on your wrist. It does one thing and does it brilliantly: it listens to the music around you and lets you know what it is.

Its recognition algorithms are superb, and having it on your Watch means you can probably win pop quizzes without getting caught. Not that we’d recommend such behaviour, of course.

The experience on the Watch is very well thought out: instead of staring at a progress icon while the song is being recognised, you simply tap the app and then drop your wrist. It’ll then notify you when the song has been identified, at which point you can raise your wrist, see the song and then tap on the lyrics if you want to know the words too. The lyrics even scroll along with the music.

The Watch app uses Handoff, so you can pick up the iPhone to see more about the track, watch videos or buy the download, plus the iOS app also boasts Rdio and Spotify integration and artist recommendations. Jfriel1995scotland reckons it’s “lol best free app ever”, and he or she might have a point.

Now Watch users have a choice of transport apps on their Watch. The built-in Maps app from Apple is still the most versatile thanks to excellent maps, directions and now public transport options in some cities like London. But Google’s answer is straightforward and attractive.

Google Maps gives directions (though not maps) for two destinations, home and work, but will also show routes recently followed on your phone. A Force Press on the Watch screen lets you switch between walking, driving and public transport modes.

The cycle routing that the phone app offers isn’t here, perhaps because you shouldn’t be taking your hand off the handlebars to read your Watch screen as you ride.

You may have missed the built-in Camera Remote feature since the Apple Watch doesn’t have a camera, but you should use it to your advantage every time you take an awkwardly framed photo. It let’s your frame a shot remotely with your Apple Watch by seeing a preview of what’s in the phone viewfinder via the Watch screen.

It also has a shutter button and initiates a countdown. It works with both the front and back cameras and is free. Use this tool wisely to achieve less awkward selfies at a distance.

I sometimes wear my messy Chipotle burritos while scarfing down the healthy-ish Mexican platters, but I’m also purposely wearing Chipotle on my wrist to send order to the store via my Apple Watch.

While it’s not the most groundbreak app, I can create a one-tap order with the Chipotle Apple Watch app and have my meal ready to go while I’m on the treadmill at the gym next door. It’s as efficient as it is calorie rich. The best part is, I get the skip the always massive line.

Facebook Messenger on Apple Watch got a late start, but it finally lets you respond to those pressing messages to friends and family without opening up the sioled-off app on your phone or website on a computer.

You can initiate and reply with a thumbs up (which I see as kind of curt and rude) or dictate a reply. Sending Facebook’s ugly smiley face or your current location can be done with the press of one or two taps too. No, there’s still no WhatsApps for Apple Watch, but this is the next best thing from Facebook.

Calling an Uber isn’t too difficult, unless of course your hands are full or running down last-second tasks. That’s me right before I leave for a flight.

Often times, I’m packing my suitcase with last second gadgets and taking out the trash so it doesn’t take on another lifeform by sitting there for a week. The Apple Watch makes it easier to hail the 21st century taxi.

The Uber Apple Watch app is not only simple to use, it lets you see vital information, like the time the driver will take to get there and the car he or she drives, complete with a picture (when they have one).

Like Citymapper, ETA will help you get somewhere. The title refers to its front-and-centre information. You add a location on the iPhone and save it. Then it’ll give you timings for driving, walking or taking public transport.

Some watch faces allow it as a complication, where it’ll show the time it’ll take to your top saved route. It knows what traffic is like so allows extra time for a drive in rush hour, say. On the Watch app you tap the chosen saved destination and it’ll take you through to Maps for directions.

Similarly, for public transport directions in select cities Maps will provide the directions. Like Dark Sky this is a paid-for app: £2.29/$2.99.

From a team of developers, psychologists and neuroscientists, Peak is a great app for keeping your brain active. The Watch version offers three games, ideal for the smaller screen. Some of these seem simple at first, but they quickly become more challenging.

There are workouts to test memory, focus and problem solving – all of them fun, engaging, and the ideal to while away the daily commute.

Currency converters abound on the iPhone and XE Currency is one of the best. While the Watch version doesn’t have the calculator feature found on the phone, it’s a clear chart of how many euros, Argentine pesos or Australian dollars a British pound buys.

You can add more currencies on the phone version – whatever’s there is replicated on the Watch. A button at the base of the screen lets the iPhone app control the refresh rates, so you can avoid roaming charges.

Headspace is a meditation app with lessons as short as two minutes or as long as an hour. It’s free to learn the basics in 10 beginner sessions, then £9.99 if you want to go further, with sessions divided into packs titled Creativity, Focus or Happiness.

It’s a great app, and becomes increasingly rewarding thanks to its down-to-earth approach and decent design.

On the Watch there’s only one function, but it’s a neat one. Opening the app reveals the SOS button. If you’re feeling stressed, tap this and it plays a two-minute session designed to help with what Headspace calls “meltdown moments.”

This powerful translation app works in 90 languages. It’s free but for full Watch use you’ll need the £3.99/$4.99 in-app purchase which offers voice recognition and unlimited translations.

A Watch complication means you can tap on the screen to start translating straight away and if you’ll let it, iTranslate will use your location to figure out what language it should be translating to or from.

It also responds to Time Travel so by winding the Digital Crown you can see phrases which change such as “Good afternoon” which is replaced by “Good evening” as you scroll forward.

This is the app that aims to give you up-to-date information on upcoming flights. Set up your App in the Air account, enter the flight dates on your iPhone (or your booking reference, though this feature is still in beta) and in the Glances screen on your Watch it’ll show the flight number and time until check-in closes.

Tap through to the app itself and there are more details, including gate number when known.

There’s also a packing list to remind you to check travel insurance and roaming settings on your phone. Added features include gate change and status updates which can be sent by SMS to avoid data charges overseas. That’s £3.99/$4.99 for five flights. Boarding time, departure and gate can be displayed as a complication on the Watch face.

If you use the Boris Bikes, as London’s Santander Cycles bike hire scheme is affectionately called, this is handy. Since Transport for London releases bike and dock data every three minutes, apps are the best way to check availability. And unlike the official app, Cycle Hire has Watch compatibility.

In the Watch’s Glances screen it shows you how many bikes and spaces are available nearby. Then with a tap it’ll reveal more detail either on a map or in list form. The iPhone app offers expanded features such as routes and reminders to return your bike when the 30-minute free hire period is running out.

This is a comprehensive London Tube app, with a journey planner, live departure boards and more. On the Watch, London Tube Tracker shows details for stations you’ve picked as favourites on the iPhone, down to what trains will be arriving when. Meanwhile, on the Glances screen it’ll tell you how long it is until your next or last train home and how long that journey should take.

The cool live Tube map, showing trains shuffling round London is restricted to the iPhone version, sadly. Still, the route planning and line statuses on the Watch are useful.

What are the tasks you really want to achieve? Pick six from the hundreds of icons on the iPhone and they’ll appear in the Watch app or the Streaks complication on the Watch face. So whether you want to read more, practise a musical instrument or walk the dog, there are icons you can invoke and reminders it can offer.

You can even choose to brush your teeth as a goal, though, frankly, I’d have thought that was a given. It works with the Health app to nudge you towards fitness goals and the name refers to the fact that you should aim to hit the targets for a streak of consecutive days.

Of course, bigger screens such as phones and, you know, TVs are best for expansive looks at the news, so the Watch’s little face is reserved for headlines and photos with BBC News. These appear in Glances and tapping on one takes you to a very slightly fuller version, and lets you access the other headlines.

You can create a personalised news list on the iPhone and these show up in the Watch app, too. Ideal for snacking on headlines and letting you follow up with the main story elsewhere.

If you’ve been meaning to get that six-pack tummy but just don’t have time to go to the gym, this iPhone app has high-quality videos of avatars performing crunches, situps, stretches and core twists that you can do in your own time on your bedroom floor, say.

Initial workouts with Runtastic are free, more come as in-app purchases. And if squinting at your precariously perched iPhone isn’t doing it for you, the Watch app means you can see an animation on your watch, with vibrations on your wrist to start and end a set. It’s easy to use and works well. Now you’ll have to find another excuse not to work out.

Clear is a beautifully designed to-do list app that uses gestures and colour to make for a really enjoyable experience – though whether that makes you actually do more of what’s on the list is another matter.

Still, confirming you’ve completed a task is satisfying and you can do that on the Watch as well as the iPhone. You can add tasks to the list on the Watch, thanks to Siri, or set reminders for when you need a nudge. Clear is an exceptional app and the Watch app is neatly realised.

There are plenty of seven-minute workout apps (consisting of 12 30-second exercises with 10-second rests in between) but 7 Minute Workout Challenge appeals because it’s comprehensive and well-designed.

The Watch element includes a simple timer or animations to remind you how to know your lunges from your jumping jacks, and you can choose your workout from the selection available. The pause and restart buttons are also useful.

This app makes working out accessible, attainable, and (importantly) fast.

Organise your life better with Evernote, the brilliant note-taking app which saves photos, text, recipes, bookmarks, voice notes and more. On Apple Watch you can set reminders and check off tasks easily enough.

You can dictate new notes for those brilliant ideas you mustn’t forget just by tapping the Plus button or Force Touching the screen. The Watch app can search existing notes using voice – though this wasn’t as reliable as I’d have liked. Even so, if you’re an Evernote fan it brings an extra level of convenience.

You can use Lark to lose weight or just for general fitness. It mines the information in your iPhone’s Health app to understand how active you’ve been, and you tell it what you’ve eaten in text message conversations. Eat too much bacon and it’ll tell you to find protein elsewhere, for instance.

On the Watch it offers quick pep talks and you can log a meal by dictating what you’ve eaten. Lark can be a bit naggy so won’t suit everyone, but if you like it, the Watch offers simple extra functions that work well.

National Rail Enquiries is a brilliant app that if you’re a regular train user is quickly essential. It’s full of data like live departure boards and notifications if there are service disruptions, all colour-coded (green is on time, red means it’s late).

On the Watch it works in three ways: to show the nearest stations, your favourites (which usually includes your home station) and recent enquiries. A useful adjunct to the great iPhone version.

Check out the Easyjet app on the Glances screens and you’ll see that even if you don’t have a flight booked it’s kind enough to tell you the temperature in Tenerife, Palma or some other warm place!

When you have upcoming bookings, it gives you a countdown to your flight date, and shows you weather for the week ahead at your destination. It even provides you the latest exchange rate.

There’s also flight status info in Glances and more features are arriving, airport by airport to show gate notifications and reminders of when to head from duty-free to the plane.

Practising yoga is easier with clear instructions and guidance, which FitStar Yoga provides alongside high-res video. That’s not on the Watch, though there are useful features for when you’re more familiar with the poses.

You can start and pause sessions and the Watch reminds you what’s up next. And you can let the app know if that last exercise was too hard, just right, or too easy. It integrates with Apple’s Health app so calories burnt are noted in the app.

Information is power and if you’re trying to lose weight, calorie tracking is a good way to stay focused. MyFitnessPal works out a daily calorie allowance based on how much weight you want to shed. Eat a meal and your allowance is spent, take exercise and you earn credit.

The Watch gives you a running total of remaining calories and how that breaks down into protein, carbohydrates and more. It can integrate with your steps total so you don’t have to add those manually. It’s simple but convenient and helpful.

If walking’s your thing, Walkmeter helps track your every step, showing your perambulations on a map and generating detailed graphs. The Watch app has clear data reporting and you can start and stop a walk from your wrist using the Watch’s Force Touch actions.

Apple’s own Workout app does a lot, but this app has more detail and the mapping detail on the iPhone is great. The app is free but for full Watch performance you need to upgrade to the Elite version for £3.99. There’s a lot here, including training plans and announcements as you hit targets or distances.

Withings makes a series of devices to help measure health including bathroom scales and a blood pressure monitor which connect wirelessly to the Withings site or the iPhone to store data.

The Health Mate Watch app shows some of this data including latest weight on the Glances screen plus in the app itself recent changes, BMI and how much of your weight is fat (I know, I know, but it can be important). The iPhone app can be used to track heart rate and count steps, too.

With the right Withings gadgets, this can lead to comprehensive and effective health monitoring.

The British Airways app doesn’t do a great deal until you’re close to travelling, but as soon as you’re within a week of wheels up, everything changes.

The Glance screen shows flight details with departure time and countdown to takeoff with more details in the Watch app itself. There’s also info on the weather at your destination, which obviously becomes more accurate and useful as you get nearer to flight day.

It tells you when to check in and which gate you’re flying from (once that information is available). And of course, once you’ve checked in, Passbook means you can use your Watch as a boarding pass at security and the gate.

The Weather Channel is the world’s most downloaded weather app, apparently. As well as instant weather descriptions for right now and forecasts for the next 15 hours or more, the Watch app shows details of how long until sunset, temperature and cloud cover now.

There’s also the current outlook, wind speed and chance of rain. Most of these details also appear in the app’s Glances screen. Since the arrival of watchOS 2, The Weather Channel is also available as a complication, appearing on some Watch faces as an icon, such as an umbrella when rain is expected. It’s free, or you can remove ads for £2.99/$3.99.

Citymapper is the pre-eminent public transport app, so no wonder it’s an Apple Watch essential. It tells you how to get around selected cities including London, Manchester, Paris, Barcelona and New York.

As well as bus, train and subway times and directions, the Watch app even offers cycling routes and bike hire details such as London’s Boris Bikes. Once you’ve set up the journey on the phone, step-by-step notifications will appear on the Watch screen.

You can start journeys to home or previously saved destinations right from the Watch, and it will even help you find your way to nearby bus stops and train stations. Brilliant, just brilliant.

Dave Phelan also contributed to this feature

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rekomande · 6 years ago

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NO TOUCHSCREEN, NO FINGERPRINTS TO WIPE OFF!

SIMPLICITY AND EASE OF USE

Your frame is really easy to use and has an intuitive interface for easier navigation even when you have thousands of photos stored on it. It allows you to organize your pictures so you can display only your external web albums, only your local albums, or a ‘Play All’ feature, which groups all your photos in the same slide show. As soon as photos are added to your frame, they are automatically resized into a 800 x 600 format to fit perfectly in the 10.4-inch high quality display. The LCD screen will present your best shots in a 4:3 aspect ratio and photos will be rotated to their proper orientation automatically.

FREE AND EASY REMOTE MANAGEMENT FROM THE WEB + MANAGE UP TO 25 FRAMES FROM 1 ACCOUNT!

ADD, DELETE albums or pictures

CUSTOMIZE your slideshows

MANAGE your contacts and security parameters

CONFIGURE your frame’s parameters

Same for web albums, when you create a Pix-Star web album or link one of your Facebook, Google + or other online albums inside the multi-frame account they get automatically to each frame account.

ACCESS YOUR PICTURES FROM THE LARGEST SELECTION OF ONLINE PICTURE STORAGE PROVIDERS!

Moreover, your Pix-Star frame updates these albums automatically 3 to 4 times per day to automatically detect when you ADD or REMOVE pictures from the provider’s website.

Pix-Star syncs with more online albums than any other frame!

UPnP – DLNA SUPPORT ALLOWS EASY ACCESS TO PICTURES STORED ON YOUR LOCAL COMPUTER AND LOCAL NETWORKS!

Pix-Star has always been about accessing pictures wirelessly from different sources.

MORE THAN A PHOTO FRAME, A COMPANION OF YOUR DAILY LIFE!

PLAY WEB RADIO STATIONS AND LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC!

WEATHER FORECASTS

GAMES FOR THE BRAIN

ALERTS AND REMINDERS

PLAY SLIDESHOWS YOUR WAY!

At Pix-Star we believe that watching pictures should be a delight. That’s why we offer you the ability to customize your slideshows in many ways.

Through your online personal account, you have the ability to create slideshows with the pictures of your choice – even if they come from different sources.

Here some parameters you can customize to “slideshow you way”:

Play Mode

Normal mode

Repeat recent pictures (this mode populates the photo list in order to play the latest pictures more frequently) of the last day, 2 days, 3 days, week or month.

Only latest pictures (this mode will display only the latest available pictures) of the last day, 2 days, 3 days, week or month.

Transitions

Horizontal Sliding, Vertical Sliding, Rotations, Zoom in, Flip, Fading, Ken Burns Effect, Boomerang, Wheel Clockwise, Wedge, Multi 1, Multi 2.

Display Mode

Normal mode (show one picture at a time, keeping the picture’s size ratio)

Collage 4 pictures (display a collage formed by 4 pictures)

Collage 5 pictures (display a collage formed by 5 pictures)

Smart Fill (auto fill the screen, stretching the picture if necessary, only when the picture ratio is close to 4:3 to avoid too much distortion.

Sorting Mode

Alphabetical mode

Newest first

Oldest first

Random

Intervals (between each pictures)

2 seconds, 3 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours or 12 hours

POWER CONSUMPTION

With a power consumption of less than 7W. With the AUTO POWER ON/OFF feature (auto sleep mode) you don’t have to unplug your frame before going to sleep or worry about wasting energy. From the frame’s settings you can schedule the times when your frame will automatically turn on and off. Emails will still be received even when your frame is off for the night or weekend.

PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

Display size (diagonal): 10.4 inches – 26 cm Display type/backlight: LCD/LED Display brightness/contrast: 300 cd/m2 (500:1) Dimensions (mm): 268x196x27 Display area (mm): 211×158 Display resolution (pixels): 800×600 Aspect ratio: 4:3 Image file format: JPEG, JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF (including animated GIF) Memory: 4 GB Card support: SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC USB port

PACKAGE CONTENTS

Pix-Star Digital Photo Frame Remote Control AC Power Cord (worldwide compatible, input voltage from 100V up to 240 V) Quick Start Guide User Manual

10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards.Display size (diagonal): 15 inches(38.1 cm) 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards.Display size (diagonal): 15 inches(38.1 cm) Receive pictures directly on your Pix-Star frame from the Internet with its dedicated email address at NO EXTRA CHARGE 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards.Display size (diagonal): 15 inches(38.1 cm) 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards.Display size (diagonal): 15 inches(38.1 cm) Receive pictures directly on your Pix-Star frame from the Internet with its dedicated email address at NO EXTRA CHARGE Send pictures from your frame to individual or groups of email addresses directly from the frame 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards.Display size (diagonal): 15 inches(38.1 cm) 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards.Display size (diagonal): 15 inches(38.1 cm) Receive pictures directly on your Pix-Star frame from the Internet with its dedicated email address at NO EXTRA CHARGE 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards.Display size (diagonal): 15 inches(38.1 cm) 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards.Display size (diagonal): 15 inches(38.1 cm) Receive pictures directly on your Pix-Star frame from the Internet with its dedicated email address at NO EXTRA CHARGE Send pictures from your frame to individual or groups of email addresses directly from the frame Access more than 20 online providers and view pictures from web albums, including Picasa, Facebook, Flickr, Smugmug, and more and Receive daily updated weather forecasts for a selection of countries and cities

#Recomended Products

0 notes

enterinit · 7 years ago

Text

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16273 for PC

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16273 for PC. A new Insider Preview build is now available for PC, but without new build for Windows Mobile. As always there some new fixes and improvements. Microsoft is now at the point "where our focus is now on stabilization for release to the world." #WindowsInsiders: it's GONG time! We are releasing build 16273 for PC on a fast #flight: https://t.co/B0tHie3Rqm — Dona Sarkar (@donasarkar) August 23, 2017

Try out emoji notifications with My People

Help test My People and emoji notifications on the desktop by adding the new Windows Insider Emoji Bot to your taskbar in My People and ask it to send you some emoji. We added a Quest in the Feedback Hub so you can rate the experience.

Introducing the Bahnschrift font

Our new first OpenType Variable Font Bahnschrift is now included in builds. This new font industry standard enables us to pack an entire typeface family into a single file with infinite variability. No longer are you constrained to simple weights like Light, Regular, and Bold. Now you can have an infinite range of font styles, with smooth interpolation from Light to Bold and beyond. Better still: because a single, efficient variable font can replace several static fonts, variable fonts save a lot of space. To learn more about variable font technology, see the articles in Wired, Designmodo, or Alphabettes.

Bahnschrift is our own rendition of the DIN font standard. Apart from being the standard road sign font in Germany and much of Europe, DIN is frequently used by graphic designers for its high legibility and clean, hard-working design style. Bahnschrift supports a smooth spectrum of weights from Light to Bold, as you can see in the above image. In this image, each letter is a slightly different weight than its neighbors. All these weights are “duplexed” – meaning they do not change in width when you change weight. You can switch from Light to Bold without changing the layout at all.

Windows Shell Improvements

We fixed an issue resulting in Start, Action Center and notification toasts at times having a background that was 100% transparent. We fixed an issue from recent flights where the Action Center icon might show it had some number of notifications but when you opened Action Center no notifications were displayed. We fixed an issue from recent flights where suggested apps were visible in Start despite the related setting being off. For now, if you encounter this please try toggling Settings > Personalization > Start > “Occasionally show suggestions in Start”. We fixed a recent issue where removed placeholder tiles in Start might come back after explorer.exe restarted. We fixed an issue resulting in certain live tiles not updating in the last flight, including the Weather and Money apps. If you were impacted by this you may need to unpin and repin the live tile for it to work again. We fixed an issue from recent flights where typing immediately after opening up the Start menu would sometimes not switch to Cortana, even though if you tapped the Cortana icon Cortana was up and running. We fixed an issue where notification groups in the Action Center couldn’t be dismissed by swiping across the app name. We also fixed a recent issue where notifications in the Action Center couldn’t be dismissed with pen. We’ve fixed some timing issues so that swiping to dismiss a notification toast should feel more reliable now. You can now middle click to dismiss a notification toast! We fixed an issue resulting in no “Safe to Remove Hardware” notification after following the device removal process from the “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media” tray icon We fixed an issue where it wasn’t possible to tab to the quick action area of Action Center if there were no notifications visible. We fixed an issue where the network flyout might become unresponsive when Bluetooth was enabled. We fixed a deadlock resulting in Start, the network flyout, and other Shell UI elements becoming unresponsive after tethering certain Android phones. We fixed an issue that could potentially result in Start not launching after installing a 3rd party IME. We fixed an issue where if you started dragging a tile on Start just as the flip animation started in the tile, it could result in the tile becoming invisible under your finger until you released it. We fixed an issue where right clicking on an image file in File Explorer would show “Next desktop background” instead of “Set as desktop background” in recent flights. We fixed an issue where desktop icons sometimes couldn’t be drag-and-dropped to certain places on the desktop, even though the desired spot appeared to align to the same grid as the other icons already in place. We fixed an issue where desktop icons could become unexpectedly spaced out when logging in after the primary monitor’s DPI had changed.

Microsoft Edge Improvements

When using Find on Page, pressing F3 will now go to the next result. Shift+F3 will go to the previous result. We fixed an issue resulting in certain websites not rendering correctly when used in inPrivate mode. We fixed an issue resulting in Microsoft Edge sometimes getting into a state where after right-clicking a website the context menu would immediately dismiss. We fixed an issue which resulted in the video element defaulting to a black background if the size didn’t match the aspect ratio of the video. We fixed an issue where right-clicking and selecting “copy link” would sometimes not work as expected. We fixed an issue where copying bitmap images from Microsoft Edge wouldn’t work. We fixed an issue where pasting Chinese, Japanese, or Korean text into Microsoft Edge in recent builds would result in question marks instead of the expected characters. We fixed an issue where misspelled words in input fields were sometimes not updated when a correction is selected from the spell checker. We fixed an issue from recent flights where a session cookie might unexpectedly get overwritten, potentially resulting in login issues on certain websites after a page refresh. We fixed an issue resulting in status updates to Facebook.com sometimes being erased during input. We fixed an issue causing certain controls such as calendar widgets to break on some sites. We fixed an issue for websites with images added using source-set where the height would sometimes unexpectedly be computed to 30px. We fixed an issue where clicking Run on a download in Microsoft Edge that required elevation would result in input no longer being received in that window until switching focus away and back to it. We fixed an issue resulting in the tab bar sometimes drawing incorrectly after dragging the window between two monitors with different DPIs. We fixed an issue from recent builds where you couldn’t use the letter ‘x’ when renaming a favorite. We fixed an issue resulting in a crash when using drag and drop to rearrange favorites. We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to type @ using the Hungarian or Czech keyboard in recent flights. We fixed an issue where PDFs containing xref streams might have rendered as blank pages in the last few flights in Microsoft Edge. Scrollbars in Microsoft Edge will now be the correct size on secondary monitors where the DPI differs from the primary monitor.

Input Improvements

We fixed an issue that resulted in words sometimes being input twice when using the handwriting panel in certain websites using Microsoft Edge. We fixed an issue where you could end up with multiple underlined words when using shapewriting in a text field then switching focus away from and back to that text field and shapewriting some more. We fixed an issue in Win32 apps where a space wasn’t automatically inserted if you used shapewriting to write a word then tapped a letter to start a new word on the touch keyboard. We fixed an issue with the Hebrew touch keyboard where tapping certain keys didn’t produce the expected character. Please take a moment with this build to try out the touch keyboard in your language and let us know how it feels for you. We fixed an issue where the Full touch keyboard layout was unexpectedly not available at certain screen resolutions. We fixed an issue when using the Emoji Panel with Narrator where using tab to switch sections would resulting in Narrator repeating the old section name for each emoji instead of the current one. Changes to pen behavior in recent Insider builds have been met with positive feedback, however also caused drawing in certain apps to work incorrectly. In this Insider build we’ve made a change to address this feedback pertaining to Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, and Clip Studio Paint.

General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

We fixed the issue causing the Virus and Threat Protection pillar in Windows Defender Security Center to show as “unknown” after upgrading to the last build. We fixed an issue from recent flights resulting in the idle timer continually being reset – thus preventing the display from going to sleep. We fixed an issue resulting in an unexpected 0x800706BE error sometimes when trying to initiate a remote desktop connection in recent flights. We fixed an issue some Insiders were experiencing where Windows Update’s Delivery Optimization settings would reset back to default upon leaving the page. If you previously accessed Device Encryption on the About Settings page, you’ll find we’ve moved it to its own page under Settings > Update & Security > Device Encryption. We fixed an issue where the lock screen might unexpectedly just show your theme color instead of the selected custom or Spotlight image after upgrading in recent builds. We fixed an issue from recent flights resulting in certain apps crashing when attempting to use the app to capture a picture using the webcam. We fixed an issue resulting in Node.js (v6.9.4) not being able to run scripts stored in OneDrive or access any paths in OneDrive. We fixed an issue resulting in an unexpectedly large number of OneDrive app-requested download notifications. We fixed an issue where using Alt-P to open the preview pane in File Explorer for PDFs associated with Acrobat would say “This file can’t be previewed.” in recent builds instead of displaying their first page.We fixed an issue where right-clicking on the volume icon in the systray might sometimes unexpectedly take 3-5 seconds for the context menu to appear. We fixed an issue where changing the selected option in the dropdown under Multiple Displays in Display Settings didn’t do anything. We fixed an issue resulting in adding a phone or taking a new profile picture in Settings not working if Settings was run elevated. We fixed an issue resulting in DVD Player failing with error 0xC00D36B4 on machines with DX10 graphics cards. We fixed an issue for PowerShell in Japanese where the “た。” character of the sentence “検証 23% が完了しました。” would display repeatedly when running SFC /scannow. We fixed an issue resulting in certain games like Cut the Rope, Buggy Racing and others from unexpectedly extending past the bottom of the screen when put in full screen mode in recent flights. We fixed an issue with the custom color picker, for example seem in Color Settings, where panning with touch across the colors would move the area rather than smoothly update the selected color. We fixed an issue resulting in acrylic material’s noise layer blinking in a second after the rest of the UI if the UI was animating in on top of a video. We’ve improved the rendering performance when using touch to pan UWP app windows that have applied acrylic material. We fixed an issue resulting in XAML controls sometimes unexpectedly becoming pure white in recent builds when transparency was enabled. We fixed an issue resulting in the OneNote app sometimes having rendering issues in recent flights (for example, missing text blocks). We fixed an issue resulting in Forza Horizon 3 crashing when loading (after selecting “continue”). As a result of low usage, Screen Saver functionality has been disabled in themes. Screen Saver functionality in Group Policies, Control Panel, and Sysprep is now deprecated but continues to be functional. Lock screen features and policies are preferred. Click to Post

#Windows #Windows 10 #Windows Client #Windows Insider

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rekomande · 7 years ago

Link

Recomended Products

Instantly receive photos from those you love from anywhere in the world using photo-mails!

EASY TO CONFIGURE, EFFORTLESS TO USE, WITH POWERFUL FEATURES AND A FREE, UNLIMITED STORAGE ONLINE ACCOUNT

SHARING, RECEIVING AND SENDING PHOTOS HAS NEVER BEEN SO EASY!

Send pictures directly to the frame by email!

NO TOUCHSCREEN, NO FINGERPRINTS TO WIPE OFF!

SIMPLICITY AND EASE OF USE

Your frame is really easy to use and has an intuitive interface for easier navigation even when you have thousands of photos stored on it. It allows you to organize your pictures so you can display only your external web albums, only your local albums, or a ‘Play All’ feature, which groups all your photos in the same slide show. As soon as photos are added to your frame, they are automatically resized into a 800 x 600 format to fit perfectly in the 10.4-inch high quality display. The LCD screen will present your best shots in a 4:3 aspect ratio and photos will be rotated to their proper orientation automatically.

FREE AND EASY REMOTE MANAGEMENT FROM THE WEB + MANAGE UP TO 25 FRAMES FROM 1 ACCOUNT!

ADD, DELETE albums or pictures

CUSTOMIZE your slideshows

MANAGE your contacts and security parameters

CONFIGURE your frame’s parameters

Same for web albums, when you create a Pix-Star web album or link one of your Facebook, Google + or other online albums inside the multi-frame account they get automatically to each frame account.

ACCESS YOUR PICTURES FROM THE LARGEST SELECTION OF ONLINE PICTURE STORAGE PROVIDERS!

Moreover, your Pix-Star frame updates these albums automatically 3 to 4 times per day to automatically detect when you ADD or REMOVE pictures from the provider’s website.

Pix-Star syncs with more online albums than any other frame!

UPnP – DLNA SUPPORT ALLOWS EASY ACCESS TO PICTURES STORED ON YOUR LOCAL COMPUTER AND LOCAL NETWORKS!

Pix-Star has always been about accessing pictures wirelessly from different sources.

MORE THAN A PHOTO FRAME, A COMPANION OF YOUR DAILY LIFE!

PLAY WEB RADIO STATIONS AND LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC!

WEATHER FORECASTS

GAMES FOR THE BRAIN

ALERTS AND REMINDERS

PLAY SLIDESHOWS YOUR WAY!

At Pix-Star we believe that watching pictures should be a delight. That’s why we offer you the ability to customize your slideshows in many ways.

Through your online personal account, you have the ability to create slideshows with the pictures of your choice – even if they come from different sources.

Here some parameters you can customize to “slideshow you way”:

Play Mode

Normal mode

Repeat recent pictures (this mode populates the photo list in order to play the latest pictures more frequently) of the last day, 2 days, 3 days, week or month.

Only latest pictures (this mode will display only the latest available pictures) of the last day, 2 days, 3 days, week or month.

Transitions

Horizontal Sliding, Vertical Sliding, Rotations, Zoom in, Flip, Fading, Ken Burns Effect, Boomerang, Wheel Clockwise, Wedge, Multi 1, Multi 2.

Display Mode

Normal mode (show one picture at a time, keeping the picture’s size ratio)

Collage 4 pictures (display a collage formed by 4 pictures)

Collage 5 pictures (display a collage formed by 5 pictures)

Smart Fill (auto fill the screen, stretching the picture if necessary, only when the picture ratio is close to 4:3 to avoid too much distortion.

Sorting Mode

Alphabetical mode

Newest first

Oldest first

Random

Intervals (between each pictures)

2 seconds, 3 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours or 12 hours

POWER CONSUMPTION

PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

PACKAGE CONTENTS

Pix-Star Digital Photo Frame Remote Control AC Power Cord (worldwide compatible, input voltage from 100V up to 240 V) Quick Start Guide User Manual

10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards Receive pictures directly on your Pix-Star frame from the Internet with its dedicated email address at NO EXTRA CHARGE 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards Receive pictures directly on your Pix-Star frame from the Internet with its dedicated email address at NO EXTRA CHARGE Send pictures from your frame to individual or groups of email addresses directly from the frame 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards Receive pictures directly on your Pix-Star frame from the Internet with its dedicated email address at NO EXTRA CHARGE 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. 10.4 in. (26.4 cm), 4:3 ratio, high-quality display with low consumption LED backlight. Manage the Frame from the Web and create a multi-frame account to remotely control up to 25 frames from 1 single web account, TOTALLY FREE. Send your photos by email via the 3G/Wi-Fi Network on your mobile phone, 4 GB memory (20,000 pictures), supports USB stick, SDHC and SDXC cards Receive pictures directly on your Pix-Star frame from the Internet with its dedicated email address at NO EXTRA CHARGE Send pictures from your frame to individual or groups of email addresses directly from the frame Access more than 20 online providers and view pictures from web albums, including Picasa, Facebook, Flickr, Smugmug, and more and Receive daily updated weather forecasts for a selection of countries and cities

#Recomended Products

0 notes