TechnikNews Favorite apps: These are editor David Haydl's favorites

We all have several apps installed on our smartphones. From games to apps for the Proproductivity is usually everything there. And then there are the apps that you open every day and that you don't want to miss anymore. And these are editor David Haydl's favorite apps.

minima (Pro)

For me it was always the case that the background images that were set on my Moto G4 Plus changed daily. Somehow I never really liked anything like that. A little less than half a year ago I was on Minima (Pro) encountered.

Minima is an app with live wallpapers. In the free version of the app, you can choose wallpapers from a ready-made library and then set them as your own. In the Proversion you can edit these background images additionally. You can also change the colors of the elements, move the elements, add a texture to the elements, resize the elements, add effects and so on. There are hardly any borders here.

In addition, the purchased app gives you access to an online collection of wallpapers, in which you can find creations made by other Minima users. But there is also the possibility to share your own works of art there. For this, however, you need a minimum account.

Minima are only available for Android. As already mentioned, there is a free version and a paid version that costs around one euro.

Minima

Minima Pro

hurry up

Hurry is more of a gimmick from my point of view. A gimmick that I still hold dear to my heart. You can insert upcoming events that are important to you in the app. When creating it, you can even add a GIF from the library to match the type of event.

As soon as the event has been created, a countdown shows how many days, hours, minutes and seconds must pass before the created event takes place. If you select an event from your list, you will be shown a kind of quiz with things that can happen in this remaining period. You can then choose one of the two options and get a point for choosing the correct answer. This doesn't trigger anything, but it is quite funny, especially in the last few minutes of the waiting time. There are also various widgets for your own home screen.

This is what the detail page of an event looks like. Here you can also play the mentioned quiz (screenshot: © 2017 TechnikNews)

The Hurry app can be downloaded free of charge from Google's Playstore.

hurry up

Sign for Spotify

I was pretty annoyed that the Windows Phone Mobile app from Spotify has special widgets for your favorite playlists and not with Android. So I was pretty glad I came across Sign for Spotify recently.

Sign is primarily designed so that you can view all your favorite Spotify content directly in a list and access it directly from there. And then there are the widgets. In total, you can choose between four different ones. The first is a grid with no content labels, the second a grid with content labels, the third a list with the labels and the fourth is an icon for a playlist, album, artist or song.

Sign for Spotify can only be found in the Google Playstore. There the app costs around € 1,50.

Sign for Spotify

TV Time

Even if The 100 will always be my all - time favorite, I 've watched other series since I' ve been on Amazon Prime. In order to have an overview of these, I downloaded the TV Time app.

In TV Time you can always keep track of the series that you watch or follow. You can create your own watch lists and enter your progress on a series there. You can also see on which day an episode of a series will be available, if that is not already the case. I also saw once that it can be shown which streaming services a certain episode is available for, but I could not find this feature or activate it anywhere.

In addition, TV Time is a kind of social network. This means that you can connect with other users of TV Time and leave opinions via video messages or written comments under a series or an episode of a season.

The area where users can exchange ideas about a series looks pretty similar to the Facebook feed (screenshot: © 2017 TechnikNews)

The TV Time app is available free of charge in the iOS AppStore or in the Playstore on devices with Android. For either € 1,99 per month or € 11,99 per year you can get TV Time Premium. With this package, among other things, advertising is no longer displayed or the watchlist is synchronized with the Google or Apple calendar. The TV Time web app can be used free of charge.

TV Time - Playstore

TV Time - AppStore

Sleep as an Droid

I have kept my hands off the apps in which I can create to-do lists. These apps were either too simple or too complicated for me. But Wunderlist offers me the perfect package for my purposes.

In the app you can create lists and folders to organize your ToDo entries. You can then add your entries to the lists themselves. For things that have to be done by a certain point in time, you can add a due date and a reminder. It is also possible to add subtasks and notes to your entries. What I haven't seen anywhere else is that you can also attach files such as documents or photos. You can then mark important entries in your lists with asterisks.

There is also a chat area in the app. This can then be used when sharing entries or lists with friends or relatives. In the settings, you can then use background images to influence the appearance of the app.

Wunderlist is available for free for Android and iOS devices. You get it for €4,49 a month Pro Package. This includes unlimited attaching of files, unlimited assigning of tasks in teams, unlimited insertion of subtasks and a few extra background images. The Wunderlist web app is free to use.

Wunderlist - Playstore

Wunderlist - AppStore

Pocket

I have the Pocket app here already presented once. With this app you can save articles and websites of all kinds in order to read them in your spare time.

The saved articles can be read in this view (screenshot: © 2017 TechnikNews)

To save a page in Pocket, you simply have to select the app in the browser on your smartphone in the menu for sharing websites. That's it. On the PC, this can also be done with an extension for the Chrome browser. In Pocket you can then look at the articles in a view that is comfortable to read. Recently there was even an update for the app, which means that it is now possible to have text read aloud. And it even works surprisingly well.

The Pocket app is available as a free download for iOS and Android and as a normal web app.

Pocket - Playstore

Pocket - AppStore

LastPass

Last but not least, there is the LastPass app. LastPass, like Dashlane or 1password, is a password vault. But how does it actually work?

When setting up a LastPass account, you also enter a master password. This is also the only password that you still have to remember afterwards. All others can always be copied from the safe at any time. A copying process is not really necessary. There is a much smarter way to get your passwords out of the vault. There is an extension for the browser on the PC which automatically inserts the correct username and password in the correct fields when called up. It's similar on a smartphone and tablet with Android. There you just have to start a window in the notification center instead of the extension.

The window mentioned above and the extension can not only call up passwords, but also request a new one during a registration process and then insert this together with the other data directly into LastPass. When you change a password, the data on the server are automatically overwritten. Pretty handy.

Since you only have to remember one password, you can also set different passwords for different services or have the app generate them. But not only passwords and login data can be saved. You can also take notes and enter data for filling out online forms so that you no longer have to fill them out yourself.

LastPass is available for free as a web app and as a normal app in the Playstore and AppStore. Premium membership costs around €24 pro year and brings with it two-factor authentication and the sharing of passwords.

Unfortunately, I couldn't add screenshots to LastPass, the option to take screenshots was blocked by LastPass.

LastPass - Playstore

LastPass - AppStore

This is the first part of the “Favorite Apps” series by TechnikNews. In the second part, our editor Lars Matt will present his favorite apps.

Recommendations for you

• Android 12: The first apps with “Material You” design language are here
• Spark: Shared inboxes for easier collaboration
• Twitter API is expanded with ads for likes and blocked users
• Setapp is now also available with iOS and iPadOS apps