40 Free Apps That Won’t Cost You A Penny

1. Fooducate! It’s an app that gives you all the nutritional details on food and grades them based off of what’s in them. Really great app for people trying to eat healthier.

2. If you are into tv shows and don’t watch everything on your own Netflix then “TV Time” is an amazing app to keep track of everything.

3. AllTrails. If you like adventure and hiking, this app tells you where a ton of hiking trails are in your area or anywhere you want to look up. It has over 50,000 trails around the world! It tells you how many miles the trail is, how difficult it is, the elevation gain, etc. There are pictures of the trails and users can leave reviews/experiences on the trail.

You can get driving directions to the trail head. It also provides a map of the trail itself and you can use Gps on the trail (if you prefer so you don’t get lost). It also tells you if the trails are dog friendly.

4. Clue. Best period tracker ever. No stupid pink flowers, condescending shit about becoming pregnant or constant ads.

5. Round. It’s an app that tracks your medications for you. Completely free, and it keeps tabs on what medications you take, gives you a notification when it’s time to take them, and also keeps track of how many pills you have left, and notifies you when you’re getting low. Super useful for someone who has multiple medications that I have to take a different times of the day, including one that I have to take half an hour before I eat anything, and also for someone who easily forgets to order refills.

6. Office Lens. I guess there’s other apps out there that do the same but it means I no longer need a scanner. When I was a student, I could use it to take photos of whiteboards and it took the glare off and sharpened up the writing. It saved me from many hours of scrawling down illegible notes.

7. 18Birdies. It’s a free golf app that works as a scoresheet, rangefinder, and more. I downloaded it this weekend before playing a round and it was great. It uses gps to figure out where you are in relation to the hole and is surprisingly accurate and functional.

8. GasBuddy. Shows the prices of every gas station in your area on a list, or you can go to the map (my preferred method) and see where the cheapest prices are.

9. Discord, I can stay in touch with my friends while playing games with them and whatnot.

10. Trello, like holy shit it makes tracking life so much easier. It’s used by companies and dev teams for project tracking, but it’s really simple lists of cards. I got my wife on board when we were planning our wedding (and she kept everything in her head), now either of us can look at the board and catch up on what’s going on. It’s also a good workflow for keeping up with lots of stuff in flight or todo. It’s a digital version of using post it notes on a wall which is handy if you’re say, at the grocery store and need to pull up the grocery card.

But I am a huge nerd for documentation and planning. I swear I would go crazy by now trying to keep up with everything and forgetting important stuff like house repairs.

It being free is fantastic, when Atlassian bought it they limited it to 10 boards but that’s still more than plenty, you get pretty much all the features with the free version (limited to one integration but most aren’t useful for personal anyway).

11. Libby, coupled with your local library card. Ebooks and audiobooks, delivered right to your phone or tablet.

12. Tiny Scanner. Scan everything as images or PDFs.

13. Podcast Addict. Has a single ad banner in a fully featured podcast app with no nagging survey/review popups that I’ve ever noticed. Use it daily, great app.

14. WabbitEMU. It’s an emulator for android for any Texas Instruments Graphing Calculator.

You can add the software from anything from a TI-83 basic to a TI-89 plus C-E. The best part is that the UI is a picture of the actual calculator, so all hotkeys and shortcuts you learned for your concrete TI work on the app as well, not to mention everything is exactly where you think it is. The app has the same capabilities as the actual calculator too.

To my knowledge, everything in app is 100% free too. (there may be a pro version somewhere that removes the extremely-occasional ad.)

15. Duolingo, granted it’s maybe not what Rosetta Stone is but that’s quickly made up for how Duolingo teaches you new languages ! It really helped me get a basic grasp of the German language.

16. RunPee. It tells you the best time to go pee during a movie. It has a timer and vibrates to let you know when it’s time. It then tells you what going on during the “pee time.”

17. Night Mode For Samsung. It basically lets your screen go lower than what’s intended. It has saved my eyeballs for nighttime phone use.

18. Honey. It literally will search the entire internet for discounts and coupon codes for what you are buying.

19. Huckleberry. It’s an app to track your baby’s sleep, feeds and wees and poos. But the best thing about it is its Sweetspot function, which you can use after 2 months of age and it looks at your baby’s data and calculates when their next nap time is due. You can pay for sleep advice, but even without that it’s been an integral part of our parenting experience so far.

20. Definitely Shazam. App is bonkers. Ever since I found the app back in the days, I’ve never understood how the hell it works, and why it’s free.

21. Snapseed is great for editing photos.

22. Tunity. Listen to any tv that is muted at the bar casino hotel etc. Works beautifully.

23. Notepad ++ It’s a beast for both programming and processing large amount of data.

24. DogLog app! Helps me and my boyfriend keep track of our pet’s daily activities and medicines.

25. Yummly – Learned how to cook like a top chef, makes planning dinner easy because if I only have like 3 things in the fridge I can find recipes that use those three ingredients instead of starving to death. Grocery list, meal planner it has everything. I probably wouldn’t eat without this app.

26. Haven’t seen a mental health app listed yet… Daylio is great for mood and activity tracking, and Presently Grateful is an amazing, simple gratitude journal. Both free!

27. Musicolet. This is the best music player out there. It’s completely free and no ads!

28. Mint. I highly recommend it. It’s to keep track of your bank account and credit cards as well as creating a budget!

29. FlightRadar app let’s you see all the commercial aircraft in the air or recently in the air. It’s useful when I’m curious what plane is above me and I can see the origin, destination, type of aircraft, and airline. Fun to look at ones around the world!

30. Waze. It’s easy to use and tells you how the traffic is.

31. ColorNote. The best notepad app I’ve ever used. You can choose between making a note document or a checklist. And it sync with all of my other devices. I love it.

32. If you like birds, the Cornell Ornithology Lab’s Merlin Bird ID. You answer five simple questions and it gives you the best suggestions for what it could be. Works very well, and can also do it off a photo.

33. Lastpass. A password manager that just works. Cross device, high security.

34. Loops and tails, it’s not exactly an app but rather a website where you (if you have the correct pen) you can learn various kinds of penmanship like Spencerian, standard cursive, print, or blackletter

35. SkyView lite. There’s an option to get a paid upgrade but I’ve never needed to. It’s really handy for those “what the hell is THAT?” Moment. All it needs is your location and it will tell you which celestial bodies are visible over your head. I used it last year to identify a very bright star above the animal home I work at (which funnily enough turned out to be the Dog Star Sirius in canis major) and a strange reddish/orange light that turned out to be Mars.

36. Cymath, type in or take a picture of the math problem and it’ll solve it for you plus give you steps in how to do it.

37. Server Life. I’m a bartender/server and this neat little app allows me to put my tips in every night and it tells me how much I averaged per hour. Also has a calendar view that I can look back at to see which days I was making the most money and which days aren’t great. I recommend it highly to everyone.

38. Vectornator. It’s an extremely powerful vector-drawing app for iPhone and iPad. As a designer, it’s so wonderful to be able to work on my projects whenever and with about the same usability as Adobe Illustrator. Bonus points because you can easily save in multiple file formats– including .ai and .jpeg– to the cloud.

39. Cronometer. Best food tracking app I’ve had.

40. Google maps. Honestly it’s a life saver.