Apple’s iPhone has revolutionized how we go through our days and is an essential tool for over a billion people worldwide. It is the quintessential smartphone that, right from the bat, has mostly everything you need to cover your daily technology needs. Need navigation? There is the Apple Maps app for that. Want to surf the web? There is Safari for that. Not to mention, Apple has some excellent first-party services, like iMessage, FaceTime, Music, and Photos, all of which offer a comprehensive set of features.
Of course, the beauty of a modern smartphone is that it can be significantly improved by installing other apps. The iPhone is famous for not including bloatware, meaning that — apart from Apple’s services and apps — users have a blank canvas on how they want to use their phones. Sure, this often includes installing essential apps like YouTube, Netflix, Instagram, and Spotify, but what about some fringe services?
Well, prepare your thumb because this article might inspire you to tap the Get button on the App Store more than once — all of that while keeping your bank account intact! So, without further ado, here are the best free apps every iPhone user needs on their phones.
AllTrails
Apple Maps has a robust feature set that includes local trails, and the same can be said for Google Maps. Still, if you are really into the outdoor lifestyle, AllTrails is the way to go. It is a navigation app for finding popular trails for hiking, running, and mountain biking. With this app, exploration is not only more fun but also much safer.
So, what does AllTrails have that others don’t? For starters, it has over 400,000 curated trails worldwide. Moreover, AllTrails will show you the difficulty level, including the elevation gain, which is crucial for amateur and seasoned explorers. Once you hit the trail, AllTrails will guide you using your phone’s GPS so you never get lost -– it even works with the Apple Watch!
Still, what really sets AllTrail apart is its friendly and vibrant community, which is composed of approximately 60 million users. This means you will find advice from more experienced hikers or bikers and images on most routes, giving you an even clearer picture of what awaits you in the wilderness.
AllTrails is free to use and includes finding the most popular trails, navigating through the wilds, and creating lists of your favorite trails. Still, there is also an AllTrails+ tier, which allows you to download offline maps, get alerts on wrong turns, see some trails in 3D, and not be bothered by ads.
Character.AI
Apple is a bit behind in the AI game, with Google and Samsung making great strides toward an AI future with the Pixel 8 and Galaxy S24 series of phones. Fret not, however, because you can also have a taste of AI on your iPhone with the Character.AI app – that is, of course, until Apple’s new AI chatbot inevitably arrives.
This highly-rated app introduces intelligent, made-up chatbot personalities that users can chat with on various subjects. Want to speak to Albert Einstein on general relativity and other physics-related subjects, like quantum mechanics? Character.AI can get you there. You can also explore an alternate timeline where Abraham Lincoln wasn’t assassinated or lay the Jordan versus LeBron debate to bed. Character.AI can handle just about any topic you might want to converse with a friend.
However, Character.AI can also do other things that separate it from other chatbots, like ChatGPT or Google Bard. Namely, the app lets you put up to 10 characters in a group chat and see a wild conversation unfold, or you can create your character and let other people play with it. The community is also robust, and interesting new characters are added daily. Overall, Character.AI lets your imagination flow and then sprinkles it with some magic AI dust to make it even more captivating. It is completely free to use and a great companion on a flight or a train ride.
AirCare
Air pollution is a huge public health issue, particularly in large cities with dense traffic and few open spaces. While humanity’s fight against pollution continues at a crawling pace, you can at least protect yourself from the harmful particles and chemicals in the atmosphere by wearing an N95 mask. You might also want to install the AirCare app on your iPhone, as it will allow you to monitor the air quality in your area.
AirCare is a free-to-use app for iPhone users. It has a streamlined interface with a modern design and is super quick to launch. Still, the app contains comprehensive information on the contaminants you breathe, including recommendations like “wear a mask” or “close windows and limit outdoor activity.”
AirCare uses data from your location and presents you with AQI (Air Quality Index), pollen amount, and UV index once you open it. AQI is a standardized system that is calculated based on various contaminants in the air, including PM10 and PM2.5 particulate matter, Ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and sulfur dioxide (SO2). All of these are one tap away –- just click on the AQI box, and AirCare will have them ready for you.
On the home screen, AirCare also shows a map of nearby areas with cleaner air and pockets of very polluted air. Unfortunately, the free version has some ads displayed on the home screen, but at least they never get in the way of using the app. Still, you can get the paid version for $2.99/month or $19.99/year to delete the ads and even chat with the newly-introduced Breezy AI chatbot.
Strava
Multiple research studies and papers have proven that competitiveness can significantly improve sports and fitness performance. Strava, one of the most popular fitness services among cyclists and runners, takes advantage of that, forcing you to increase your exercise intensity and achieve your goals sooner.
Like other fitness apps, Strava allows you to track any activity using your iPhone’s GPS and can also connect with the Apple Watch or other fitness trackers of your choice. However, the real beauty of Strava is its vibrant community. From amateurs to professionals, athletes seem to prefer Strava over other fitness apps, and the main reason for that is the rating system.
Namely, once you finish your activity, it is overlayed on a digital map, and your results are compared to other athletes who ran or rode the same path or an interval. Strava provides all-time leaderboards for men and women, as well as overall leaderboards, meaning you can quickly check how you compare to other athletes.
You will need to pay to see your exact position, though, as the free Strava version only provides the top 10 results and how you compare against those. If you want to see your exact position on any interval, the premium subscription costs $11.99/month and $79.99/year and brings other perks, like discovering new routes, training dashboards, and setting custom goals. That said, you can still connect with your friends and access the vibrant community in the free version.
Snapseed
The Photos app built into your iPhone has a solid editing feature, allowing you to crop/straighten, change the exposure, retouch, and apply a filter to your image. However, if you want to go into more detail and bring Photoshop-like editing features to your iPhone for free, try Google’s Snapseed.
Google is no stranger to improving photos via software, as its image algorithms do wonders with image processing on its Pixel lineup of phones. Snapseed uses some of those algorithms but takes them a step further and gives you complete creative control so you can make images that really stand out.
In its simple and easy-to-use interface, Snapseed will allow you to adjust curves and white balance, use a Lightroom-like brush select feature to enhance certain parts of the image, or choose two photos to use in creating a double exposure. Moreover, the app has a robust healing feature that can clean blemishes and a rich selection of filters divided into several groups. Want a more dramatic image or maybe a grainy Hollywood-style look? Snapseed will have you covered.
Even better is Snapseed’s ability to edit RAW photos from your iPhone (or even your DSLR/mirrorless camera), allowing you to change the parameters to a greater extent without worrying about posterization. This makes Snapseed perhaps the best free RAW image editing app for the iPhone and a great alternative to Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop, both of which offer full functionality only with a premium account.
Duolingo
The easiest way to learn a new language is by using Duolingo, the free educational app for the iPhone that helps you learn 43 languages — 39 for English-speaking users.
Unlike other educational apps, Duolingo uses minigames, which should make the learning process more entertaining and allow you to learn the language more quickly. The minigames become more complex as you progress, and you can learn every aspect of the language, including speaking, listening, and reading. Duolingo has recently included learning math and music, adding to its appeal.
The user interface is also well-designed, and using the app is a breeze, thanks to the large letters and clear illustrations. Nonetheless, ads occasionally interrupt the learning process, and losing too many hearts (when you make a mistake) can slow you down.
If you don’t want to bother with those limitations, there is always Super Duolingo, which eliminates the ads, gives you unlimited hearts, provides personalized lessons after you make mistakes, and gives you unlimited attempts at Legendary challenges. It costs $7.99/month or $47.99/year, with a Family subscription (for up to six people) costing $71.99/year.
INCI Beauty
INCI Beauty is an app that can help you navigate the sea of cosmetic products and find one that contains no harmful chemicals. It uses information from various scientific papers, regulatory bodies, and data provided by beauty brands themselves to create the INCI Beauty algorithms that give you information on the chemicals in a personal hygiene product and ultimately rate each product from 0 to 20.
In addition, INCI Beauty will list every ingredient and give it either a green flower (good), yellow flower (satisfactory), orange flower (not so good), or red (possibly dangerous). You can also get more information on any chemical, along with references.
INCI Beauty is straightforward to use and allows you to scan the barcode of any product to see its composition and score. If you can’t find the item that way, you can also type its name and search for it. Meanwhile, if the product is not already analyzed by INCI Beauty, you can send a photo of the ingredients along with the barcode, and their team will quickly put it in the database. INCI Beauty is free to use, though if you want to get rid of the admittedly annoying ads and add other perks like offline mode and analysis without barcode, a premium subscription is $13.27/year.
Sky Guide
Sky Guide is sort of a personal planetarium that uses your iPhone camera, positional sensors, and some AR trickery to give you information on various celestial bodies, like stars, planets, and satellites. Once you start using the app, it overlays the constellations over the night sky, making it much easier to spot them than just using your eyes.
Furthermore, Sky Guide can give you detailed information on most stars visible in the night sky, as well as the planets in our solar system. In that sense, it is not only fun to use but also very educational. It might also force you to explore our planet; due to light pollution, stargazing isn’t as accessible as it was, meaning you will need to go into the wilderness to see the full night sky and push Sky Guide to its limits.
Another thing that sets Sky Guide apart from its competitors is the design -– the graphics are top-notch, and the fluidity of the animations is second to none. However, although the free version will have enough information for most people, Sky Guide Plus ($2.99/month or $19.99/year) gives access to 100 times more stars, 10,000 times more satellites, and a 100x zoom. There is also Sky Guide Pro, which has information on 1.7 billion stars and 1 million deep-sky objects, but it costs $4.99/month and $39.99/year.
Too Good to Go
Food is as omnipresent today as it ever was in humanity’s history, and the choice of different food items is off the charts. Want to be a vegan, pescatarian, or carnivore? Today is the best day in history to be on any of those diets. However, as much as we made multiple daily meals accessible to most people on our planet, we are also not efficient with it –- there is simply too much food waste. Too Good to Go wants to tackle that problem while solving the issue of food becoming expensive lately.
Namely, the company works with restaurants across North America and allows you to buy unsold food packed in a Surprise Bag at very low prices, making it both wallet-friendly and good for the environment. Crucially, the Surprise Bags are very affordable, starting at $3.99 for a full meal. Too Good to Go also has a modern interface that lets you pick your favorite foods, so it can give you better recommendations. You will need to head to the selected restaurant to pick up the food, which might be a hassle for some, but delivering the food to your doorstep might raise the price of the Surprise Bag significantly.
According to Too Good to Go, every Surprise Bag saves our atmosphere from 2.5 kg CO2, making it a much greener solution. Since the app is completely free and meals are super affordable, there is no point in not having it in your iPhone’s app list.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is one of the sincerest efforts made by one person to help people. Created by Salman Khan, an educator and entrepreneur, the non-profit organization provides online learning tools to help students. It also offers a free iPhone app that is well-built and contains multiple features for tracking the student’s progress.
Khan Academy has free courses on math, computer science, biology, chemistry, physics, arts and humanities, economics, grammar, life skills, and language arts, all covering a broad range of grade levels. Of course, if you are more into Asian art or biodiversity, don’t worry — the organization collaborates with partners to expand your knowledge even further.
The iPhone app has educational video lessons from experts in every field. Still, it can also help students solve math problems and create various challenges, like quizzes or exercises, to help them learn better. As such, Khan Academy’s app is an indispensable part of the arsenal of every student, but also for teachers to refresh their knowledge or just about anyone who wants to learn something new. Parents will find the app useful, too.
However, Khan Academy is much more than just a digital book. It can track your progress, give you recommendations on what to learn next, and provide you with hints/feedback. Put simply, it provides a 21st-century learning experience to the masses. Khan Academy is free with no premium option, though you can contribute to the organization to support the cause.