It’s Black Friday time once again, and with it comes the usual mad rush to grab the very best hardware and software at bargain prices.
It’s not all new cameras, laptops and desktop software though – there are plenty of cut-price apps that you can download right now, for a limited time. In some cases, they’re actually now completely free, so who could refuse? We haven’t brought you ALL of them by any means, but we have brought you some of the best.
If you’re an Android user, you can jump to the start of the Android apps in this list here, or if you’d rather view the whole post on one page, you can do that here.
What are you waiting for? Get downloading!
iOS
Remembering passwords can be a real pain, remembering them exactly when you need them and using them across a range of different devices can be even trickier.
Thankfully, 1Password’s password manager and secure wallet is currently 50 percent off, meaning you can go ahead and download it now for just $9.99 instead of the usual $19.99.
Like some of the other password managers available, it’ll keep your different devices in sync, but unlike most of the others it also offers multiple and shared vaults, which is handy if you have more than one user on a device or need to share lists of passwords frequently.
Phlo is a universal search app. To use it, simply fire it up, enter a term and hit search. It’ll then return results from a whole range of different sites and services, saving you precious time in repeating your search in various different places.
It also offers useful features like a saved search history and sync between other iOS and Mac devices.
It previously cost $2.99/£1.99 but can now be had for $1.99/£1.49 for a limited time.
➤ Phlo
Productivity might not be the most fun word on the planet, but sometimes what you really need is a mobile document editing suite to get the job done. In honor of the Black Friday tradition, Polaris Office – which includes tools for editing many different document file types (doc/docx, xls/xlsx, ppt/pptx, txt) as well as viewing PDF files – has had its price slashed dramatically.
Normally costing $19.99/£8.99, there’s currently a whopping 95 percent off the usual pricing, meaning you can download it for $0.99/£0.69 for the next few days at least.
Eking out the monthly budget can be a challenging task at the best of times, but sometimes turning to an app for some help isn’t a bad thing. With MoneyWiz, you can track your incomings and outgoings all in one place and generate a variety of different reports and graphs. If that sort of thing excites you. It’ll sync with your Mac and other iOS devices too.
Fittingly for a money-tracking app, buying it now rather than later will also save you some cash – it previously cost $4.99/£2.99 but is now available for $0.99/£0.69, for a limited time.
➤ MoneyWiz
There’s no time to waste on this one, PhotoStackr, the service that lets you view, download and edit pictures stored in a variety of different services directly from an iPad or iPhone, is currently free.
Usually costing $0.99/£0.69, Photostackr for Picasa, PhotoStackr for 500px, PhotoStackr for Box and all the other PhotoStackr apps are free for one day only.
Readdle Printer Pro for iPhone
Readdle’s Printer Pro app let’s you print attachments, documents, Web pages and more right from your iPhone on any Wi-Fi or USB-connected printer. With support for a wide range of file types (PDF, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, TXT, HTML, JPG and Safari webarchive), the reduction in price from $4.99/£2.99 to $1.99/£1.49 isn’t to be sniffed at.
The company says the pricing for Printer Pro (as well as its other reduced apps) is only good for 48 hours, although it didn’t specify when that started we’re presuming that means until the end of today.
➤ Readdle Printer Pro for iPhone
If Apple Maps, Google Maps or any of the other mapping and direction apps available on iOS just don’t live up to your expectations, now might be the time to consider looking at Garmin’s variety of iOS offerings. For this weekend, there’s about 50 percent off some of its apps, including this Garmin USA one, which is just $24.99, rather than the usual $49.99.
With features like turn-by-turn directions (including spoken street names), preloaded points of interest, integrated Google Local Search , 3D buildings and landmarks, lane assist with junction view and an integrated red light and speed camera database, including community-generated alerts a bit like you get with Waze.
If you were half thinking about checking out Garmin anyway, at 50 percent off, now might be the time.
FileCentral, from the creators of productivity apps EuroSmartz is an all-in-one document viewer (not editor), file storage, PDF, converter and printing app for your iPad which allows you to easily display oversized PDF, Office and iWork files stored on your computer or in the cloud.
You also get the option to send the documents to just about any kind of printer to roll off a hard copy.
Previously $3.99/£2.99, FileCentral is on special offer for Black Friday at $0.99/£0.69.
The Animoog synth is pretty well-known to be one of the best synth apps available on iOS.
Its core feature is its Anisotropic Synth Engine (ASE), which allows the user to “move dynamically through an X/Y space of unique timbres to create an expressive and constantly evolving soundscape”. With a full feature set Animoog has plenty to keep budding music producers busy.
To celebrate Black Friday, Animoog for iPhone is now just $1.99/£1.49, down from its normal price of $9.99/£6.99.
If turning your desk or any other object into a drum sounds like fun, Impaktor is probably worth a look – particularly as there’s currently 80 percent off its usual price as part of the thanksgiving sale.
After turning any surface into a playable percussion instrument, Impaktor gives the user a choice from a wide range of drum tones and sounds, like Tabla, Djembe, Marimba, Cymbals, Metal bars to electronic or more industrial inspired sounds.
Usually $3.99/£2.99, Impaktor is available to download now for $0.99/£0.69. The company’s Sunrizer Synth app is also on sale down from $9.99/£6.99 to $4.99/£2.99, which is about half price.
➤ Impaktor
Making sure you get things done is Gneo’s speciality.
While a lot of the core functionality of Gneo can be found with other to-do and calendar apps, Gneo’s slick interface makes it one of our favorites for the way in which it allows you to easily prioritize tasks.
For the thanksgiving weekend, there’s 50 percent off the normal price, making it $4.99/£2.99 instead of $9.99/£5.99.
➤ Gneo
If you’re a Dropbox user but you hate the interface, you’ll definitely want to check out Boxie, which promises to “prettify” your Dropbox.
With it, users can quickly navigate across folders and it supports several features, including: drag and drop support, the ability to share, copy, delete, rename, move, paste items, with reversable actions and offline access for when you’re not connected. There’s also more too, like bookmarking and support for file and revision history. With the update to iOS 7, you can also now receive in-app and background notifications for file system events like additions, modifications and deletions.
Previously costing $ /£1.99, Boxie is now free, from today.
Push.co
Push.co is a product of TNW Labs and is one of the easiest ways to stay up to date with the news of your choosing.
Simply, it allows you to create your own push notifications to keep informed whenever anything is published that you’d want to read. Check out some of the Push.co apps already available for a better idea of what you can do: The Next Web, Hacker News, Thing du Jour and New on Netflix UK.
Normally priced at $1.99/€1.79, Push.co is free until the end of this weekend. Go and download it now.
➤ Push.co
Traktor DJ for iPhone is another iOS app that has seen its usual retail price ($4.99) slashed for thanksgiving, with the new price ($1.99) good until December 9.
Features of the DJing app include: swipe and pinch gesture support, familiar DJ mixer layout with crossfader, 3-band EQ, and filter on each channel and direct access to your iTunes library from within the app. More advanced functions also allow for things like intelligent song recommendations based on tempo and key, automatic tempo and key detection with BPM sync, in-app notification center and pre-made DJ effects like reverb and delay.
Android
SwiftKey is one of the best known non-stock keyboards for Android devices, and offers a set of features that’s worth checking out if you haven’t already.
Its finest skill is almost psychically knowing the next word you’re about to tap in, but it’ll also support swipe keyboard inputs (just like Swype) if that’s more to your liking. There’s also a range of different layouts, like the split keyboard option shown above.
Usually priced at $3.99, Swiftkey is now available to download for $2.99 for a limited time.
➤ SwiftKey
Weather is weather is weather, right? Wrong, not all weather apps are created equally, and Accuweather’s paid-for Platinum version is one of the best known out there.
Unlike the free option, the Platinum app offers ad-free weather info and features like customizable forecasts, multi-location widgets, and optional weather graphs. It also offers push notifications for severe weather alerts in the US and on-screen alerts for snow, ice, rain, wind, or the probability of thunderstorms around the world. There really is a whole lot of info buried in this app, so if you want more depth to your weather apps, it’s worth a look.
In order to celebrate thanksgiving, the usual $2.99 asking price has been slashed to just $0.99 for a short time.
The Go Launcher Prime app, which actually requires the free Go Launcher app to be installed in order to work, is a launcher app with more than 10,000 themes to help you personalize the look and feel of the OS to your own taste, but with the minimum of effort.
Normally priced at $5.99, it can be downloaded for $2.99 until the end of the weekend.
Dropsync Pro is a two-way automatic sync client for keeping your Android device(s) in step with your Dropbox account. Some of the more advanced features unlocked in the pro version include syncing multiple folders, syncing the whole Dropbox with a folder on your phone or tablet and support for uploading of file sizes up to several gigabytes, among others.
Like the Go Launcher Prime, requires the free version of Dropsync to be installed first. Once it is, this Dropsync Pro Key app can be downloaded and the full feature set will be unlocked in the free app.
Normally costing $3.99, it can be downloaded until the end of the weekend for $2.99.
OfficeSuite 7 Pro is a fully functional suite of tools that allows you to create, edit and view Word, Excel and PowerPoint files and attachments on your Android device.
Alongside wide-ranging file type support, it goes beyond core document editing tools to offer a file browser that integrates with Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive and SugarSync, so you can also manage your files stored in different cloud services. Even if you don’t download the app, do check out the promo video, it certainly wasn’t as dull as we feared it would be.
Normally costing $14.99, it’s available to download now for a limited time for $4.99.
There are lots of calendar apps for Android if you don’t like the stock option, but DigiCal+ Calendar and Widgets, as we already noted in our best Android calendar apps roundup, strikes a good balance between building on the functionality of the standard calendar but keeping things simple enough to actually use.
Some of the key features only available in this ad-free premium version include: multiple home screen widget options with control over things like background transparency, font sizes, background and text colour for the day, day list, list, grid and month widgets.
With 50 percent off the usual $4.95 asking price, now would be a good time to take a look if it piqued your interest.
➤ DigiCal+ Calendar and Widgets
If livening up your home screen sounds like something you want to do, HD Widgets has got you covered.
With hundreds of different widgets to choose from and a vivid UI, you can create exactly the widget you want – or use one of the pre-made options. Clocks, switches, weather, you’ll find it all here – and for a limited time only, HD Widgets is just $1.49 instead of $1.99.
Pocket Informant 3 (PI3) is another calendar app that made it into our top 12 on Android, just like DigiCal+ which is also on sale.
Above and beyond calendaring tasks, Pocket Informant 3 also acts as more of an organizer but does it in a way that it all remains manageable. I’ve noted before how, I like the option to swipe horizontally across several days at a time to bring them all up in a new window for a quick glance at your schedule for the next few days.
Usually priced at $9.99, PI3 can be yours for just $6.99 if you act fast.
Sketchbook Pro needs little introduction, so we’ll keep this one brief.
With a feature set that includes a full screen work space, multi-touch support, dynamic symmetry and more than 100 pre-set brushes in the library, if you’re into creating digital pictures, it’s worth checking out.
Naturally, there are more advanced features too, and for just $3.99 instead of the usual $4.99 you can explore them to your heart’s content.
Featured Image Credit – Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images
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