Why does the Monday commute home feel like the longest commute of your life?. Why not use it productively? Time to kick back and spend some quality time decompressing with your Android, iPhone, or Windows Phone.
Android
QuizUp
The astoundingly popular trivia game came to Android this week, making the pool of potential challengers even enormous-er. With over 200,000 questions in more than 400 topic areas, more than 10 million players worldwide, and new topics added weekly, if you get bored with QuizUp, you’re too smart to be spending so much time playing with your phone. [Free]
AlarmPad
Sure, your Android has a built-in alarm clock, but it’s a tricycle compared to AlarmPad. This baby brings you the weather report and your day’s calendar events along with your alarm, and lets you set alarms at whatever crazy interval you want. Best yet, it even has voice functions, so you can hit snooze without actually touching your phone. The free, ad-supported version lets you set 5 alarms, while a $1 upgrade to AlarmPad Pro gives you unlimited alarms and no ads. [Free]
Adobe Revel
Revel gives you the ability to share your favourite photos with family and friends, without “sharing” them with the entire internet. The centralised library works on a whole plethora of devices, with automatic backup and syncing to all your devices so you’ll never fear losing your favourite frames. [Free]
iOS
Bills Forecast
Your smartphone notifies you when you have an email, and when your friends have checked in to the taco joint down the street. Why not have it ping you when your bills are due? Bills Forecast lets you categorize low, medium, and high priority bills, schedule a push notification when they’re coming up, and monitor your spending with weekly and monthly statements. Plus, it syncs with your iCloud calendar, so all your info is in one spot. [$2]
StackMotion
This fun little photo editor app lets you snip out foreground subjects and superimpose them on the background of your choice. It’s like having a green screen in your iPhone. You can even use a panorama, slide show, or video as the background and — naturally — share your creations via social media. [$2]
UP Coffee
This handy app helps you balance your love of coffee with your need for sleep. Jot down the caffeine-containing things you consume throughout the day, note your energy levels, and after 10 days you’ll get a customised readout showing you how your caffeine consumption is impacting your sleep, and how to tweak it for maximum rest and energy. Pair it with a Jawbone UP fitness tracker for even more data. [Free]
Windows Phone
Facebook Messenger
The official messaging app from the ubiquitous social media juggernaut finally makes its way to Windows Phone, letting you carry on your Facebook conversations without having to continually refresh Facebook. It brings with it all of the messaging features of full-flavour Facebook, including location sharing and message read notifications, and it shows you as logged in on your friends’ chat lists. [Free]
Music Drop
There’s something great about an app that does one thing and does it well. Music Drop lets you wirelessly transfer music files from any computer to your Windows Phone. Just link both devices to the same network, launch the app, and it will generate a URL to punch into the computer’s browser. In that tab, just drag and drop your music files, and they will pop right up on your phone. Sweet! [Free]