Quick question: What is the first app you check every morning?
According to TechCrunch and Google’s reports of the five most popular apps of 2020, chances are it might be TikTok, Instagram, or even Zoom.
At #LatinaGeeks, we are skipping past the obvious must-haves and rounding up the most underrated apps to download for productivity, community, personal finance, and self-care:
Productivity
Forest: Here is an app – which you download into your smartphone – that charges you a $1.99 fee to “help you stay away from your smartphone.” We are not kidding. Forest takes a creative approach to cutting down time wasted on your phone so you can focus on work, or other tasks that require your full attention. The premise? Check out the photo below. (4.8/5 Apple Store rating)
1Password: What is worse than trying to remember the exact password to one of your countless online accounts? According to OnePassword: nothing. This app stores all your passwords, and keeps them safe and secure behind one password that only you know. (4.5/5) While we are at it – check out this #LatinaGeeks blog post about online security!
TechCrunch: Get all your tech news on one site with TechCrunch. The app easily allows you to personalize your content, save articles to read later, and stay abreast of all the latest news and updates within Silicon Valley, venture capital, and the technology space. (3/5)
Evernote: This app is the perfect tool for entrepreneurs who are always thinking up new ideas and need a quick place to jot them down! Download Evernote to quickly document and organize your notes and access them from any device. (4.4/5)
Community
Citizen: Aside from notifying you of local curfew alerts and real-time 911 alerts in your area, Citizen has a new feature that helps you track COVID-19 related updates amongst your friends and family. (4.8/5)
Alignable: This is the perfect app for small business owners looking to grow organically through word-of mouth and referrals. Joining helps users build trusted relationships and generate referrals. (3.2/5)
Personal Finance
Digit: This app helps you save, invest, pay off debt, and prevent overdrafts. You set your own savings goals (i.e. amount of money and ideal deadline) and Digit sneakily re-allocates your money on a weekly basis, almost unnoticeably, to help you meet your goals. Another key feature – Digit sends you one daily text message briefly outlining your checking account balance and savings updates. (4.7/5)
Self-Care
AllTrails: Calling all outdoors enthusiasts! This app boasts over half a million Apple Store reviews; it uses your zip-code (which you provide voluntarily – nothing creepy here) to narrow down all the hiking trails, campsites, and generally fresh-air-forward attractions near you. The best part? It allows you to filter trails by level of difficulty, length, and customer reviews. Think Yelp, but for hiking. (4.9/5)
Insight Timer: This free meditation app helps you incorporate moments of mindfulness to your busy days, and promises to fit into any hyper-booked schedule. With 70k guided meditations and 9k teachers, you should be able to find something that works for you, even if that means one-minute meditation sessions once a week. Everything counts! (4.9/5)
Downdog: We promise we did not leave the one fitness app for last on purpose (or did we?). Downdog has over 60k yoga, barre, and workout sessions all available in up to nine different languages, spanning across difficulty level and speed, and features a library of music you can pick for each workout based on your taste or your mood. We highly recommend trying Downdog’s free version, especially as fitness-focused New Year’s resolutions loom ever so closely. (4.9/5)
Lastly, our honorable mentions include: Causes (Community), Mint (Personal Finance), Sleeptimer and Nike Training Club (Self-Care). We would have listed them in detail, but there is such a thing as a character limit for these posts.
Tell us, did your favorite apps of the year make the cut?
This article was written by Laura Dominguez
Laura immigrated to the U.S. from Colombia in 2008, and now lives in sunny Los Angeles, California. In her job as a Career Services Manager at Flockjay, she helps “nontraditional” job-seekers launch their career in Tech Sales. Laura specializes in working with underrepresented minorities, and is passionate about helping tech companies meet their D&I goals, one hire at a time. In addition to #LatinaGeeks, Laura has worked with 4.0 Schools and Saturday Business Academy in Southern California.
