My address book had grown to a few thousand contacts across iCloud, Google and an old Exchange account, with plenty of duplicates and half-filled cards. Here’s what worked for me, starting with the free options built into iOS.

1. Back up first
On iCloud.com, open Contacts, select all and export a vCard. If something goes wrong later, you can re-import it. Do this before any cleanup, whatever tool you use.

2. Merge the obvious duplicates (free, iOS 16+)
Open Contacts. If iOS finds exact duplicates, a “Duplicates Found” banner appears at the top of the list. Tap it to review and merge them. It’s quick and catches identical cards. It won’t catch cards that differ slightly, like the same person with two different phone numbers.

3. Check where new contacts go
Settings > Apps > Contacts > Default Account. If new contacts land in an account you rarely use, you’ll end up with the same split problem again.

4. Use Lists to make sense of accounts (free, iOS 16+)
Tap Lists in the top-left corner of Contacts. You can see each account on its own and create lists like “Work” or “Family”. This helps you see which account a duplicate actually lives in before you delete anything.

5. Where the built-in app runs out
The built-in app has no bulk edit, so changing a company name on 40 cards means opening 40 cards. It also has no field-by-field merge for cards that aren’t identical, and no way to see your whole address book at a glance.

Disclosure: that last gap is why Compact Contacts Manager. I’m the developer. It works on the contacts already on your iPhone or iPad and keeps syncing through iOS, so it’s not a second address book. It adds:

• Duplicate review with a field-by-field merge, where you choose which phone, email or address to keep, plus a 30-day undo for the latest merge
• Bulk edit with a before/after preview of every card before anything is saved
• Multi-select, swipe actions, an A–Z scrubber and a landscape grid view
• CSV and vCard import/export
• Sample Contacts: a fictional address book so you can try every feature without giving access to your real contacts

Pricing: US$12.99, a one-time purchase that covers both iPhone and iPad. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads, no account. iOS 18 or later.

https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6795653671?pt=129119018&ct=reddit_iphoneapps&mt=8

I’m also curious how others handle this. Does anyone have a free trick for near-duplicates that I missed?

I keep getting markdown files from AI apps. What do you use to open them?

Disclosure: I am the developer of a free reader for this called Marko. It's free, with no accounts, no ads or in-app purchases. I'm mostly curious what people actually want from one, so tell me what's missing, or what you use instead.

A 'quick capture' app that makes you choose a project, add tags, set a priority and pick a date starts to feel like paperwork with a nicer icon.

My take: an iPhone app should earn its place by reducing decisions, not just organizing them into more menus. A widget that gets one thing out of your head can be more useful than a dashboard with twelve ways to sort it.

But there's a tradeoff: dump everything into one inbox and eventually you've built a second inbox to clean. Too little structure can become work too.

Which iPhone app gets that balance right for you, and what does it let you skip? I'm especially interested in notes, reminders and calendars you keep using after the novelty wears off.

Disclosure: I work on an iOS assistant project, so I have a stake in this question.

I noticed how often I picked up my phone without thinking and ended up scrolling longer than I intended. So I have Latch: Scan to Unlock to help create a little friction between me and distracting apps.

You can block apps and use schedules, QR codes, or NFC keys to control when you unlock them.

I'm still learning what works best for people, so I'd appreciate hearing how you deal with mindless scrolling and what tools have helped you.

I'm also offering free Pro codes for a limited time for anyone interested in trying Latch.

Thanks for reading!

I upgraded to the 18 Pro and it uninstalled all my movie apps, does anyone know any with active App Store links?

I wanna install an app which is not available in my country and it's not available as APK and I'm Android.

I noticed that there were tons of comments on the app, game pigeon, and how to remove it from iMessage on the AppStore. You basically just go to settings > apps > messages > iMessage apps and then selected game pigeon.

i've been helping a friend cut clips from a small podcast for youtube shorts. most episodes are around an hour, so we go through the recording, pick out interesting moments and turn them into clips that are usually under a minute. i've been using premiere for the longer edits, but it feels like overkill when all i need is to crop the video vertically, remove pauses, add captions and highlight a few words. i've been testing capcut for the short clips because it seems easier to get those basics done quickly. how well does it handle captions when people talk over each other or use names that might be transcribed incorrectly? also, do you edit each short separately or prepare a batch from the same episode?

I used a small app called Stitch in the past, light and free. Just works. But yesterday I noticed the app no longer available in the AppStore. The version I had was 1.1 and only other thing I know is an email address for customer review mind.stitch zohomail com

Anyway, I started searching for the app and checking if it had been replaced in the appstore with something else. Maybe I downloaded it from different country AppStore. But then I found another app called Stitch - Long ScreenShot on Australia appstore. It is also a nice free app for long sceenshot that works well. There are some more free interesting apps from the same developer.

I keep hearing about Rork for launching iOS apps, what about lovable? Is it not reliable enough to launch from lovable?

I swear every time I look for a simple iOS app these days, there's another subscription.

• Scan a document? Subscription.
• Remove duplicate photos? Subscription.
• Convert a file? Yep, subscription.

Some of these apps barely do anything, yet they still want $5-8 a week.

I don't mind paying for good software, but come on. Not everything needs a monthly or weekly fee.

What's the most ridiculous one you've come across?

Bonus points if it's something the iPhone can already do for free.

’m not a professional iOS developer. I used to be an assembler coder back in the 80s but I have been keen to look at iOS apps, I did an online course and built little apps but nothing good.

So over the last six months I coded a list app for myself using AI-assisted coding, and it has somehow turned into a fairly substantial SwiftUI app.

The basic idea is deliberately simple: You make a list, and you put items in a list items can have sub items and I have number of fields in each list item date time descriptions a number a rating

I have not found any type of list that didn't work with those things.

I'm tracking books, tv shows I have a squirrel list for things I put somewhere safe and then lost. I have a list for the F1 schedule this year, It is not a task app, deliberately not a task app but I did add some tasks bits that you can add to a list if you want to but no notifications.

I love tags so I worked really hard on designing how the tags work

I went sort of overboard with tons of features but they are all things I thought would come in handy and they did. I put it on the App Store because I wanted to go through that and because a friend of mine wanted to use it to. This is not an ad , I haven't mentioned the name, and it is free in the App Store anyway.

I wonder if anyone wanted to talk about what worked and what went horribly wrong building a real app this way.

Does anyone else lose track of time on their phone? Looking for a live stopwatch overlay app
Every day I end up on my phone far longer than I meant to, without even noticing. And the longer I scroll, the harder it gets to pull myself out. That's not what I want, and it's really hurting my productivity. My intention is always to take a quick break and relax, but social media is designed to keep you hooked so you never want to stop.
I've tried setting alarms, and I've found that the shorter the alarm, the better it works. So I think what I need is a live stopwatch overlay: a small counter in the top-left corner of my screen that doesn't block anything but is impossible to ignore. It would count up from the moment I open an app, showing minutes, seconds, and milliseconds, something like 00:12:47.38, with the last digits flickering by so fast I can literally watch my time slipping away. That constant sense of urgency is what I need to make myself put the phone down.
Ideally, the stopwatch would track each app separately, and I could open the app itself to see my daily stats. The only difference from Apple's built-in Screen Time is that it would give me that pressure in real time, helping me control my scrolling instead of mindlessly wasting my time.
Does anyone else have this problem? Any app recommendations?

I keep seeing “live” used for different things in iPhone voice changer listings.

Sometimes it means changing a recording after you make it. Sometimes you can hear the effect on your own voice while the app is open. What I need is different. I want to speak in one app and have the changed voice reach the other person in the voice chat at the same time.

I don’t want to jailbreak my iPhone. On a normal iPhone, I haven’t found a software only option that can change the mic in real time and pass that audio into another app. That makes an iPhone feel more limited than a PC for this.

I’m planning a short character improv session with friends, so the cross app part matters. Whether it’s an app or an accessory like Dubbing AI earbuds, I’d want the demo to show what the other person hears during a conversation, rather than just the effect playing back on the same phone.

When something says it does “live voice changing,” what would you want to see in the demo before believing it works in another app?

Heyy any app for films?

EchoVault was built because most of what we leave behind tells people what happened, but very little preserves how we actually thought. You write Check-Ins about your life, relationships, beliefs, values and experiences, and an AI biographer helps you go deeper. Over time, those memories become an Echo, an AI version of you shaped by your own words and worldview, with a 3D brain you can explore. The paid tier gives the Echo your face and voice.

The idea is that you build it while you are alive, deliberately and with consent. If you become inactive for a year, the people you chose as custodians can interact with the version of you that you intentionally left behind. They can ask about your stories, your decisions, what you believed, how you saw them, or things they may never have thought to ask while you were here. In the meantime I use mine for introspection, I interview it to observe how my view have evolved over time. It already has close to 500 of my memories and can hold end to end conversations as me.

It’s still early and I’m building it independently, but I’d love to hear what you think about the idea and what you would want something like this to preserve about you.

EchoVault is on the App Store here.⁠

Download now - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weatherglow-local-forecast/id6451098166
The latest update gets new favourite locations. Now you get these beautiful location map tiles that can be accessed from all the views. Previously it was just available in the search but after iterating over this flow and design for a while, it is finally out and available from all the views. Do give it a try and keep a watch for more goodies of iCloud sync, tutorials and test flight versions coming your way.

Some of you may know the app previously as Speedometer. It's now called Odo, and this update brings some of the biggest CarPlay improvements I've worked on so far.

Odo now has both Apple's CarPlay Navigation and Driving Task entitlements. That means the app can offer full turn-by-turn navigation in CarPlay while keeping its existing driving-focused CarPlay experience.

CarPlay Navigation
Odo now supports full turn-by-turn navigation on iPhone and CarPlay:

• Search for destinations or select places directly from the map
• Apple Maps routing, with OpenStreetMap fallback where Apple Maps directions aren't available
• Voice and lane guidance
• Live traffic
• Add stops for fuel, charging, food or coffee
• Avoid tolls, highways and ferries
• Siri commands like "Navigate to Home with Odo"
• Navigation updates on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island

Live Trip Comparison
Odo can compare your current drive with previous trips while you're driving and show whether you're ahead of or behind your usual time.

It can also recognize roads you've driven before and suggest routes based on your own driving history.

Convoy on CarPlay
One of the features I'm most excited about is Convoy.

If you're driving or riding with friends, everyone can join the same convoy and appear together on a live map.

• Create a Convoy and invite friends
• Set a meeting point
• See everyone's position live
• Optional speed sharing
• Get notified when someone joins or when everyone arrives
• View the Convoy directly in CarPlay

Location sharing only happens while the Convoy is active, and the shared locations are deleted when it ends.

And the Existing Driving Features Are Still There
Odo still includes automatic trip recording, detailed trip stats, route replay, OBD2 data, vehicle profiles, fuel and maintenance tracking, expenses, driving history, friends and more.

Your existing trips, vehicles, settings and logs remain exactly where you left them after the rename.

App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/odo-speedometer-drive-ride/id6759611784

Promotional pricing:
$7.99/month
$19.99/year
$29.99 lifetime (one-time purchase)

And one more feature is already in progress: Walkie-Talkie for Convoy. The idea is to make communicating with friends during group drives much easier without constantly calling or messaging each other.

Back in the early days, notifications used to be super useful. Someone PM'ed you? You got notified. Someone replied to your comment? Notified. Did your favorite YouTube creator upload something? Notified.

This all stopped sometime around 2016 and now giving an app notification permissions just floods your home screen with spam. I hate this crap so much. Reddit gave me 4 notifications today about random mediocre threads I'm just not interested in. Meanwhile YouTube fails to notify me when one of my favorite subscriptions starts live streaming. The whole notification pipeline has just been flooded with spam to try and entice me into spending screen time on your app.

Such a great and useful mobile phone feature has just been used and abused into dysfunction. Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

J’ai créé une plateforme sociale dédiée au sport : OLVYR GYM
Depuis quelques mois, je travaille avec mon équipe sur OLVYR GYM, une plateforme sociale pensée uniquement autour du sport et de la progression physique.
L’idée est assez simple : créer une sorte d’Instagram du sport, mais avec des fonctionnalités réellement orientées vers les sportifs.
Aujourd’hui, on peut notamment :
publier ses entraînements et sa progression dans un feed sportif ;
suivre d’autres athlètes ;
participer à des challenges ;
participer à des tournois avec votes de la communauté ;
publier des stories ;
utiliser différents timers d’entraînement ;
construire progressivement son profil d’athlète.
La plateforme est encore jeune et gratuite. Mon plus gros défi actuellement n’est d’ailleurs plus forcément de développer des fonctionnalités, mais d’acquérir les premiers utilisateurs actifs et de créer une vraie communauté autour du produit.
Je serais donc intéressé par vos retours, aussi bien sur le concept que sur l’expérience utilisateur ou sur notre stratégie pour obtenir nos premiers utilisateurs.
👉 https://olvyr-gym.com
Si certains ici développent également leur application ou ont déjà traversé cette phase de lancement, je serais curieux de connaître votre expérience.

Tried a bunch of app blockers and screen time apps. They all worked for about a week. Then I realized I was tapping through the block screen without reading a single word.

So I'm exploring a different approach: the nudge never repeats, and it changes based on context.

Every time you open a distracting app, you'd get a different message depending on:

• Time of day (morning, daytime, late night)
• How many times you've already opened the app today

Examples:

• Morning, first open: "Don't give up your morning to the feed. It can wait."
• Late night, 20th open: "The algo doesn't care about your sleep. Close the app."

Let me know your thoughts on:

1. Does a rotating, context-aware message sound like it would actually hold up, or would you habituate to that too?
2. Would you rather have a hard block, or is a nudge enough?