Apps

PSA: Today, September 30, is the last day to get CardPointers before it gets more expensive.

9to5Mac readers can sign up for CardPointers for $30 per year (a 50% discount). There’s also a lifetime option for 9to5Mac readers at $100 (a 50% discount). Plus, you can unlock a $100 Savings Card as a sign up bonus with the Lifetime plan – effectively making the CardPointers+ upgrade free.

CardPointers pricing will increase to $72 per year or $240 for lifetime purchases next week.

As someone who loves playing the “credit card points game,” CardPointers is one of my all-time favorite iPhone and iPad apps. CardPointers makes it incredibly easy to know which card to use to maximize your rewards on each purchase.

Funn Media makes some of our favorite health and fitness apps (plus one of the most addictive iPhone games ever). This year, Funn Media is rolling out updates to its full suite of apps to take advantage of iOS 18, including new Control Center widgets, support for new Home Screen features, and much more.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

MoneyCoach is an all-in-one personal finance app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. It has unique budgeting features, helps track your financial goals, and prioritizes privacy.

The fan-favorite cutting app Channels is rolling out a big update this month focused on personalization. Channels 6.0 for Apple TV and iOS adds a new “Personal Sections” feature, customized navigation, a new “Theater Mode” experience, and more. Head below for the full details.

Microsoft has announced a big shift for its mobile app strategy. The standalone Xbox Game Pass app is being discontinued, with its features being merged into the existing Xbox app for iOS. Here are the full details.

A new bill in California, dubbed “Click to Cancel,” has been signed into law. It requires companies to make it as quick and easy to cancel subscriptions as it was to subscribe in the first place.

Thanks to FTC interest, with Adobe being specifically called out on this, the provision may also become federal law …

Raycast, the powerful launcher app for Mac, is officially in the works for iPhone (and Windows). The popular power user tool has been Mac-only since its debut, but the iPhone version is coming next year, and there’s a waitlist to join a beta sooner. Here’s what the company had to say about it.

macOS Sequoia screen recording permission reminders can now be permanently vanquished, thanks to a new pay-what-you-like app.

Apple’s new security feature was intended to make Macs safer, by reminding us that we’d granted a powerful and potentially dangerous permission to an app, but many experienced users simply found it irritating …

Obscura is a powerful third-party camera app for iPhone, and it just got even more capable. With the launch of iOS 18 and the iPhone 16, Obscura can now be accessed directly from your iPhone’s Lock Screen, adjusted via the Camera Control, and more.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

Pyxis is an interesting and new location based note taking app that allows you to quickly jot down things down, attach photos, and assign tags to keep them organized. Once you write down your note, you can view them all on a neat little globe, allowing you to easily view your notes based on where they were taken.

Dark Noise, the powerful ambient noise app, has been updated to take advantage of iOS 18. This includes new dark and tint mode icons, as well as deep integration with the all-new Control Center experience in iOS 18.

Setapp Mobile, a third-party iOS app store offering multiple apps for a single monthly subscription, is now available to anyone in the EU. It follows an invitation-only beta that launched back in May.

As with any third-party app store, Apple makes you jump through quite a few hoops to install it, but downloading apps from within it is then quick and easy …

Widgetsmith, everyone’s favorite aesthetic app, is getting a big update today to take advantage of iOS 18. As detailed in a blog post, Widgetsmith 7 “takes device customization to all-new levels.” The update focuses on new customizable Actions that can be added to the Control Center, Lock Screen, and Home Screen.

iOS 18 is a huge release for iPhone users. It brings major improvements to system apps like Photos, Messages, Notes, and more. The update also introduces a brand new app: Passwords, which makes password management on Apple devices easier than ever. Here’s a look at everything that iOS 18’s new Passwords app can do.

You’d think that dating apps would help people find better partners, given that they allow daters to expand their dating pool beyond the people they meet organically, but new research suggests that isn’t the case.

The research even suggests that online dating may have negative effects on society as a whole, by reducing social mobility …

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

CardPointers helps users maximize their credit card rewards and offers, saving users money. If you have multiple credit cards, it can often be difficult to mentally keep track of the best way to earn the most points. Additionally, if you have cards with high annual fees, you’ll often have various perks and credits to help you offset your annual fee, but it might be hard to actually use all of those credits, especially the monthly ones. CardPointers aims to make credit card rewards easier for everyone.

Plus, 9to5Mac readers can also save 30% on CardPointers+ by signing up through the web and get a $100 Savings Card.

Apple has created a new way for developers to entice users back to their apps. Soon, you may start seeing special offers from subscription apps whose plans you’ve canceled.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

FitBee is a modern calorie and macronutrient tracker for the iPhone, focused on speed and data accuracy. A lot of other calorie counting apps will take too much time to process, can’t find the food you’re looking for, or contain inaccurate data. FitBee aims to streamline this process for everyone.

There are a lot of task managers out there, but most of them are focused on personal tasks. For those who are constantly reminding other people about things they have to do, developer Mustafa Yusuf has created Karo – a new app for managing and sending tasks to any of your contacts.

Gentler Sreak, the popular fitness and wellness app available for Apple platforms, is getting another update. This time, the developers behind the app are introducing a new Workout Summaries feature, which essentially turns Gentler Streak into a workout journal.