iOS, Android: I’m pretty sure Alarmy is evil, but perfect, because a good alarm clock should be two-parts irritating, one-part useful. You don’t want to hate your alarm clock whenever it wakes you up each morning, but a great alarm app shouldn’t be very easy to turn off (tempting you to you go back to bed).

Android: For whatever reason, Google has yet to give its Android YouTube app the long-awaited update that finally unlocks dark mode. iOS users can dark mode. Web viewers can dark mode. But Android? It's the light side or nothing (at least, as of when we wrote this article).

Android: There are plenty of people who don't need bells and whistles when an easy-to-understand, well-designed app will do. And that's my impression of Google's new Podcasts app - teased for some time and finally made available for download as of yesterday.

Android/iOS: What's on your network? You can always pull up your router's web interface to get a sense of which devices are connected, but you're probably just going to get a list of MAC addresses and assigned IPs - not very helpful. The app Fing - Network Scanner is a great, free way to get a better idea of all the devices your router has to deal with.

iOS/Android: Philips has released a major update to its Hue app that actually makes it worth using. And I'm not being over the top when I say that; prior to this update, the Hue app was a mess. It felt like it took forever to load; the user interface was challenging, to put it nicely; and it made me set off on a hunt for the best third-party apps I could use to control my fancy Hue lights without the headache and stress of the official Hue app.

Nobody likes a boring home screen. And while you get a number of default options within Android to pretty up your device, you can get a lot more creative if you build your own live wallpaper. KLWP Live Wallpaper Maker is the perfect "the sky is the limit" app, for its usefulness is directly correlated to how much time you're willing to spend in it, making the live wallpaper of your dreams.

Google News is pretty much a household phrase nowadays, and the company just release a big update to its Android and iOS apps that adds in a lot of machine learning. Presumably, this will help you get more relevant and interesting news to read within the app.