Working at home means you're surrounded by all of your stuff: from that pile of dirty dishes in your sink to that pile of laundry that's still unfolded. And maybe you have a pressing deadline along with a pressing need to sort that pile of books (you sure do have a lot of piles!). Good news: you can do both with the help of a few time management and chore management apps that can double as productivity boosters when you need to get a handle on your day.

There's no shortage of budgeting apps out there, but sometimes, rather than futzing with categories, charts, graphs and daily alerts that you're over a pre-set budget or have "irregular spending" in a certain category, you just want something simple to track the money you're spending.

There are plenty of great apps to keep track of your running mileage, and a clear winner when it comes to cycling (Strava, duh). But it's a bit harder to pick a winner when you're lifting in the gym. Until recently, all the apps were clunky and hard to use. Now... well, only some of them are.

Being a notepad and pen replacement is just one of the roles that smartphones fill for us now — alongside being a digital camera, a musical jukebox, an address book, and an ever-expanding encyclopedia. Not all the options are created equal, though. Whatever the reason you need to take down notes, these are the best tools to do the job.

Instagram is making it easier for people with visual impairments to experience its site. Today it started rolling out a new automatic alternative text feature which will create descriptions of photos uploaded to the social networks using object recognition technology.

Sneaking a quick nap on your regular commute is a risky move. If your alarm doesn't wake you (assuming you had the foresight to set one) then chances are you'll miss your stop, be late and end up somewhere you don't want to be. Fortunately for those living in Victoria, Metro Trains has an app called "Stop Here", specifically designed to avoid this scenario

Earlier this year I embraced the greatness that is Instagram stories. While I'll typically spend a good deal of time trying to capture the perfect image with the perfect caption to put on regular Instagram, with Instagram stories I'm willing to post pretty much anything. When given the choice I also like to add stickers and GIFs to what I post, sometimes at a level that (wrong) people might call excessive.

All browsers: Google and Dropbox are now collaborating on a brand-new "Dropbox add-on for Gmail", which will make it easy to share the contents of your Dropbox directly within Gmail. If you're going the other way, it's also a lot easier to dump files directly into your Dropbox, saving you the step of having to pull up your Downloads folder and manually drag the file over yourself.

iOS, Android: Keepsafe, the company behind privacy-focused apps like Blur for iMessage and Private Photo Vault, launched a new app this week for browsing the web privately. Aptly named Keepsafe Browser, the browser prevents third-party trackers from snooping on your mobile web browsing and comes with a built-in ad blocker to give you a little more privacy as you peruse the web.

I've lost almost $400,000 worth of bitcoin so far. Now's the bit where I'm supposed to tell you it's all fake and I only lost it in the cryptocurrency trading simulation game Bitcoin Flip. But no, I actually bought $500 worth of bitcoin back when it was cheap, then left it in the hands of the Mt. Gox online exchange, which then lost it.

Carrot Weather, the famously mouthy weather app for iOS and Mac, is now in beta on Android. The app reports the weather with sarcastic patter, doing a mediocre impression of the abusive AI from Portal. Thankfully, you can switch to "professional" mode and enjoy a sophisticated, customisable weather app without distractions.

Earlier this year, Snapchat rolled out a drastic redesign meant to make the confusing social network a little easier for newcomers to understand. But the new layout flopped and now Snapchat is admitting defeat with a second redesign that undoes almost all of those changes.

I already know I'm addicted to my smartphone, and if you've ever absentmindedly reached into your pocket and switched on the screen without realising it, you're probably just as hooked as I am. These devices have become so ingrained into our lives that it's hard to tell how often we check them, but a new Android app lets you dig into the data to see exactly how much time (and battery life) you're wasting on a daily basis.

The slimmer version of the Facebook app for Android, Facebook Lite, has been available in select countries since 2015. This however excluded the likes of the US, Australia and the UK. Yesterday, the social networking giant opened the app to the aforementioned nations -- including Australia -- if you're keen on the lightweight version.

If you've been thinking about purchasing a Galaxy S9 but aren't quite sure you're ready to bite the bullet, Samsung has created a way for you to give the phone a test drive using your current device.

Snapchat recently released a redesign that hasn't exactly been a hit with its most loyal users. With most apps, if you opt for the upgrade you're stuck with the new version until the developer puts out something new.

iOS/Android: I hate mobile browsing. When I open Safari, I'm usually trying to google something quickly, then go back to my other apps. Lately I've been trying the mobile browser Cake, publicly released for iOS and Android today and it's made searching much faster.

Most of the time, when a notification pops up on my phone I can decide in a split second whether I need to deal with it immediately. But every once in a while I make the wrong call, swiping away an important alert that sends me digging through Gmail or Twitter to type out what should have been a quick response.

Most of us end up getting a ton of email during the day. As it turns out, I see a lot of that email via the notification bar on my phone. I want to know what emails have come in, but not enough to go into the Gmail app on the phone, and so browsing them in Notifications is a quick and easy solution. When I see something in there I want to read or respond to, I launch the app.