My phone and I are definitely good friends. Although my screen time isn’t obscenely high, I still spend a lot of time on my phone and have a lot of apps that entertain me or help me out in my day to day life. I mean, why check Facebook on your computer when you could check it on your phone and computer at the same time? I ask myself that question every day.
Ok, time to end the unfunny discussion of my phone habits. Basically, for this post I’m going to show y’all what’s on my phone as well as my favorite apps. This isn’t an original idea or anything, but I thought it’d be pretty useful, and maybe y’all can find some recommendations for apps you might want to use. I’ve grouped the different apps into a few categories, so feel free to skip around to whatever you might need recommendations for. I hope y’all find this useful, though you may just want to watch the satisfying coloring time lapses over and over and that’s cool too. Happy reading!
General
This section isn’t for apps, but rather, it’s for all of the general features of my phone: the case, the wallpapers, and the layout. I couldn’t take a picture of the back of my phone with my phone, so I wasn’t able to get an actual photo of my phone case. My case is an Otterbox Symmetry with gold and white feathers on it, and it’s an absolute dream. I’ve dropped my phone a few too many times for comfort, and this case is thin yet still protective. I’ve had it for almost two years now, and it hasn’t failed me (*knock on wood*). I have an iPhone XS, and I wasn’t able to find the exact case online, so here’s the same pattern on an iPhone SE.
Moving onto what’s actually on my phone. I have way too good of a time finding different ~aesthetic~ phone wallpapers (no really, just search aesthetic wallpaper on Google), and these two images are just what I have on my phone right now. My lock screen is a painting of the beach with the words “the world is quiet here”, and my home screen is a drawing of these really cute planets and stars. Speaking of planets and stars, remember when the area 51 raid was a thing? Wild. Anyway, these two images are really cute and I love having them as my home and lock screens.
Finally, the layout of my phone. It’s not anything special, but I like to keep apps in the same category organized in folders and the apps that I use on a daily basis front and center. I don’t go folder by folder in this post, so I’m just going to real quick explain what each of my folders are for. Utilities: apps that come with the phone that I use a lot. Social: social media. School: productivity apps, apps to check my grades/assignments, and apps used for work-related communication. Apple Extras: apps that come with the phone that I never use (I know you don’t use Keynote either). Extras: entertainment/fun stuff.
Music
Spotify is the only app that I use for music (as well as podcasts!!) because I’m not trying to pay for Apple Music. Okay that’s kind of hypocritical given that I have Spotify Premium, but it was a gift so not my own money? Spotify’s pretty self-explanatory, but check out my favorites post for some of my music recs. Peep the Taylor Swfit.
Social Media
Left: Socials folder. Right: VSCO.
Ah yes, social media. Because putting your life on the Internet is everyone’s life goal! I don’t have too many socials, but the ones I do have are WeChat, Facebook, Instagram, and VSCO (it’s a photo editing app, but you can chat and favorite stuff so I put it here). I used to have Snapchat and TikTok, but they were deleted for taking up too much of my time :’). WeChat is a messaging app similar to WhatsApp or GroupMe that I use to talk to my family. Facebook and Instagram are pretty commonplace, and I also have the Messenger app to go along with Facebook. Please don’t roast me for having Facebook while below the age of 40, thank you. I use VSCO to edit my photos and post the pictures that don’t make it onto my Instagram. My VSCO page is basically just food and subpar photos of myself.
Productivity
These are the apps that I use to get to that peak performance. The first one is called Habit, and it’s my habit tracker that I started using this year to maintain my new year’s resolutions and keep up with some healthy habits. I just check off the little dot when I do the habit, and I can also see how often I’ve been keeping up with each habit. I’ve color coded each habit, so blue is health, yellow is technology, and purple is productivity. It’s been really helpful when trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle, which is something that’s become pretty hard to do in quarantine.
The second app that I started using this year is Daylio, which is a mood tracker. Each day I report what my overall mood was, and I can see an overview of how I was feeling for the month or year. The year in pixels is something that I’m really looking forward to completing, too.
The final productivity app is a health and fitness app called Nike Run Club, which is, as the name indicates, run by Nike. I use it to track my runs, which is useful when I’m running outside and might not know the exact time, distance, or number of calories burned. I can see all of that information as well as more statistics on this app, so it’s been really useful.
School
Left: phone folder. Right: Duolingo.
As much as school and I aren’t besties, I sure have a lot of apps downloaded to help me with it. I have a bunch of Google apps, such as Gmail, Classroom, Drive, Docs, and Sheets, so I can edit files, check emails, and view coursework on my phone. It just makes my life a lot easier because I might not be around a computer all the time, and I’m sometimes too lazy to send files back and forth between devices. I also have an app to check my grades (ew) and Blackboard, which is also used to view coursework. Finally, I have Duolingo, which I used a lot in the past when I was determined to learn Spanish. No fue bien. Before you ask, I had to Google translate that and it means “it didn’t go well”. Which it evidently didn’t.
Work
A host of apps that all do the same dang thing. I have work group chats on each of them to make it easier for me to check and respond to messages. Discord I use for the company I tutor for (no gaming here, sorry), and Slack I use for my internship, clubs at school, and another volunteer job I have. Both Discord and Slack have servers for a company/organization, and you can create individual channels in those servers for specific teams.
WhatsApp and GroupMe I actually don’t have any need for because the organization I used GroupMe for moved onto Discord and the organization I used WhatsApp for has only emailed me. I should probably delete them, but here they are. They just allow for group chats and messaging. SportsHi is a company that I did a marketing internship for, and it’s an app for college recruiting that allows athletes to connect with college coaches. I’m not looking to play volleyball in college, but I have the app because of that job since our company group chat was on there.
Fun Stuff
Last one, best one! These are just some of my games and apps that just happen to be in this folder. Sandbox is a coloring app where you can color pictures pixel by pixel, so it’s kind of like a paint by numbers, but all of the spaces are little squares. The time lapses are the best part.
Left: fun stuff folder. Right: Candy Crush ft. the level I can't beat.
Tune For Ukulele is just the app I use to uh, tune my ukulele. Candy Crush is a very well-known game, so I don’t really have to do too much explaining, but it’s something I downloaded in March as part of competition with friends, got addicted to, and then stopped using around April when I got stuck on a very hard level. I still haven’t beaten it.
So, that’s everything on my phone! Hope you guys found this interesting, and have a good one!
Cover photo: China
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