HN Explorer

Ask HN: Best Ad-Free iOS Apps?

8 points by als0 ↗ HN
I recently downloaded Organic Maps, which provides beautiful offline maps without ads. I was just stunned with the quality.

There was also a recent thread about ad-free open source Android apps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37463662 including this project from KIT: https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/105.php

What would you say is your favourite iOS app that meets these qualities?

8 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 30.3 ms ] thread
sgt
There must be tons of ad free iOS apps but generally most apps worth using cost something. Even just a small amount. A lovely app I use is Exoplanet[0]. Granted, it has an in-app purchase to make it ad free but that's like a cup of coffee.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/exoplanet/id327702034

als0
> There must be tons of ad free iOS apps

You say that but they’re actually really hard to find because discoverability in the App Store is terrible. There is no way of filtering for them either.

By the way, that’s a very cool app - thank you for sharing!

sgt
There should be another listing ... a curated list of iOS apps that are more focused on quality. There must be tons of such lists but I bet it's not like in a Wiki format.
k310
My old favorite daily, iosnoops, has quit operations. There, you could get daily "gone free" and "price drop" listings, and I grabbed plenty of free and discounted apps. They indicated in color apps with IAP's/subscriptions and new apps (mostly subscriptions these days) So, ALL of my ios apps are ad-free. A price drop to free almost always means ad-free vs. always free, meaning all too often ads inside.

So, I am looking at appsliced and igeeksblog as substitutes but they fall flat.

Of the apps I put on the new iPad, I like (and some of these I actually paid for) Basic! and techBASIC (out of nostalgia), some databases that I don't use, QuakeWatch (it's CA), ForScore (the reason I got an iPad1 long ago) MaxCurve (lets you adjust photos like xv did and Gimp does, on a curve) Kanban and list apps I don't use, outliners I don't use (I put rarely used apps in folders to hide them) Promised myself to try logseq and Obsidian, and Joplin, as I cancelled the Evernote subscription for obvious reasons,

Carnets (essentially Jupyter) a-Shell (looks to be a complete unix VM) Processing, various star apps, Trunk Notes still seems to work, as does kiwi (I Like Wikis) Promised myself to try tiddly wiki. Paprika Recipe Manager (they jacked up prices with a new version. I have the older version/ios and macos)

File Explorer, highly recommended, By Evgeny Cherpak (goes on sale for free now and then) It's remote file access. Works when airdrop fails or balks, which is too often. I really hate bluetooth. And I dropped all password managers but Samurai Safe. Trying Sheriff to block cookies and JavaScript on a per-site basis.

I forgot PhotoSync. It's not free but works with everything ... Only photo transfer app I know of that will do that. I got "Symbols" because for unknown reasons, I can't search for emoji on the iPhone, unlike the other devices. Autosuggest is supposed to hint at emoji, but that depends on the app, so it seems. Apple puzzles me at times.

Cheers

carlosjobim
NetNewsWire RSS reader is the gold standard of how a free app for iOS should be.

There's also tons of cheap high quality apps for iOS, usually your time is better spent paying for quality.

skydhash
KeePassium

Things

iA Writer

Bobby

Streaks

1Writer

Anybox

Bear

Doppler

BookPlayer

Reeder

That's pretty much all the apps that I use. I can't support Ads and I pay for quality apps that doesn't have to rely on them.

5041us
GymBook, Seconds & WorkOutdoors are good fitness apps that also work really well with the apple watch - each of these apps offers pro options without the need for a subscription.