What iOS subscription apps are worth it for you?

I’m looking at TweetBot 6 for 7.99 CAD and Infuse 7 for 9.99 CAD a year. Maybe Drafts for 24.49 a year but that’s it.

Some of these others want upwards of $50 a year ugh. New versions of what were formerly paid apps of course.

Pocket wants 62.99 CAD and 52.99 for Fantastical.

I subscribe to deliveries for $5/year because it has an online component and the price is reasonable. That’s it, I don’t subscribe to apps.

Hmm I own Deliveries already and $5 sounds reasonable. It looks like that, Infuse and TweetBot will be it for me.

I am working on cutting down my apps subs.

Keepers so Far: Tweetbot.

Going: 1Password. I just need to move some secure notes and software licenses out of there before end of October.

On the fence: Ulysses and 1Blocker. Ulysses I am grandfathered into for the $25.yr, and it’s the best writing app I’ve come across. I am looking at moving over to IA Writer for blog posts.

  • 1Blocker ($5/year.) May need to re-evaluate once new Safari situation settles down
  • Fantastical (yeah, I know. I won’t need it for my next job, I’m sure)
  • Castro podcast app ($19/year.) I love podcasts and like the triage model better than Overcast or Pocket Casts so this is an easy yes

I also have my family on 1Password for $30/year but I don’t really see that as an iOS subscription, just as I don’t Disney+ etc.

Instead of 1Blocker my AdGuard Pro was a 1 time purchase. Not sure if it’s because mine is grandfathered with the VPN mode or not.

Oh I love Overcast and have to look at how much that is.

Lol wtf I’m already on a Castro sub I forgot about.

I pay for:
Deliveries - $4.99/year
Overcast - $9.99/year (subscribed once because I needed the File Uploads feature, never use it anymore but let the subscription continue because I like the app)
Tweetbot 6 - $5.99/year
Halide - $9.99/year

I recently tried “Glass”, which is like “Fancy Instagram”, and it was nice, but $4.99/month or $29.99/year is too expensive for what it offered as is, plus a social network is only as interesting as who I’m using it with. As far as Instagram has gone downhill from where it started, it’s still where my friends and family are. No one I care about is going to pay for a fancy instagram.

I use 1Blocker, but it’s not a subscription. I was apparently grandfathered into some features, though there are still some I don’t have w/o the subscription. I haven’t looked at it recently, but apparently I can just get a lifetime subscription to 1Blocker Premium for $12.99, which I might go ahead and do, or if not $4.99/year is more than reasonable.

I use Fantastical without the subscription too. Their subscription pricing seemed insane to me, but if there’s a market for it, more power to them. The free functionality isn’t much different from the built in iOS calendar app, but the visual style of Fantastical is slightly more appealing to me, and now I’m just accustomed to using it more than the built in app.

I have:

  • Twitterrific for 0.99/month
  • 1Blocker for some ridiculously low price of $4.99 A YEAR!
  • Pocket Cast because I needed a Windows desktop version that syncs with iOS - 0.99/month
  • Parcel, Delivery Tracking for another ridiculously low price of $3.99 A YEAR!
  • Tapatalk - I don’t use it much, just the occasional forum but it is $0.49/month, so what the heck.

I use a bunch that have already been mentioned (Drafts, Halide, Tweetbot, etc.). I track all my subs on spreadsheet, and most of them are pretty cheap on an annual basis, so I am fine with it.

Also:
Apollo (A Reddit app, although I think I bought a lifetime sub)
Carrot Weather
Obsidian (I paid mostly because I want to support the app)
Craft (probably going because I like Obsidian more)
Rungap (fitness thing)
Tempo Run

Yes, I gladly paid $50 for the lifetime of Apollo.

May I suggest a free iOS app called Bobby to track your subscription? It will show you a monthly and yearly cost. And will notify you a day/a week in advance when your sub is to be renewed. They have other features you can buy one time if you want to e.g. category, dark mode, etc

That sounds great, but I also pay for Office 365. I need to find a use for Excel somehow. :-)

(I have a huge finance workbook that tracks almost everything.)

I stuck with the old version of tweetbot. No online component.

I was grandfathered into 1blocker too but that version only very rarely updates blocklists. Definitely not paying for that, as 1blocker just loads up lists created by the community like easylist. I switched to adguard, which is free for Safari blocking.

I think the only recurring subscription I have is for Cronometer - a very good calorie tracker and meal planner IMO. It has helped me be a lot more disciplined about my diet.

Otherwise, I cancel things as soon as I subscribe - I loathe auto renewal.

The one exception on desktop is Obsidian, which I use for both personal and mostly work note taking, and I find the cloud service worthwhile for that.

I’m happy to pay for software I like. Reeder (RSS reader) has avoided the subscription trend by just releasing a new point version every couple of years, but if Silvio asked for a subscription, that would be an easy one.

I pay for Carrot Weather but with Dark Sky getting acquired by Apple and rolling up into the OS, not sure if I’ll keep it.

Tweetbot is worth the entry price.

Castro is great not just for subscribing to tons of podcasts, but also useful because it can extract audio from just about anything and saves it into iCloud. I use it to get through some YouTube rants that I wouldn’t want to sit and watch.

Apple Arcade and the other stuff in the One bundle is also well worth paying for.

For RSS reader, I was using Unread, but that went subscription based soon after NetNewsWire got released, so I switched to that. NNW works great for my needs, and I think I can drop my Feedbin sub next year and just use its sync without a service. I like RSS readers, but I am not sure I like them enough to pay for them.

Apple Arcade has turned out to be great just for the classics. If I feel like gaming, there is usually something there worth downloading. One in general has been pretty good. I don’t use News+ a ton, but it’s got some decent stuff on there.

I need to figure out RSS as well. I started using Reeder as of v5, and I’ve really fallen in love with it. I connect my NewsBlur account which is $36/year. I’m no longer using their interface but I still have the filtering set up. It seems like there should be some service that is great at providing and filtering feeds, that doesn’t waste any time with UI and connects to Reeder. I’m happy there are so many competing services but it makes research challenging. :)

I used Reeder for many years but recently switched to Lire. Also not a subscription.

What’s the best premium e-book EPUB reader app these days?

Lire looks nice. I’d be willing to switch from Reeder if the keyboard shortcuts are good enough. Would still need to figure out the feed fetching end.