I am looking for 100% ad-free apps for older adults with dementia. Things like jigsaw puzzles, coloring and the like. Paid is fine.
I work in IT, and was the caregiver for both my parents as they aged. You'd think I would be the one that people turn to to ask this question, and yet I have been utterly frustrated by my attempts to find such.
I have a few folks who are extended family and friends that are now in the early/mid stages of different forms of dementia, and a real pain point is that they no longer have the capacity to recognize ads, and will unfailingly click and install scam apps via the Apple store. Think things like 'cleaner' apps that have a $50/week subscription fee, and other abusive tactics. The #1 subject I get called about is some ad popping up after they've finished a puzzle, and now they think they're out of space, and in a panic.
This is not a small problem. The coloring and puzzles they can still do bring them happiness and stability through their day; removal of the ipads entirely causes them a lot of stress. (TV is nothing but ragebait, and a non-starter. They do have books on tape, but get tired of listening rather quickly.)
I have been completely unable to locate ad-free, paid versions of these types of apps. I'm not looking for free. I don't care about the cost. I just need apps that only do what they say they do, and don't have unexpected pop-ups, ads, or anything else, and I thought perhaps the folks here might know of some.
Any ideas?
[edit] Only five hours in, and I've already gotten more insightful, helpful responses than anywhere else I've asked. You all are the best.
Apple Arcade has a couple coloring and puzzle apps. They are very good about not having in app payments or ads, and there's quite a bit of variety in selection depending on how much leash you're willing to give them.
Edit: Simon Tatham's Puzzles has also been recommended a lot around these parts.
One of the requirements for Apple Arcade is that it can’t have ads or in app purchases. So anything in Apple Arcade should meet OPs requirements (beyond requiring that you have an Apple Arcade subscription).
That is useful information to know. Thank you.
I was just about to recommend Simon Tatham's puzzles. It's a great little collection, zero cost and zero ads. I don't know how it looks on Apple, but on my Android phone you can somewhat arrange the puzzles so the ones you prefer are at the top of the list, in alphabetical order.
I loved that app on Android, but the iOS app is so different that I suspect it’s a completely unrelated knockoff. I don’t remember the specific issues, but I uninstalled it because it was so bad.
That's good to know. I looked at both and surprise, the app authors are different -- Chris Boyle for Android, Greg Hewgill for Apple.
I'll take a look; thank you for the suggestions!
There are also some previous threads full of recommendations for mobile games as well as this gem of a website that has a list of games that are offline available with no in app purchases.
https://recognition101.github.io/ios-games/
Edit: Netflix also has a number of games available through a subscription if that is already something you are signed up to.
Simon Tatham is indeed excellent but some of them might be a little bit of guess work on how they work or what the UI expects. Show them individual puzzles and be prepared for a lot of "that one that was like that with a dot where is it"
As one of the people who has recommended Simon Tatham's Puzzles before, and also someone who has known someone with dementia, I fear that app won't be simple and intuitive enough. I hope it can still work, especially if they're still in the early stages, but I'm doubtful.
I hope you find what you're looking for. Something that helped the person I knew was watching constant repeats of The Golden Girls; it was one of his favorite shows and the familiarity got him to give otherwise rare laughs. He also loved listening to the bands from his youth. (We tried to get him into Wii Sports, specifically bowling since that used to be a favorite activity of his, but even those simple controls were too much to remember.) If you have any way to put on nothing but old favorites to watch or listen to, it could help a great deal. If you have the time for it, I'd even suggest ripping the episodes and putting the files on their devices with a VLC playlist or something.
Sorry I don't have any suggestions that fit the actual question you asked. Good luck.
My sister works for memorylanegames.com. specifically designed for dementia patients
Hey, that's great. Thank your sister for the great work her company does. My mother worked for the Alzheimer's Society of Canada for years and thinks those games are great. These would be perfect for OP.
Get them a 2nd ipad pre-installed with all their favourite games, and disable the radios.
Ads won't load if they don't have internet. The ads that might load, are often if not always innocuous.
It's a good idea, and I did try that a while back. They unfortunately aren't able to distinguish between their connected devices and gaming ones, and they do need to be online to verify doctor appointments and the like.
I'm asking this out of curiosity, why haven't you set a local firewall for them?
I do have some simple back-end stuff in play, but it's important to keep in mind that apps that behave erratically (as in, not being able to connect for content they think they should be able to load, then displaying confusing, partially-loaded screens) are just as much part of the problem as the ads and scams themselves. Consistency and repeatability of the experience are exceedingly important for folks who are cognitively impaired.
Cracking the Cryptic has a great Sudoku app on Android/iOS called Classic Sudoku. They have another app that supports variant sudoku and other puzzle type apps, all made by Studio Goya. I can't speak for their other apps but the classic sudoku app has no ads.
There are actually 9 different apps by Cracking the Cryptic. The content is paid for, but it's great content. The Sudokus are hand picked and created by actual human setters, not simply autogenerated like many of the ones in daily newspapers. Simon and Mark just have an eye for beautiful logic.
Personally I'd prefer it if they had just kept all variants in one App with newly released sudoku packs becoming available via in-app purchases, but installing many apps instead of one is just a minor inconveniemce.
Note that the more advanced puzzles do require some complex logical thinking to solve properly. I'm not sure if those are a particularly good fit for cognitively impaired elderly people.
I prefer the usability of Good Sudoku by Zach Gage but I think it’s only on IOS
it's not what you asked for and a long shot.
But do they like physical, manipulation based puzzles?
My dad sat in front of a (physical) Tower of Hanoi for a good half hour and he had a lot of fun. I have no doubt that if he tried it again in a month he'd be slightly better at it but engage nearly as long. I'm talking about those physical, wood, string and metal hoop types of puzzles. Something that even if you "know the trick" it still takes a hot minute to physically execute and to coordinate.
I haven't tried this brand but I'm interested
would yours be interested as well?
otherwise, print a stack of puzzles from https://krazydad.com/
they're also available for online play! (But i want my dad to use a physical pencil...)
I appreciate the suggestions! The folks I'm working with used to like physical puzzles, but the mess of a partial jigsaw is now troublesome for them, unfortunately, and I think the other physical types are now a bit beyond them. But I'll happily keep your recs in my back pocket for potential future use. :)
Hey, what a coincidence! I'm currently staying in a rehab facility with a family member that is recovering from major brain surgery and we just got a list of apps that were recommended from the cognitive therapist. Unfortunately, I can't vouch for the ad-free part just yet as we haven't gone through them all, but it doesn't hurt to share the stuff the pros recommended, right?
Here's the list:
Edit: apps I've checked out and are ad free are in bold
Peak-Brain Training by Brainbow
Fit Brains Trainer by Rosetta Stone Canada
BrainHQ by Posit Science
Elevate by Dana Nakano, PhD
Lumosity by Human Cognition Project
Tetris by Alexy Pajotnov
Sudoku 2 by Finger Arts
Memory Block by Category 5 Games
Stroop Effect by Attila Hegedus
Visual Attention by Tactus Therapy Solutions Ltd.
Brain Lab by Digital Brain Factory
Word Search+ by Brainium Studios LLC
Word Jigsaw by Sarah Pierce
Brain Challenge by Gameloft
Chain of Thought by Jay Bacal
This is to That by Jay Bacal
Chicktionary by Ludomade
1010! by Gram Games
Free Flow by Big Duck Games LLC.
Rush Hour by ThinkFun Inc.
Unblock Me by KirGames Co., Ltd.
Cognito by TidePool Inc.
I'm going to download them all and look through them over the next day or so then I'll update if any of them have unavoidable ads.
Many games work just fine if you revoke their network connection (even consistently, as if you'd bought a paid no ads version). I think iOS has this built in, but I do it through NetGuard on my android. It's a toggle once after install and done, no need for them to try to remember if you set it up. Puzzle games I've blocked this way includes solitaire, sudoku, sokoban (block pushing, lots of collections for these), I Love Hue, and KAMI 2.
I Love Hue is a game where you swap blocks of different hues to try and get the proper gradient. May be not the best option if they've got sight issues.
KAMI 2 (and the first) are flood games with a paper folding aesthetic, they're nice.
Seconding Simon Tatham's Puzzles, love this app and it is properly free.
Wordscapes, you can pay to have the ads removed. They have daily puzzles that are the same across users, so you could do one "with" them.
Picross Touch is a free, no ads nonogram game with paid level packs beyond the base of several hundred.
Kind of a meta suggestion, but have you considered putting their devices under parental controls to limit what they can do? I'm asking because I basically have the same requirements (in ads) for my daughter's phone, and being able to control what apps she can download is one way to put guardrails around her experience.
When I went down the rabbit hole, I found that the android ecosystem has more options for parental controls because third party apps can hook deeper into the system. But to be fair, we already have android devices, so most of my understanding of the IOS capability is secondhand.
We use a combination of MMGuardian and google's Family Link. Family link lets you control what apps are visible - apps you disable are not even visible in the app list. MMguardian is mainly to limit who she can call or text with (it's one of the few apps with this capability). Probably the latter is not needed, but if they reach a point where they are responding to spam texts and phishing calls they shouldn't be, it might be useful to be able to whitelist family and medical providers.
I love my solitaire app. It's by Nerbyte and it's .99 for a fully ad-free experience.
I also like SimpleMatch3, it's a 300-level .99 app with zero ads and no paid upgrade features. It also has daily levels and some customization. Easy and interesting game.
Nothing similar can exist on Apple until the EU finishes beating up on them, but on Android, you should basically never touch the Play Store and install apps from F-Droid instead ("solitaire", for example). It's entirely free software, which aligns the incentives completely differently. I don't think they have a hard rule against advertising, but I've never seen it.
F-Droid has a setting called "Include anti-feature apps" where you can untick-to-hide apps with various negative qualities (as defined by F-Droid). Top of the list is Ads, so presumably ads are allowed but apps that use them can be excluded from results.
There’s this great site with games that avoid addictive gaming dark patterns. I think you’ll be able to find some games that meet your criteria there.
I do have a jigsaw puzzle app that lets you pay for coins but you earn them fine without it. But it does also provide a pop-up ad with the daily coins if you would like to earn more.
I thought I had was if they have Androids to make use of a Google Play pass for a relatively small amount of month. A number of games are free/ the premium version of them without them having to do anything else about it
Yeah, there are a few I've found that would be perfectly fine for folks with normal capacity that are in-line with what you describe. Unfortunately the folks I'm working with would be completely distracted by things like coin limitations, or trying to get more, then fall down the ad hole, or the credit card hole. We've limited purchases so they can't hurt themselves that way, but the frustration that they get when they can't just play the next puzzle is a real problem.
I appreciate the suggestion about the Google play pass. I've tried that with a Samsung tablet for them, but they have a very hard time with tablets that don't have a physical home button. :(
Reasonable, also sorry, fixed my voice to text errors above.
I'm solving nonograms in an app named Nonograms Katana. No pop-up ads! I think if you run out of hints, you can watch an ad to get additional hints, so I guess there's still a risk of them seeing shady ads.
Maybe it's too late, but you should take a look at Nintendo Switch.
I bought one recently to play with my SO and it's a mix of handheld + regular console + tablet.
Switch has plenty of low stress and simple games that works with the oled touch screen without using the gamepads.
Just install some, turn on airplane mode just to be safe and it's done.
I think Holedown might suit your needs? I got it as recommended by Tilderino Numero Uno himself @deimos (I think), and it's one that I keep installed and return to every once in a while. I got the full version, so there are no advertisements. It is very intuitive, replayable, and I have handed it to my dad (who is elderly but does not have dementia at all) and he has no problems understanding how to make it work. You shoot a stream of balls at objects; if you fail to break all of them before they reach you, you lose. It is not time-based - you can really stop and think about the angles if you want to.
This seems like a case where iOS' parental controls might help. (Unexpectedly appropriate name!)
You can set a restriction to turn off in app purchases without a supervision passcode being entered, which you could keep or just put somewhere they have to go and look up before making a purchase.
OrdinaryPuzzles could be the perfect game for this. It's super simple and gets progressively harder.
Can be played in the browser, on iOS and Android
The Conceptis Puzzle apps offer no ads, free starter packs that are HUGE (I still haven’t finished all of the free puzzles), weekly free puzzles, and many, many packs of additional puzzles ranging from $0.99 to $5.99 for when you finally clear all the freebies. I’m partial to Slitherlink and Pic-a-Pix myself, but there are many other options as well.