What are some apps that you use that aren't particularly well known? Let's help each other discover some interesting new tools!

lichess - best chess app out there IMO. Completely free and open source, has daily puzzles, and a pretty active pool of users to play against!
Syncthing - file syncing tool that works with just about any operating system (although I don't think it works with iOS). I use it to take notes and write lyrics/my journal and sync them back to my linux laptop.
Untappd - social media app for tracking craft beers that you drink. I've only just started using it, since I was on holiday and wanted to keep a note of the ales I was drinking. It's a free app, but supported by ads. I believe there's a paid tier, but the free version works well enough, and it's useful for encouraging me and my friends to try new beers when we're out and about.
WK - Japanese flashcard app, which is technically a front-end for the wanikani service. As you learn new radicals, characters, and vocabulary, it serves them back up to you after a certain length of time. If you remember it, it'll wait longer next time, and if you don't get it right, it brings it back to the top of the pile.

Like many on here I've been moving away from cloud services. I used to think that the open-source-heads that grumbled about loss of control were just out of touch. Just "get-off-my-lawn-types" but now I'm one of them. One of the things that pushed me over the edge was Amazon removing a bunch of tracks I had in my workout mix. Just so not cool.

So I'm done with Amazon but hesitated to stop paying for Prime because I couldn't figure out a good way of getting music onto my old iPhone 5S that didn't involve the absolute steaming pile of garbage that is iTunes sync. Why oh why does ti have to be so hard? And the answer is DRM. It's always DRM. Fuck DRM.

I have mp3s from hundreds of CDs I bought and burned to my computer back in the 90s and early 00s. These have largely sat unused. But not now! Now they are free!

And that is all thanks to the magical open source media player VLC. I've long used it on my laptop and desktops but didn't even know there was a mobile option for iOS. I stumbled across it while struggling to find the default iPhone Music app in Apple's app store. I never found it - I found one that looked like it could be it but it talked about an online store to buy music from so I wasn't sure. Anyways, up popped VLC.

The VLC app is awesome! I can get audio/video to it so, so easily in a variety of ways. I can drag-and-drop across my network, use a number of different kind of online services like dropbox, etc (which is not what I did, but that's cool). In theory, I could sync through iTunes as well, but F that noise!

So now I have 5-10 of my favorite albums, including good music to work out to. And best of all, I have "you are my sunshine" which I was able to download off of Youtube. I play that every night for my daughter and ever since they nerfed the YouTube app to prevent it from playing music while other apps were open, well it's been a pain to just sit an listen to it while she falls asleep each night without doing anything else. But not now! VLC isn't trying to market the shit out of me and lock me into their app. I can put on a song and finally use other apps.

So if you are one of those "get-off-my-lawn" types like me, I invite you to check it out. I don't know if there is an Android version but I sure hope so.

This is all stream of consciousness so forgive my typos and likely poor grammar. I'll clean it up after a I get tired of rocking out to these awesome tunes (maybe...)

I can install Linux or Windows or even BSD on my laptop without much hassle, and get the updates directly from the OS vendors.

This isn't the case for smartphones. You don't have choice over your OS. You don't even get android updates directly from Google, and have to wait for device manufacturers to release the updates. Why is it so?

I dislike reddit's mobile site, as it is slow, filled with app popups, and my content blocker ends up creating software gore situations.

On the other hand, i.reddit.com is faster, simpler, and the one popup it has is easy to block with element hiding.

Unfortunately, tapping on a username or subreddit link automatically redirects me to the newer mobile site, and I have to add /.compact to the end of the url.

On Android, this is easily fixed by installing an Firefox extension to always use i.reddit, but iOS Firefox doesn't support addons.

So is there anyway to avoid going to reddit's new mobile site? Maybe use a pi-hole to redirect www.reddit.com?

The one good thing, imo, that iOS does is its continuity and handoff with other devices. What are the best ways you've found to emulate this on your devices? Like if I'm actively working on a document or on web pages how can I seamlessly continue using them on my tablet/phone without having to re-open all the tabs or docs again?

Has anyone found a better way?

At the moment I get around this a couple ways:
-Google drive is my primary basic filesystem on all my main computer (desktop/documents/downloads/pictures/videos folders)
-Google Photos on all devices
-PulseSMS for the texting
-Google Chrome which offers a somewhat fix to webbrowsing

But the actual feature of my devices popping up and letting me "carry on" with what I was doing exactly where I was doing it with the click of the button isn't there. Also, the Google Chrome "continuity" is simply the ability to let me go see recent tabs open on my devices and click to reopen them. If anyone knows a way to sync tabs across all my devices (desktop/laptop/phone/tablet) and make them open/close altogether that would be great.