Waveform’s Top 5 Apps of All Time

The Waveform Podcast hosts – Marquez, Andrew, David, and Ellis – recently took on a fun challenge: each of them had to name their top five mobile apps of all time. No desktop software, no web apps. Just the apps on your phone that you actually reach for, day in and day out.

What came out of it was a surprisingly diverse list – part utility, part nostalgia, and definitely a little unexpected in places. Here is a breakdown of every host’s top five, with links so you can check them out yourself.

Marquez’s Top 5

Marquez came prepared with a ranked list and a stack of honorable mentions, which tells you everything about how seriously he took this. His picks lean practical and polished – the kind of apps that have quietly become indispensable over years of daily use.

1. Carrot Weather – His undisputed number one. Carrot lifted the layout directly from the beloved (and now defunct) Dark Sky, and nobody else has really replicated it. Accurate data, solid radar, multiple sources. iPhone only, but if you are on iOS, it is hard to argue with it.
2. TickTick – He has tried switching to other task apps repeatedly, and he keeps coming back to this one. It just works.
3. Flighty – The app that started the whole conversation. Flighty is a flight tracker that will notify you of delays before the airline does – sometimes 45 minutes before everyone at the gate finds out. If you fly even occasionally, it is worth a look.
4. Waze – Crowdsourced navigation that still edges out Google Maps for granular road condition reporting. Potholes, closed roads, flooding – Waze surfaces things Google Maps does not always catch.
5. Relay for Reddit – The best Android Reddit client, full stop. It has a paid tier, and it is worth it.

Andrew’s Top 5

Andrew announced upfront that he had no honorable mentions – if an app is not on his list, it is “dog water.” Respect the conviction. His picks are the most eclectic of the group, and he fully owns it.

1. UDisc – A disc golf app that doubles as a community-building platform. It has course finders, scoring, and even tools for requesting new courses from local townships. The free version gives you most of what you need; a $30/year subscription unlocks smartwatch integration and premium features.
2. Google Tasks – Andrew says this one legitimately changed his life. Dead simple, no friction, and it works natively with Android Auto for hands-free task entry. Sometimes the simplest solution is the right one.
3. Blip – A cross-platform file transfer app that the whole team has become obsessed with. No file size limits, no fussing with the same Wi-Fi network, and it hits 50-60 MB/s transfers across the country. Think AirDrop, but it actually works between different platforms.
4. Old School RuneScape – A nod to the grind-friendly classic MMO. The mobile app is perfect for grinding XP while doing literally anything else. Andrew admits he mostly just watches content about the game rather than playing, but the app earns a spot on legacy alone.
5. Taco Bell – No judgment. He makes the case that it is the only fast food app that works reliably every time, with no upsell pop-ups and no glitches. Given what the McDonald’s app puts people through, it is hard to disagree.

David’s Top 5

David recently switched back to Android after a long stretch on iPhone, which shaped his list considerably. His picks skew toward apps that work across ecosystems – tools built to last regardless of what phone you are holding.

1. Obsidian – A local-first note-taking app available on Android, iOS, and desktop. David uses it as a full knowledge base, linking notes together in a way that replicates what he had built in Apple Notes – but without the ecosystem lock-in. He was surprised by how capable the mobile app is, especially in DeX mode.
2. StoryGraph – Goodreads, but run by an independent developer and actually updated. Amazon bought Goodreads over a decade ago and has barely touched it since. StoryGraph’s recommendation algorithm is legitimately excellent.
3. Stellarium – A star and planet viewer that uses your phone’s accelerometer to map the sky in real time. The pro version adds high-resolution images of planets, so as you pan around the sky, you can zoom in and see actual photos. It has been making the rounds on TikTok, and for good reason.
4. Duolingo – The app that made gamification a standard design pattern. David acknowledges he still is not fluent in anything, but it changed how language learning apps work, and that counts for something.
5. KWGT – A custom widget builder for Android with a strong community behind it. There is a learning curve, but you can import widgets other people have made and customize from there. If you have ever looked at someone’s Android home screen and wondered how they made it look like that, KWGT is probably involved.

Ellis’s Top 5

Ellis got a new phone in December 2025 after years on an iPhone 12 mini, which he notes was too old to run most apps properly. So this is effectively a top five from someone who experienced mobile apps with fresh eyes, and the list reflects that – specific, personal, and genuinely interesting.

1. Brooklyn Public Library – His number one, and he makes a compelling argument for it. Free ebooks, free audiobooks, and the app is fast and frictionless in a way most apps with budgets ten times the size are not. If you are not near Brooklyn, look up your own library system – or get a Brooklyn library card online.
2. Moment Pro Camera – A manual camera app for iPhone that lets you lock in settings and save profiles. Ellis loves forcing the camera into a specific ISO range to get a flattering, slightly grainy look that the default iPhone camera actively tries to avoid. One-time payment, no subscription.
3. See Saw – A gallery guide app for New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London, and Paris. It maps current exhibitions, lets you filter by neighborhood, and tracks openings and closings. Ellis loves that it does exactly one thing and does it well.
4. Fog of World – A location-tracking app that fills in a map as you travel, revealing everywhere you have ever been. Ellis included it for nostalgia but specifically said not to download it, citing significant privacy concerns. Noted.
5. Discogs – Goodreads meets eBay, but for music. You can log your record collection, browse a marketplace for buying and selling vinyl, and read articles from staff writers and community contributors. Ellis once uploaded an album so rare that he was the first person to ever log it – which he described as a big day.

A few patterns worth noting

Blip showed up on two separate lists (Andrew at #3, and Ellis called it phenomenal before leaving it off his final five), which is a strong signal that it is worth downloading. Relay for Reddit appeared independently on both Marquez’s and David’s lists. And Flighty – which sparked the whole conversation in the first place – landed at #3 for Marquez and as an honorable mention for David, who said he missed it after switching to Android.

The most divisive pick is probably Andrew’s number one: a disc golf app. But honestly, a great niche app that someone uses every single week probably belongs on a top five list more than a utility people open out of habit.

You can watch the full episode on the Waveform YouTube channel.