Best Windows 8 apps
Here they are - the best Windows 8 apps to download in 2013
UPDATE: Our best windows 8 apps roundup has grown to accommodate even more applications, available to download now.
Windows 8 is here – Microsoft’s biggest operating system shake-up since it introduced the desktop. It’s the first to truly embrace touch-enabled devices.
Clicking on the Windows Store icon on the Start Screen will jump you straight into a huge collection of free and paid for apps, all of which are designed specifically for the new Modern UI interface. There are some clear gems to be discovered around all the chaff, but it can take a bit of digging.
That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the best early efforts here, to save you the time. Read on to work out which ones are right for you.
SHAZAM
What was the name of that track again?
The music-identifying app is now available for Windows 8, so you can use it on your desktop as well as your mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones.
Although its key tool remains the music identifier, Shazam has added a few extra features including better social integration and a wealth of additional content and social features for television shows – good news if you’re a TV buff. The app also allows users to tag their favourite tracks, view song lyrics and read music reviews and bios of their favourite artists.
Price: Free
Download: Shazam
PUZZLETOUCH
Easy mode makes this app anything but puzzling
After five minutes with this app, we were hooked. PuzzleTouch includes dozens of images but you can also create your own puzzles by using an image in your photo album. Simply drag and drop the pieces together until you have the finished product – it’s that simple.
If you’re useless at puzzles, don’t sweat it. There are several puzzle modes you can select, from the easy 12-piece puzzle mode to the more advanced puzzles that require you to rotate jigsaw pieces 360 degrees. It’s not the most advanced game in the world, but will keep you entertained on your morning commute to work.
Price: Free
Download: PuzzleTouch
MAGIX MUSIC MAKER JAM
After five minutes with this app, we were making dubstep worthy of Skrillex. Eight instruments are arrayed across your screen, from bass to synth to vocals, and you adjust levels and instrument types to get the groove you need. There’s even a loop generator for more advanced control.
The free version lets you choose from Jazz, Dubstep and Tech House styles, and extra styles such as Hip-Hop and Deephouse are available for £1.79 each. Once you have your loop how you want it, just hit record to save it to an MP3.
Wub-wub-wub-wub
EVERNOTE
Evernote is our favourite note-taking app, mainly because it is available on every smartphone operating system – whether you have an iPhone or Windows Phone or Android handset, your notes will be kept in sync.
Normally we use the web interface when managing our notes on a PC, but the Evernote Windows 8 app makes things easier. The clear, full-screen interface shows your notes as tiles, each containing a summary of the note, and any changes you make or new notes you add are synchronised across all your devices.
Keeping track of your life across all your devices is easy with Evernote
SKYPE
Skype has expanded from mere voice over IP into video conferencing and instant messaging, across Windows, Android, iOS and even smart TVs. It’s also now owned by Microsoft, so there should be no surprise that it’s available at launch for Windows 8. It’s also one of the best looking Windows 8 apps we’ve seen so far.
All the features you expect from Skype, with the gorgeous Modern UI on top
All the features we’ve come to expect are here, presented in a gorgeous Modern UI style that’s easy to navigate with a mouse and keyboard or on a touch screen. It has a live tile, as any good Windows 8 app should, and if you allow it to merge your Skype account with Windows messenger, all your existing contacts will be imported, letting you chat without having to load up a second program.
There’s no need to install the desktop program when you’ve got this installed – it’s exactly what a Windows 8 upgrade should be, freeing the desktop for more productive programs.
XBOX SMARTGLASS
On its own, Smartglass isn’t useful – in fact, unless you own an Xbox, you won’t be able to get it to switch on at all. However, when you connect an Xbox 360 to your local network, Smartglass will automatically detect it and connect, opening up a whole host of second screen services including music sharing, video streaming and extra features in games.
SmartGlass can even set up playlists for Dance Central – assuming you have no shame and own Dance Central
When you come home, tablet in hand, and are only half way through that TV episode you’re a fan of, you don’t want to carry on watching on a small screen when you’ve got a huge TV just sitting there. With Smart Glass, you can send a signal to the Xbox to connect, stream and navigate to the exact point you paused the video, carrying on where you left off. Your device then turns into a helpful guide, showing you the actors on screen and what other roles they’ve been in, as well as chapter breaks which you can swipe between to quickly (but accurately) skip between scenes.
NETFLIX
With no LoveFilm app on Windows 8, its the US-centric service that leads the way when it comes to subscription video. Competition or not, it’s a brilliant iteration of the service, with loads of content onscreen that you can scroll through and a drop down menu allowing you to jump to between genres and personalised shortlists.
There’s a box that provides a quick resume link for the last three items you watched, better still you get a thumbnail for each exactly at the point you paused it, so you can see where you got to.
Enter a programme listing and get episode listings, descriptions and all the usual tags for actors and directors to find connected content. It’s simply the best version of the service we can think of.
Netflix is simply great on Windows 8
WIKIPEDIA
Not the cleverest or most advanced app you’ll find in the store, but Wikipedia is such an essential reference tool for most people that it still deserves its place in this list. The key thing here is that Wikipedia will be added to the Search menu as a modifier, so you can search the encyclopaedia without the usual rigmarole – put the term in Google, add wiki to the end, and then click the link. Instead just start typing from the Start screen and then click the Wikipedia button.
Once in the app, everything is pleasing laid out with a simple white background. You scroll through articles from left-to-right and the whole thing works beautifully in landscape orientation, though it takes a little bit of getting used to after years of using the usual web layout. Type anything within the app and it immediately starts offering auto completed search terms.
Our main complaint is that listing lacks the information box that usually appears in the top-right corner, you have to click to bring this up, and then scroll through it in a pop-up. Also missing are the indexes for longer articles, which makes navigating them far harder. Still worth installing, but needs a few fixes.
It’s everyone’s favourite Dr Watson, sorry Lucy Liu
TUNEIN
If you’ve ever wanted all the nation’s favourite radio stations at your fingertips, then the free TuneIn app will be music to your ears. Everything from the major networks right down to the obscure local shows are now just a click away, so you can listen to BBC York in Exeter, or Jersey’s Island FM in Dundee if you so wish. Stations can be sorted by music, sports, news, talk, location, language and podcasts, and once you’ve selected one of these options, you can further refine your choice by genre as well.
It’s not completely perfect – it could do with a search bar to help pinpoint exact stations and podcasts without having to trawl through its various filters, and streams of smaller, more local stations sometimes take a while to load up – but radio buffs will absolutely love it.
TuneIn offers more radio stations than you can shake a stick at.
FRESH PAINT
There are quite a few free art apps to choose from on Windows 8, but Fresh Paint was definitely our favourite. While Colors! and InspirARTion simply give you a blank canvas to play around with, Fresh Paint offers picture-book style outlines for you to colour in as well. Every brush stroke is rendered with realistic textures, and you can mix colours in your virtual paintbox as well, either on the canvas itself or on your miniature easel in the menu. It’s the best mess-free way to play with paint we’ve ever come across, and you can even pretend you’re finger-painting if you have a touchscreen monitor.
Unfortunately, Fresh Paint only comes with six free outlines, but there are additional packs with up to 50 outlines available for less than £1.50. If you don’t fancy spending any money though, there’s always a blank canvas waiting for your latest creation.
The free Fun Pack also comes with outlines for robots, flying origami figures, turtles and monkeys.
NATIONAL RAIL ENQUIRIES
If you’re overwhelmed by the seemingly unnecessary and sadistic structure of Britain’s rail services,then the National Rail Enquiries app is handy tool to cut through the confusion. You can set it up to show departures from your favourite stations at a glance, view routes, check station facilities and even go online to buy tickets. It needs better support for planning connections to be perfect, but features such as live news about delays make it one of the most helpful apps around for anyone who suffers the daily grind of commuting.
See depatures and delays from your favourite stations at a glance
If, after all that, the range of applications on the Windows Store just isn’t wide enough for you, then Bluestacks might be just what you need. It’s a virtual Android environment that makes it easy to both run and download Android apps from a massive range of sources, including Google’s own store, Amazon’s App Market and the default 1Mobile marketplace for free apps. By linking your Google Play account to BlueStacks, you’ll be able install apps you’ve already bought for your Android phone or tablet. You can even remotely add apps to BlueStacks via the standard Google Play website, where it’ll appear as a Samsung GT-I9100.
It’s not always an entirely smooth experience, but all our apps, including both games and utilities, successfully installed and ran. The most we had to do to ensure a smooth experience was reduce the size of our window. As all the apps are already designed to work with touchscreens, they particularly lend themselves to the touchscreen monitors that Microsoft has designed Windows 8 to work so well with.
We don’t have word on Bluestacks’ compatibility with Windows 8 RT yet, but we’ll keep you posted. AMD has also lent its support to the project and is providing a re-branded version of Bluestacks in the form of its AMD AppZone Player.
Run all your Android apps on your Windows 8 PC using Bluestacks
