The Top 30 Best Windows 8 Apps
Now with over 100,000 apps in the Windows Store, there are actually some good choices. Here are the top apps we think you should install on your Windows 8 PC.
With the launch of Windows 8.1 just a month away and a new Surface tablet coming even before that, on September 19, it's time to take stock of where Microsoft's new operating system stands when it comes to app selection. The news has been pretty positive, with thebenchmark of 100,000 appshaving been surpassed on July 1.
Some marquee names have joined the flock of the best Windows 8 apps, including Twitter, Vevo, Foursquare, Rockmelt, Rhapsody, and OpenTable. We're still waiting for a couple of major entries, to wit, Facebook and Flipboard—Luckily, these will become available at Windows 8.1's public launch on October 18, along with a bunch of much-needed updates to the operating system itself and an more usable updated store for getting the apps.
Don't forget that Windows 8 (and 8.1) still runs nearly all of the millions of applications programmed for Windows over the past decade and a half—in its desktop mode—though that doesn't apply to ARM-based Windows RT tablets$349.00 at Microsoft Store. The new class of apps, formerly called "Metro" but now simply called Windows 8 apps, are full-screen, touch friendly programs can connect both to the Web, to each other through "contracts," and to features of Windows 8 itself, such as the Search and Share charms.
You get the new-style apps from the new Windows Store—Microsoft's equivalent of the iTunes App Store—which automates installation and updating, and gives both users and developers a central place to discover new and needed software. It's true that the Windows Store has a ways to go to catch up in number with the more than 300,000 iPad apps available in Apple's iTunes App store. But according to the excellent site, MetroStore Scanner, there are currently over 115,000 Windows 8 apps, with hundreds being added every day.
As with any app store (Android's in particular), a good many of these are no better than chaff, and many are country specific, though over 83,000 of them are for US English speakers. Just as with those other app stores, some gems appear among the muck. The good news? Most of the top apps we include here are completely free. Some have in-app purchases, but even apps that cost money often offer trial versions—something not available in Apple's App Store. Most of these apps run on both Windows RT tablets, and all run on full Windows 8 Pro systems like the Microsoft Surface Pro$799.00 at Microsoft Store and standard laptops and desktops.
The redesigned Windows Store gives you help in separating the app gold from the silt. In addition to the store's highlighted staff pick's section for new and noteworthy apps, each app's page in the store includes user ratings and reviews. You can also browse the list the top paid, top free, and newly released entries, both overall and in sections like Games, Social, Entertainment, Photo, Music and Video, News and Weather, Lifestyle, Productivity, Security, Business, and more.
Whatever your software needs, we think you'll get more out of your Windows 8 PC experience by installing these 30 apps, but they're not the last word—there are a number of important ones we don't include here. What we wanted to do for this first list was to assemble a collection of apps that can make your Windows 8 PC or tablet productive, creative, and informative. You won't find any of the excellent default apps you get with Windows 8 here—the People, Mail, Photos, Music, Video, News, Games (really a game center), Bing, and SkyDrive. Nor will you find that most useful of all apps, Microsoft Office, since it's a desktop, rather than a new-style Windows 8 app.
You can either navigate our list via the 30 Best Windows 8 Apps slideshow above or page through this article for five at a time. We've linked the app names to their Windows Store descriptions and download page, or, if we've reviewed the app, we've linked to our more-detailed review. Don't hesitate to leave comments below if you feel that our selections are dead-on or if we've overlooked worthy candidates. And don't forget to check out the links below for even more Windows 8 coverage.
$6.99
Halo has long been one of the legends of first-person shooter video games, and PCMag's Samara Lynn thought well enough of this sequal to award it a 4 out of 5 rating. You don't need to have ever played the game's previous versions to enjoy this one: Its gorgeous graphics and fun, touch-based gameplay will draw you in. The music is quite impressive, too, not the typical low-budget canned electro stuff. You do have to buy credits if you want certain weapons and armament upgrades. Weekly and mission-specific challenges keep the game fresh, but it can be tricky to master the shooting and moving gestures.
Free
Even if you're not going to win American Chef Idol, or whatever the latest cooking game reality show is called, Allrecipe can be an invaluable friend in the kitchen. It gives you ideas for proven successful recipes, or lets you choose what to cook based on what ingredients you have on hand. You get step-by-step instructions, along with nutrition information. The companion Allrecipes Video cookbook app could be an even better fit for those who need more handholding or for trickier techniques.
Free
When you're fetching around for a movie to watch—one that you actually might enjoy—there's no better solution than Flixster. The Windows 8 app from this cinematic informer is well-designed, letting you view playing and upcoming flicks and DVDs by current box office hits, local theater showings. One of the best things about the app is that it uses the very reliable Rotten Tomatoes ratings, which are a pretty good indication of whether the film is a dud or a dream. Each movie's page also shows the synopsis, cast, journalist reviews, and trailer playing. One downside was that tickets for most movies can't be purchased through the app. Another is the lack of Ultraviolet integration.
Free
Khan Academy is an education in a tablet—not a pill: I'm talking about your Windows 8 tablet. The organization behind this app has as its goal to offer "a free world-class education for anyone anywhere". You can also watch the thousands of course videos on a desktop PC, covering Math, Science, Economics and Finance, and Humanities. Each of these general topics is broken down into several sub-topics to get you to your specific area of interest or need, with several videos available below yet another, more specific level of topics. For example, you could learn from 12 videos about Chemical reactions. You can download videos to your local device. Literature content seemed lacking, but there are other special talks and interviews in addition to the course work.
Free
Comixology is the de facto comic app, with over 40,000 comics and graphic novels from publishers such as Marvel, DC, Dynamite Entertainment, and more. The app starts you out in its featured new releases section, and there are quick links to categories like collection, kids, free, top rated. You can see books that release the same day as print, and digital firsts. You will need to register for an account (which requires credit card info) if you don't already have one, and most hot books cost $3.99 or $2.99, while extended graphic novels can cost up to $19.99. The comics looked beautiful on my Surface Pro, and the Guided View, which lets the story unfold as you tap, has a definite leg up on traditional paper comics.
Free
This one is a no brainer. If you want to visit with Grandma without crossing state or national lines, there's no better choice of app and service. When you first run Skype, it will ask permission to use your webcam and to run in the background. It's full-screen view of your video-call partner and good use of the Windows 8 touch interface and notifications are a great start, but you don't get some Skype for desktop features like multi-party calling and screen sharing. With Windows 8.1 comes a great new capability: you can answer calls from notifications on the lock screen without having to log in to the PC.
Free
No tablet platform is complete without a Twitter app. Windows 8's included People app does show you Twitter (and Facebook updates), but it's not as useful as Twitter's own app for other platforms like the iPad. Twitter fans now can take advantage of a native app on Windows 8, and it's a good one, even offering capabilities not found on other platforms. For example, you can tweet through it from any other app via the Share charm. It also shows a "collage" of tweets or of photos from tweets. And you can pin it to the side of your screen to see your live Twitter updates.
Free
Audible is a godsend for those of us weary-eyed folk who spend all day staring at a computer monitor. When I get home, I love to read, but being read to instead helps save the old orbs. This book-reading app from Amazon.com is simplicity itself. After signing in, you can browse the extensive catalog of audiobooks—from Tina Fey's hilarious bestseller Bossypants to classics such as the works of Dickens and Twain. You can preview a healthy selection of titles for free, too. There are a couple drawbacks, though: The app doesn't uses the standard Windows 8 Search Charm, and you only get three categories on the main page to browse, and to search, you need to open the sidebar, which is really just a collapsed webpage.
Free (requires subscription)
If you're one of Netflix's 30-plus million subscribers, you'll be happy to know that Windows 8 and RT allow you to get your movie and TV show fix. The app's home page show the 10 ten for you, New Releases, and Genres options, and you can scroll through thumbnail piles of your Instant Queue, Top 10, Popular on Netflix, New Releases, Recently Added, and any of the genres you've shown a predilection for. Clicking on a thumbnail brings up the movie page, which is informative and interactive, letting you rate, play, and see who starred in it. While playing a movie, you can use the app bar to pause, scrub, change volume, or disable/enable subtitles if available.
Free
Keeping for a moment with our television theme, for serious couch potatoes who want to keep up with the latest TV shows, or maybe just for active folks who want entertainment on their own schedules, the Hulu Plus app does the trick. It's as well designed as the Netflix app, but it offers more up-to-date television content. Hulu also throws in a decent selection of full-length feature films, if you're a subscriber. You get everything you expect from the service, the ability to view your queue, personalized recommendations, and all the popular genres and trending shows.
$4.99
The latest version of Rovio's breakout hit Angry Birds series is available on pretty much every mobile platform, and it's sure to please fans of the feathered pig-smashers. During the game, you'll head out on an intergalactic journey across the deserts of Tatooine all the way to the depths of the Pig Star. Along the way, you'll use the Force, and wield a Lightsaber in your quest to blast away the Pigtroopers and take down the evil Darth Vader, "Dark Lord of the Pigs." This one is sure to tickle Star Wars fans as well as inveterate Angry Bird players. If you're not all caught up on the series, you can also get Angry Birds Space.
$4.99. 10 levels free.One of the most addictive and enjoyable time-killers on record now comes to Windows 8. A free trial gives you 10 levels to play with. The "Live" means its equivalent to the Xbox Live version, which is basically Bejeweled 3. The free version entitles you to play only the Classic mode, while the purchased version lets you engage in Butterflies and Diamond Mine modes, too, and lets you accumulate Acheivements.
Free
If you're a city dweller, you've likely seen people playing this game of connecting colored dots with meandering lines. There's a reason: Flow Free presents a rewarding puzzle in increasingly challenging patterns. Once you've exhausted all the levels in the free version, you can unlock all extra packs for $4.99 or individual packs for $1.99 and $2.49. This will also remove the ads that appear along the bottom of the game board.
$1.49
Back in the realm of amusement, Where's My Perry, from Disney Studios, is very fun indeed. It's great use of touch input to manipulate a sewery world of water puzzles from which your goal is to extract the cute top hat-donning platypus from Phineas and Ferb. Just beware of evil villain Dr. Doofenshmirtz's lasers, and collect as many gnomes as you can along the way.
Free
If you're running Windows 8 on a touch tablet, there's no better demonstration of the cool types of things you can do with multitouch. Five simultaneous fingers are supported, and you can actually mix new colors on a virtual palette. If you'd rather not start with a blank canvas, "packs" of line drawings and cartoons can get you started. The Fun Pack is free, but the more artistic Variety Pack is a $1.49 in-app purchase, and the Adventure Pack, with its 24 character sketches and Friends Pack of mostly pets cost $1.99 each.
Of course, you can just start finger or mouse painting on a blank page or a photo of your own, with a good variety of brush and pencil tips. You also choose among a dozen canvas and paper textures. Once you're done, you can export your masterpiece to a PNG file, or even use the Share charm to send it to any apps that can share to email, social networks, and more. This is a surprisingly polished app, but it's one that's been around since the early days of Windows 8 prereleases. What's most impressive is that the paint is just so real looking.
Free
You can get some of its functionality in the OS's built-in People app, but there's no official client app. Quite a few Facebook apps are available in the Windows Store, but we consider Facebook+ Lite even better than some of the competition you'd have to pay for, which often simply look like nothing more than the social network's website, rather than adding any tablet conveniences. Facebook Touch uses a Windows 8-new-style interface with big buttons and swiping gestures to navigate your news feed, photos, friends, messages, notifications, and events. Its Start menu tile shows your important contacts' latest updates. And it lets you upload photos via the Share charm from the default Photos app.
Free
Yes, there's now an official Twitter app for Windows 8 and the platform's own included People app does show you Twitter (and Facebook updates). But Rowi will appeal to those who prefer its very clear three column view, with a huge space for the tweet you're viewing in the center. On the left you choose whether to view newsfeed, interactions, directs, and favorites. On the right you see your images and can switch to trending topics. The app also makes good use of the Share charm from other apps to post tweets, and pops up notifications for new tweets.
Free
Of course you could just browse news sites on your Windows 8 PC's web browser, and there are apps for many leading large papers, but USAToday stands out for having created a well-designed, reasonably rich, touch-friendly news app. You scroll through sections for News, Sports, Life, Money, Tech, and Travel, each with buttons to call up relevant photos, videos, and "snapshots" or infographics. For Sports and Money, sections are added for scores and markets. Your local temperature and weather icon appear at top right, and clicking this opens a map and ten day or hourly temperature and precipitation forecasts.
FreeJust as with the iPhone and iPad's, Windows 8's built-in Weather app is not bad—but why not get your sun and rain report straight from the source? The Weather Channel's app lets you see conditions hour by hour or over the next 10 days. You also get maps and videos, as well as warning messages for severe weather conditions. Add to that wind speed, humidity, sunrise and set times, visibility, atomospheric pressure, and UV index—you can see, it's the full package. You can even watch a 60-second video report for your area.
Free
With the Super Bowl just behind us, you many wonder why we include a sports app. In fact, you could get by with the included Bing Sports app, which is surprisingly good. But this one comes from the ultimate authority on high-paid play. Sports-related news pieces, scores, videos, photos, and podcasts are at your fingertips with the ESPN Windows 8 app. As with the built-in Sports app, ESPN lets you pin your favorite teams to the Start menu, where you'll see scores and headlines for your clubs. This one is really everything you need to get your fandom on.
In truth, I'm a Nook user, but I know there are plenty of Kindle users out there who would feel highly put out by a platform with no app for reading their chosen ebook flavor. Kindle for Windows 8 shows large color thumbnails of your book covers in Library view in Cloud and Device sections, the latter for titles you've already downloaded. True to Kindle form, the app supports WhisperSync so that the current page your reading shows up on any device. You can change font size, background colors, and column number, and you can highlight, bookmark, and write notes. Double-clicking a word brings up its Dictionary.com definition. Thankfully, Amazon has added the ability to buy new books from within the app, but not periodicals.
Microsoft's investment in Nook has finally paid off in the form of a Windows 8 app. As I mentioned above, I prefer Nook to Amazon's ereader ecosystem, and the Windows 8 store ratings give Barnes & Nobles a slight edge when it comes to Windows 8 apps. The interface is extremely well designed, intuitive, and capable. All the font and navigation options you get on the nook device itself are here. And unlike the Kindle app, in addition to the over 3 million nook books (a million of them free) you can browse and buy new magazine and newspaper issues as well as books right from within the app.
I was originally planning to include Evernote here, but while that service's Windows 8 app does let you view, tag, search, and add notes, it's pretty primitive compared with the OneNote Windows 8 app. Unlike the rest of Microsoft Office , OneNote is not a desktop application, but instead offers apps for iOS, Android, Mac, and PC, and Windows Phone, so you're covered when it comes to devices. An insertion wheel lets you add a table, tag, photo, list, or paste to your note. I use this app to take notes at all my vendor meetings, and since I log into the same Microsoft account as on my Windows 8 machine, all my notes were available. I could even play my recording of the meetings, but playback wasn't linked to text as it is in the desktop version.
Free
Also the productivity veering on business vein, Box (formerly box.net) is an increasingly popular tool for collaboration on work files. It integrates with Salesforce.com and Google Docs, and lets users share online "workspaces." It also lets users assign tasks, post comments, and can notify you when a document involving you has been edited or commented on. With Box, anyone can get 5GB of free online synced storage, and apps are available for all the major mobile and desktop OSes.
Free
This musical app from Magix lets you craft tracks by adding loops for drums, bass, brass, pads, synths, and even vocals. You enable and disable instruments and cycle through varying options for each: For example, your synth can have the organ, filler, brute reverb, be choit, unreal, or royal synth sounds. You can raise and lower the volume, and change keys in loops. A very cool Effects graph lets you apply distortions to your whole combo, in heavy and soft, high and low directions. You can record your workOne downside is that it doesn't play while running in the background.
Free
Another app we loved on iOS arrives for Windows 8. Use it to play any Web-streamed radio broadcast on earth. It can find local radio station, has a sleep timer, and can keep playing in the background while you do other things with your PC. Stream categories include local radio, music, sports, news, and talk. And you can search by other locations or find and play podcasts. I only wish the app let me choose a bit rate for stations that offered several, like those from SomaFM, but it shares that limitation with its iOS version. The latter still has a bunch more features, such as the ability to record and favorite what you're listening to.
FreeThe Windows 8 Vevo app plays top-charted music videos for free on you Windows 8 PC or tablet. If you can't decide what to watch or listen to, you can start playing the VevoTV Live video broadcast. Organized somewhat like iTunes or Windows 8's own app store, you can swipe through categories for Featured, Premieres, Top Videos, Top Artists, and Shows. The videos start quickly, playing in glorious full screen, but you'll see a pre-roll ad occasionally. Still missing are search, personalized suggestions, and song sharing via social networks.
Free.
There's no Vine for Windows 8 yet, but Vyclone offers a similar social video experience—without the 6-second limit! Vyclone is already available on iPhone and Android, so you don't have to worry about a lack of content and potential contacts. As with all these social apps, you can follow, heart, and comment on videos submitted to the service. You can also watch nearby footage, but where Vyclone really shines is when you have multiple people shooting the same event: The service edits the disparate angles together.
$4.99
CyberLink's video editing software has long garnered top ratings here at PCMag, and now the company has brought some of its expertise over to Windows 8. YouCam lets you manipulate both photos and video even while you're still shooting. You can crop, tag faces, frame, draw on , and stamp photos with stock art like flowers and kissy lips. On top of its photo features, YouCam lets you trim video, and then upload it to YouTube or Facebook.
$2.99
For many of the more tradition photo adjustments—brightness, contrast, white balance, along with artistic filters—look to CameraStudio+, from Moobila. It's surprisingly rich for a $2.99 app, with cropping, resizing, red-eye correction, as well as frames and overlays. Once you're done perfecting and enhancing your photo, you can save it as a JPG or PNG to the folder of your choice or up to the SkyDrive cloud. It's really all you need to improve the photos you snap on your Windows 8 tablet.
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