
Apps That Can Help You Make Money: What Each Type Actually Delivers
Naomi BergmanA category-by-category look at earning apps, what they pay for your time, and where the fee sits.
Apps reviews the software people keep on a home screen: notes, photo, finance, health, streaming and productivity tools. Each piece weighs the annual subscription against free alternatives, checks which permissions are requested, and tests whether data can be exported cleanly. For readers deciding what deserves another year.
Mobile and desktop apps assessed on what they do well.

A category-by-category look at earning apps, what they pay for your time, and where the fee sits.

A one-hour plan to cut apps, silence notifications, and reset your screen-time settings — no new apps required.

Apple's "Ask App Not to Track" button really does block the ad ID trackers rely on — but it doesn't stop every tracking method, and a few account types can't turn it on at all.

Apple's Family Sharing and Google's Family Link both document downtime, app limits and approval-gated downloads — the thirty-minute setup, plus the two settings that cause most meltdowns.

Duolingo's free tier remains the most complete; Babbel and Pimsleur document free tiers that are really trials — the pricing math depends on how you learn, not the app store ranking.

"Requesting 32 permissions" on a flashlight app is the documented red flag — here's which permissions matter, what normal looks like per app type, and the settings that claw access back.