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The 5 Best iPhone Apps of the Month

3 minute read

Every week, TIME rounds up our favorite iPhone apps of the past few days. Here are the best of the best for March, from messaging to mapping.

VaporChat

I say a lot of things I wish I hadn’t, so an app like VaporChat is pretty essential for a walking foot-in-mouth marathon like me. VaporChat offers you far greater control over your conversations by allowing you to delete texts or even entire conversations from your own phone and from the receiving device as well. No further explanation is needed.

VaporChat is free in the App Store

HERE

A much-lauded maps app, HERE combines the practicality of Google Maps with the level of detailed offered by more powerful travel apps. This means maps can be downloaded for offline use or in areas of spotty wireless service—the times when having maps may matter the most. HERE functions as a full GPS, helps plan public transport routes, and can give to tips on where to stay or help keep your itinerary organized. The interface is simple, keeping the app from getting overwhelming.

HERE is free in the App Store

Breaking

Breaking is like lots of other iPhone RSS readers in that it lets you compile news alerts from different sources—anything that has an RSS feed—and then pulls updates to your phone. But where Breaking stands out is that it pushes stories to your notification center, which makes it easy to get news at a glance without having to log into a dozen different apps.

Breaking is $2.99 in the App Store

Layout from Instagram

Some clever folks over at Instagram realized they weren’t doing enough to help users make collages or photo montages right in the app, seceding those functions to a plethora of third-party apps. Enter Layout, which lets you tinker with your photos by putting them in a collage or mirror-flipping them for a variety of clever effects. You can then share the results on Instagram or anywhere else on the web.

Layout from Instagram is free in the App Store

Fresh Air

Fresh Air creates a handsome graph that tracks developing weather patterns, giving you a better sense of how the day will develop — just because it’s sunny when you roll out of bed doesn’t mean your suede shoes will be safe from those afternoon showers. Moreover, Fresh Air sends notifications to your phone in the mornings, which feels a lot like having a butler on your phone to help you plan accordingly.

Fresh Air is available for $1.99 in the App Store

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