Drops: Language Learning Games Reviews

I was looking for a constructive distraction during the pandemic, so figured learning a new language might do the trick. Read a few reviews on different language apps and picked a month plan on this app. I figured if I lost interest quickly, I wouldn’t be out much. I stayed with it, and renewed with another basic plan for a year. Then after that year, I said why not, and got subscribed to a lifetime premium plan.

All was going well, until recently, when my app somehow reverted back to a basic plan, which had continual pop up ads prompting me to upgrade (back) to a premium plan, and also limiting session length to only 5 minutes. Not sure what happened, but contacted this app support, and they worked with me to get Drops restored to what I had purchased last fall. It did take a few days to get this resolved, but ultimately the issue was taken care of satisfactorily.

The actual sessions are fun and can keep you engaged to keep learning. I spent about a year learning Hindi, and now have been learning Greek since then. Unfortunately I don’t have anyone to practice my learned words with, so that would be helpful to really lock in the words you’ve learned. But that is no fault of Drops . The bottom line is it’s kept me engaged since I’ve started. My streak is currently at 613 days which probably is the only time in my life I’ve started something and stayed with it! Give it a try!

Drops is the greatest thing to happen to language learning ever. Seriously. I’ve been studying one language or another my entire life and have never looked forward to vocab drills before. I actually get excited about getting to do my this app review every evening. It’s fantastic. Right now I’m using it to tackle Mandarin Chinese and it’s incredibly helpful for learning the characters. The sounds are paired with the characters (or words) so you have a “See & Say” learning experience, which is the best way to learn. The system is smart and shuffles back to the ones you flubbed on recently so you can practice them more. It also has an immediate reinforcement after you make a mistake so that the correct answer is cemented in your brain. Many of the other apps don’t do that, leaving you to wonder “then what WAS the right answer!?” Drops reinforces the correct answer immediately. Clearly the developers know a thing or two about the language learning curve. One thing to remember - learning any language is hard. You’ll have places where you struggle. That’s where an app like this can help so much. Even if you feel like you’re just repeating the same cards over and over (and making errors), you ARE learning. Stick with it and don’t give up! But honestly, download Drops already. You’re here because you’re serious about learning that new language, and this is the way to do it!

I've been using this app for about three weeks now, specifically to leisurely learn Japanese. I have the "genius" subscription (about $8 a month--I think--for unlimited use). I've found it to be a fun and convenient way to build my vocabulary. In the Japanese section there are over a 1000 words available, so there's plenty of material. After introducing a word, Drops gives a good mix of entertaining matching, spelling, etc. drills to help cement the word. For Japanese, there's two difficulty settings: beginner (only hiragana) and intermediate (katakana and kanji). There's also an option to have romaji subtitles. I've found the beginner setting great for working on basic pronunciation and the intermediate good for getting familiar with kanji. In the beginner setting, there's a hiragana section in which you can get familiar with all the symbols (which I loved). There isn't a section for voiced hiragana or voiced katakana, but there are other flash card-style apps available for the syllabaries, so it's not a huge issue. Drops has a dojo section in which you can practice all the words you've reviewed together. I've really liked it as a way of gauging my progress. For me, the dojo always crashes on the intermediate setting, but when I contacted this app about it they replied right away, and I'm confident they'll fix it. Overall, I think this is a great app and I definitely recommend it.

The learning style is fun, inventive and effective. By encouraging use of pictorials coupled with sound and text means that regardless of the way in which you learn best, you are reinforced in every medium. The bite-sized daily reminders are also a great way to encourage daily practice. I also think this is a fantastic value — for only a lifetime price of US$169, my whole family is learning on Drops , and my kids decided to pick up some fun basic words in multiple languages they never had prior interest in. The platform makes it really attractive and not daunting at all to just try to pick up a few words.

Suggestions — the basic words that are taught for each language appear the same — ie., ‘bread’ is one of the first things you learn, and so is salad and lemon. However, this may not be the staple food for some countries. Perhaps learning ‘rice’ first for some languages or ‘noodles’ makes more sense.

Secondly, I am only a tourist in my first language I am learning here, but I think it would be a good idea to already introduce some basic sentences by now so I can learn grammar. Maybe this is coming but I haven’t gotten there yet. I also think watching a real conversation in a quick video clip might be helpful for more advanced learners - followed by the terms broken down the way it is done in Drops already.

I really love Drops! I use it for learning Korean and it has been a great addition to my studies! It is more fun than going through flash cards and uses a system similar to Anki so once it knows I have mastered a word, I won’t see it as often. It tests me in multiple ways so I’m even familiar with the writing as well as the verbal language. Uses images helps me to not have an English equivalent to Korean words and that has helped me to recall words and not stumble having to think of the English word and then the Korean one.
I do have a suggestion for the Developers: Please make a group of topics for VERBS. I think verbs are the most important thing to know when trying to form my own sentences and since I don’t plan on visiting Korea for at least another year, the plethora of traveler topics are not a priority for me. I purchased the yearly subscription and the only thing that I can think of to improve Drops is to add a few verbs-based topics.
I also have a tip for anyone using Drops ; TURN ROMANIZATION OFF. It has been a huge help for me (not using romanization) since a lot of Korean does not phonetically romanize well. To avoid he confusion, turn it off and after an hour or two of wondering if you made the right decision, you’ll realize taking away the training wheels (romanization) makes Drops better and helps you learn better.

Hey this app team! I really love Drops , I downloaded multiple apps pertaining to learning New languages, and Drops by far exceeds all of them. For the simple fact that one doesn’t feel like they are in a car dealership lot just browsing and have a swarm of salesman coming at you from all angles and potentially losing the interest of the potential customer. What I mean by this is this app not only let’s you enjoy Drops and get into it with its user friendly features, but unlike most language learning apps, doesn’t try and get you to pay for it with a bunch of pop ups, it lets you actually want to keep Drops . Which in turn would make you want to pay for premium.
The only con that I can think of have using Drops for awhile now is that, while trying to review all the words you have previously learned thus far, a pop up opens and does try to get one to pay for the upgrade. To me personally this part of Drops could be changed. Just for the simple fact that it is a smart marketing strategy I could see, but for those who don’t have any form of card payment, it is kind of a bummer not to be able to see the words you have learned thus far. I appreciate the time it may or may not have took to read this review, but I would like to send appreciation to those who made Drops possible for people who want to broaden their minds and try something new like learning a new language for what ever reason one might have. Thank you this app.

This is not a comprehensive guide to make you fluent in a language. However, this app is very instrumental to building a solid foundation for almost 40 languages, not including their attention to major dialectal differences by offering separate courses for Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, British and American English, Brazilian and European Portuguese, and Castilian and Mexican Spanish. Vocabulary is very important when learning a language, and this app gives you thousands of words in an easily digestible fashion. Of course it's not the only way to learn a language, since grammar is also important, but what's the point of focusing on the grammar if you don't even know what words you're putting in the right order? My favorite part about this app is that they're dedicated to expanding their catalog of languages whenever possible. It's very cool to see an app this prominent teach languages that others like Duolingo will take forever to get, like Persian, Igbo, Serbian, Thai, and Samoan. The lack of grammar holds it back from being a 5 star rating, but as i said, what it does teach is still extremely helpful. The words they teach are very applicable to casual tourism in a region, and for those on the path to fluency, it also covers a solid baseline of words you'd hear in everyday speech. The way they drill them with fun and simple games also goes a long way to improving memorization skills

I took Japanese in college and was always so terrible with vocab. I have forgotten so much and I’ve been wanting to get back into it, so I tried Drops, and I feel like I know more vocab now than I did when I was taking classes! this app makes it simple and fun to learn, and is perfect in conjunction with Duolingo or teaching yourself the grammar. I do have one issue with how Japanese words are ‘broken up’ when you have to spell them using the bubbles; I’m sure all words in all languages are broken up in the same way, but at least for Japanese it feels really off putting because it goes against the way the Japanese alphabet is organized and how you should be pronouncing things properly. I think it would be easier and less confusing if you customized the way certain languages get broken up to follow the correct structure (Japanese is usually sets of two letters or just a vowel/n so if you broke up ‘konpyuutaa’ as ‘konp’ ‘yuut’ ‘aa’ it just feels wrong, and should be something like ‘kon’ ‘pyuu’ ‘taa’ etc etc). I haven’t purchased yet but I’m thinking about it, my only reservation is that the five minute chunks and having to wait basically a full day to come back to it makes me more disciplined! If I had endless time I’m afraid I wouldn’t be as diligent. We’ll see, but in the mean time, thank you for this amazing app!

I never have seen Italia in my life so you can understand why it’s my dream to go and travel the whole boot, top to bottom! I have already been studying Italian for a little while but not on a regular basis so this makes it a bit fun bc as my brain is occupied the subconscious mind is having fun learning! I like it and time flies when you’re done, I mean when you’re having fun! I do hate cliches and I always have to let someone know that I do and why I do but I’m saying now , there’s always an exception to every rule or situation that you might find yourself heading right into , you didn’t catch that one huh? I improved on a classic that time flies…the way I have actually given this one cliche some wisdom from my imagination I improved it and now I have to comment on how easy it is in the beginning but It’s got to get more challenging but I can’t see how. They could speed it up but that’s lame and then I would never play again bc something like that takes absolutely no talent to completely me up with so when you are stuck you keep going till you get it right! It’s that the kind of reviews that you were looking for or what! Hey if not, I just wasted my time writing but I like writing so I find it fascinating and it was a pleasure doing it even if you think I’m never going to get it to write a book like The Godfather or The Prestige!

This is the only vocab learning app that I’ve found to be a good multi-tool for beginners and advanced speakers! I originally downloaded it at first to learn Russian vocabulary, in which I’m essentially a total beginner. I soon realized you can easily switch between many languages, and as a C1 level German speaker, thought I’d see what they had to offer there. Because of the way this app organizes lessons into themes, I’m able to learn/re-learn vocabulary for subjects that I didn’t learn or have since forgotten in my path to fluency (like specific flower types, elements of biology, etc.), without first having to suffer through beginner’s vocabulary. Although there’s always a few words I already knew, I have, notably, still learned at least one new word from each 5-minute lesson in new subjects (which is a victory to me) or relearned words which I only previously glossed over in my studies. I’ve also found it completely worth it to pay for the full version of Drops in order to have unlimited learning sessions, which is a lot coming from me, as I do not purchase apps as a general rule. Thank you for giving me a small foundation on which to continue my Russian studies and for improving my advanced German skills one word at a time! :)

To recover lost vocabulary in Japanese, I wanted something like this: brief and engaging daily games offering new words interspersed with review, organized by level and topic.
Minor complaints: the Romaji included errors -- at least one badly incorrect transliteration ("ferry") plus many letter-combinations, in the spelling game, that "break" Japanese syllables inappropriately. (Luckily my kana recognition is decent so I turned romaji off and I see no errors in the kana.)
It seems Drops uses the same framework for many languages. The odd result, for Japanese, is a tedious ratio of "garaigo" English vocabulary (English through a Japanese phonetic filter). It would be great to have an option to toggle these words off. And there are a few concepts forced into a word-for-word translation here ("or" for example) when in fact Japanese uses a different grammatical structure to accomplish what an English word or phrase does. And there's nothing in Drops to help explain that "hai" does NOT quite mean "yes" but something more noncommital, etc. So I would be wary of recommending Drops as a first exposure. Someone brushing up on rusty skills, though, can shrug and move on without being misled.
Last, the reinforcement icon at the end of each mini-challenge lingers just a moment too long for me, preventing a real game-like flow. Others may like the pacing. A timing slider in settings would be a simple fix.

this app is a great app. It is actually fun and easy to use, and it isn’t too fast paced so it helps you memorize things. It is great in this way, but I have noticed a few problems with it. I am learning Farsi on it, and I have noticed some words, such as bale and sobhane are pronounced incorrectly, using the long e sound instead of the short e. I already knew a little Farsi before I started using this app, so I could tell this was wrong, but other people who have no experience and nobody to correct them could learn incorrectly. Assuming Drops is very expensive, it should be accurate. Also, keep in mind that this app will only teach you words, and at a certain point you will need to learn how to use them in real life situation. For that, I would recommend an app such as Ling app, high is completely free. Depending what you are looking for, this app could be worth it though. If you are a beginner who is committed and willing to spend a lot to get this app (or just use it for five minutes, which isn’t enough time to retain everything in my opinion), than Drops is good for you. If you are more advanced and want to learn sentences and more complex phrases, than try Ling app, which isn’t overall as fun but is more informative. Still, I will continue to enjoy this app as it is great and helpful to a certain extent.

I’ve been using this app to learn Mandarin Chinese and I really like it as a way of boosting my vocabulary and recognition of characters. I also really want to learn to write, so this app helps with that.

BUT the one super frustrating thing is with the writing. I’m not sure exactly how it’s programmed, but it isn’t very adaptive. It seems like it’s recognizing how close you get to their set path, instead of actual character recognition. Sometimes it has you write characters without any guidance which is great practice. But, I find it impossible sometimes to get it “right”. I know what the character looks like and how to write it, but since I’m not putting my strokes exactly where Drops wants them, it gives me haptic feedback and forces me to start over. It’s really frustrating when I know I’m doing it right but I can’t get Drops to recognize it. There’s value in striving for proper proportion and handwriting, but this is too much. It makes it really hard to enjoy Drops as I spend a lot of time just trying to get through these types of exercises. I’d probably be getting a premium membership if it weren’t for this. It also constantly gives me the message “stop the stroke a bit earlier :)” which seems nice, until you get it 1000 times (even when that isn’t the problem, I’m just doing it completely wrong).

I love the design of this app and the way it focuses on vocabulary and I was induced to pay for a year because of that. But oh my word, the quality control is terrible. At least with respect to the French option which is riddled with errors. And I’m not talking translation choices or anything stylistic. I’m talking about actual errors and mistakes like (A) the written words not matching the spoken words, (B) the same picture being used for two different items within the same subgroup, (C) words being cut off in their pronunciation, (D) the written and spoken words being correct but the picture is of the wrong thing.

I just cannot understand how the quality control could be so poor and no one caught these things before they were released to the public. Essentially this is damaging to people learning the language who may not know some of these mistakes are there.

There does appear to be a *limited* way to report these errors while using Drops , but even that is very flawed. You can report the error ONLY upon its first appearance and before you swipe down the first time. So you have to immediately know it is a mistake which, if you are a learner, is hard to do. Even being advanced, it’s hard to stop the swiping in time to make the report. Once you make that swipe though, it is impossible to make any error reports for that word. That option is gone forever.

안녕하세요! I have been using Drops to learn Korean for over a year now, and Drops makes learning a language so comprehensible. You don’t even realize how easily you are learning the words, and the methods are fun and simple to follow. I have really picked up on the language thanks to quite a bit of help from Drops.

Some things I would suggest though, is for those who are really trying to learn to speak the language, there is only really vocabulary words and how to word certain verbs on here, and I would like to see maybe some teachings on how to conjugate verbs and sentence structure. I had to do a lot of alternative research to really learn to speak the language correctly. I don’t know if there is something for that in the intermediate section because I’m only halfway done with beginner, but I definitely think it would help. I would also really like to see some sections that cover slang words and honorifics, because I think the latter is very important to learn if you plan to travel and use the language in the country or with actual Korean people. Otherwise, it’s very fun to use and I always look forward to doing my lesson at the end of my day. 정말 행복.... Very happy! 감사합니다!

I am a paid user, I have been using Drops over a year now. I have never encountered an issue until a few weeks ago. I’m not sure what is going on but I’m having some sort of login issue where Drops is having an error message repeatedly pop up over and over if I leave Drops for longer than a few minutes. It never resolves itself and I’ve tried all common sense trouble shooting methods.

I figured I would try to get help from this app to solve it. I went in to “create a ticket” but it was actually really hard to find *how* to make one. The help pages told me to make a ticket but it was not user friendly in how to actually make a new ticket or where the link was to make a request. Finally, I found an email address for customer support and sent a message. It’s been over two weeks now and I’ve sent up a follow up message and I have heard nothing. The problem has only gotten worse and now if I want to continue using Drops , I literally have to delete it from my phone every time I want to use it. Completely annoying and inconvenient.

I tried to commenting on an instagram photo for help and didn’t get a response from their official page. I don’t know what else to do. I paid a lot of money for the unlimited lifetime use of Drops and I don’t know who to contact or if anyone reads that supposed email for customer service support.

even though it's extremely user-friendly in many ways and has a very streamlined navigation process through Drops their biggest fault I can tell after only using it for five minutes is the inability to choose multiple languages at a time and take part in multiple languages like you would with Duolingo, if there's an update coming soon you guys should definitely at least consider making it possible for somebody to learn multiple like for instants your app is one of the only apps that offers Korean but that doesn't mean that I don't want to also learn Chinese vocabulary Arabic vocabulary Hebrew vocabulary Japanese vocabulary etc you guys are one of the only language learning apps that offers nonromantic non Latin-based languages ( or at the very least strictly European languages)
which makes it hard for anybody that doesn't want to sit around in Europe and sip coffees all day but actually wants to go out in the world and meet new people of similar and different cultures and see new things.
so thanks keep up the great work
and literally just by adding the capability of learning multiple languages at a time you've elevated yourself above duolingo because the worst thing about them is there all Caucasian language selection and general lack of diversity.
good luck y'all

Drops itself is very clean. It really met my expectations. It has a large variety in activities which was really fun and helpful. Every activity is different and it really helped me in not getting bored, it also reminds you to learn every day. I’m not sure how my opinion will change in the future however as of right now the free version isn’t terrible, in fact it’s quite good. This is surprising as many language apps require a payment for quality. Drops is very reasonable especially for the price that I paid. If you’re learning a language with a non-Latin alphabet, Drops shows you both the romanization and the original language which was great since I am learning Hangul and I want to be able to read and write it as Romanizations aren’t always completely accurate. Luckily Drops reviews the romanization, the pronunciation, and the original language’s writing. For those looking to learn a new language, especially one with a non-Latin alphabet, this app will be a great addition to your learning tools. My only complaint is the short time span. I wish that you could practice for more than five minutes a day, it’s just way too fun. Thanks for making it so that everyone can learn ✌️❤️

this app is a language learning app that is mainly focused on vocabulary and is a game-like learning experience for your target language. There are various topics for you to choose from to learn every single day. The best part is that it's free! Of course, there's a limited package, but it's not like those other apps where you have to pay to get more lessons. Drops has you do a maximum of 5 minutes a day without the subscription. If you just wanna expand your vocabulary in your target language and are not truly serious about getting fluent in that language, then this is a fantastic app for you. However, if you're truly, truly serious about learning another language, then do not use this as your only resource and there is no need to pay for Drops since there are better resources for your language learning. Since Drops only focuses on vocabulary, then you will need to find another source for grammar, which is one of the reasons why you can't use this as your only resource. However, make sure to give it a try whether you are serious about learning or not! Again, it’s an amazing tool for expanding your vocabulary, but not good for becoming fluent by itself.

I’ve been learning Italian with this app for a while now, and it is a good app. Only thing that I wish to change is to make the words more accurate and specific-it says that il suo means his, hers, AND it’s. Another thing that I would like to change is the fact that Drops only teaches you words, as opposed to teaching words and sentences. Stringing together words is a good skill, but knowing the right way to actually say a sentence correctly is a better one. I would also appreciate if you made the categories better-for example in shapes, I learned about 10 when there are like a 1,000 and when I’m absorbing the new intel, I see the correct way to say something that isn’t related in any way to the topic I am learning. Another thing that I feel would be a good thing to make optional but still in Drops , is the option to practice 1 WORD over and over again with the option to quit and move on. I feel that this will be a good way to improve memory and to make sure that you never forget a certain word. And also, i don't think that its reasonable to make the collection inly for premium users. We should be allowed to see the words and hear them even if we aren’t premium users.

Drops is great for learning new languages! It’s so much fun! And easy to learn new words! It’s more fun to learn a new language! I really enjoy Drops, but there’s one thing you could do to make it even better! Instead of only doing a section 5 minutes long and then have to wait for 10 hours to do the other one what if you could have more time if you get the answers correct? if you do really good on your first section then you get more time for the next one And so on? So maybe instead of 5 minutes you can do 15 minutes for free? If you do really well on the sessions ? And only have to wait an hour to have time back filled up? Other then that this is the BEST learning language app! Out there! Thank you for reading this, have a wonderful day!
Please get Drops if you want to learn ANY languages,

Ps. I’ve been looking for the right learning language app for DAYS, my search is now over thank you again! And get Drops if you want to learn any language! Because it’s fun & easy! This is why I gave the great app a 5 Star review! I really really love Drops and enjoy it!

This is the best vocabulary app on the market. However, it is too heavy on the nouns. I rarely come across verbs, prepositions, adverbs, or adjectives. I have no expectations for Drops to teach grammar (such as conjugating) since this is purely a vocabulary app. However, it seems as though 95% of the words here are nouns. I’ll buy the lifetime version no problem if it does that. But I can’t justify the high cost of a vocabulary app when it is missing crucial parts of speech. I like that that the voices are easy to understand and not robotic like many other language apps. I like that you get practice spelling the words by choosing from a few bubbles instead of having to use a full keyboard (which makes it much easier to learn words in more difficult languages such as Arabic). I know this is company is small, but I would like to see them expand so that they can have the man power to add more languages, increase the vocabulary word count, and add more parts of speech. I sincerely think that Drops would significantly more people buying the full version if these things are implemented. I would like to see Drops become more popular since it is invaluable to language learning and very well made.

As a long-time learner of Cantonese, I was excited to hear that an iPhone app was actually starting to offer Cantonese vocabulary practice. However, my enthusiasm has been dampened by the number of errors I have discovered within the vocabulary decks (sometime as many as six words within a section will have an error). The errors usually involve incorrect tones in the jyutping romanization, though the audio recording will be correct, leading to a bit of cognitive dissonance where what I hear doesn’t match what I see. A lot of these error are likely due to the fact that this app has specific jyutping spellings hard coded 1-for-1 to specific Chinese characters, but in Cantonese, some characters switch tones depending on where they are in a word, so the logic needs to be fixed. I also found some instances where the audio and the reading didn’t match at all (like 我闖入). I used the “report and error” function weeks ago for many of these problems, but this app has yet to change the vocabulary cards in question or even respond. As such, I can’t really recommend Drops at this time.

(also, Cantonese learners often deal with two separate romanization systems: jyutping and Yale. It would be cool if this app followed the lead of other apps like Pleco and offered the ability to toggle between the two)

First off, Drops is amazing - one of the best I’ve ever used for learning new vocab in Italian. Having said that, this app does not focus on teaching the grammar of a language, and therefore cannot be used as your only resource in learning a language. This is not a bad thing, as Drops specializes in one thing and does that one thing really well, but it’s something to be mindful of. I personally would not recommend this app to total beginners of a language, but I would recommend it to anyone who has previous experience, fair knowledge of the grammar and pronunciation, and is just looking to build their vocabulary. Perhaps you can use it alongside Duolingo to supplement or strengthen your vocab while you build grammar, but I find learning too much vocab in the beginning of learning a language to be a little overwhelming. Nevertheless, top notch app - beautiful design, easy to use interface, the words they teach you are definitely important and some are ones that I wouldn’t have thought to look up on my own, and they bring up previous words during all of your lessons to make sure you still remember it.

The teaching style of this app is amazing! Although I do wish the daily limitation wasn’t there or at least is longer than 5 minutes. If one wanted to solely use this app to learn languages, that 5 minutes surely doesn’t seem enough unless we are forced to pay to do so. Nonetheless I am currently attempting to learn, Mandarin, korean, Japanese and Thai and I can say that I have learned a lot more in 5 minutes than just reading and forcibly memorising by book, or online. This is an amazing program, quite different from the likes of Duolingo, but if you might add a kind of detailed lessons into each part you teaching, like that on The Duolingo web version where each section has a detailed breakdown or summary type of paragraph where it teaches you how to use each thing you learned. Although I haven’t been using this long, nor have I got the chance to explore further into your app to see if you already have this feature since it limits my usage this is an exceptional programme and I hope you can continue the hard work it surely will help me learn a lot of languages in my life!

It’s very simple. A visual and audial experience that doesn’t do the work for you and helps you actually understand the worlds you’re learning. You’ll go through the motions of writing the words and letters by tracing them for languages such as Japanese, Mandarin, Korean, etc. each language has a similar structural setup so if you choose to learn multiple at once, they follow the similar format of introducing the word or phrase being spoken, showing the visuals of what it is, and allowing you to repeat it for dialect practice, as well as selecting the right letters to form the words.

Also wishful thinking is to implement a review section that would be great to listen to while going to sleep so I can solidify what I’ve learned in my head. An example would be for a voice to repeat the words I’ve learned and reviewed and translating them in the process. “[This word] means [that word]”. It may sound silly but I’ve found that helps me learn a language considerably faster.

I truly think Drops should be in everyone’s Top 3 Language Learning Apps.