SSPAI Review | Best New Apps to Try This Week

Maestri: A Whiteboard Tool for the AI Agents Era

Platform: macOS
Keywords: AI, Agent, Terminal

@Vanilla: To be honest, when I first opened Maestri’s official website, I thought it was just another app trying to ride the AI hype. However, after actually downloading it and using it to complete a small project, I found that Maestri performs quite well in certain scenarios, helping us better leverage AI Agents to get work done. Next, I’ll use a recent investment research project of mine as an example to see what Maestri can really do.

When you open Maestri, you’ll notice that its main interface is a whiteboard canvas. You can add elements such as terminals, tags, attachments, file trees, portals, formats, and drawings. Among them, the file tree can be thought of as folders, portals as web pages, formats as text boxes, and the rest are fairly self-explanatory.

Looking at the toolbar at the top of the canvas, in addition to the elements mentioned earlier, there is also a selection tool that allows you to move or resize elements. All buttons on the toolbar have corresponding keyboard shortcuts, usually a single letter key, making them very quick to access.

Then, at the bottom right corner of the canvas, there are three buttons: floors, minimap, and zoom.

The floor feature is something Maestri built using macOS system capabilities. It allows you to create multiple floors, essentially independent workspaces. When creating a floor, you can either start fresh or directly duplicate the base layer. In the end, you can merge them or designate one floor as the final output layer—it has a bit of a Git-like flavor.

The minimap is a thumbnail view of the entire canvas, helping you quickly locate different areas. The zoom function is even more straightforward, letting you control the zoom level using plus and minus buttons.

Currently, Maestri’s terminal supports Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, and Shell, and you can choose among them when inserting a terminal element.

When you insert multiple terminals on the canvas, you can connect them with lines, allowing them to communicate with each other. In addition to connecting terminals, you can also link tags and portals to terminal elements, enabling AI Agents to read and edit the content within those elements.

Maestri actually relies on Maestri Skills to enable communication between AI Agents and to operate on connected tags and portals. As a result, its capabilities are limited to what Maestri Skills support—for example, AI Agents cannot create new notes and write content into them, nor can they establish links with elements like file trees or text boxes.

Overall, Maestri addresses the issue of frequent context switching and lack of data interoperability when working with multiple Agents. Through its “canvas” approach, it allows multimedia files within a project to be displayed simultaneously. Especially on large-screen devices, it can significantly improve reading and workflow efficiency.

Maestri is available for free download on its official website. A $18 purchase unlocks unlimited workspaces, authorization for two computers, keyboard navigation, and more.

Hour by Hour: A Scheduling App with Natural Language Input

Platform: iOS
Keywords: Scheduling, Natural Language Input

@ElijahLee: Hour by Hour is a scheduling app developed by an indie developer. Its standout feature is the ability to input schedules using natural language, with the app automatically recognizing event names and time arrangements, making it easy to plan out an entire day.

The inspiration for the app came from the developer’s experience creating travel itineraries. For example, if you need to catch a flight at 11:30, what time should you arrive at the airport, when should you leave home, and when should you set an alarm? To perfectly organize such a schedule—handling time calculations, convenient input, and event associations within a single app—the developer created Hour by Hour.

Adding events via natural language input is one of the app’s key features. You can type “Swim at 3pm,” and the app will automatically recognize a swimming session starting at 3 PM. Then, if you input “Leave 45 mins before,” the app will calculate that you should leave at 14:15, and the two events will automatically be linked. By enabling notifications from the top-right corner of the schedule planning page, the app will send reminders when events begin, helping you remember when it’s time to head out.

When creating a schedule, you can customize the schedule name, choose an icon, and select dates in the future. The app offers a wide range of customization options. For names, you can add both a title and a subtitle; icon choices span categories such as general, weather, transportation, food and drink, social activities, work, and exercise; date selection includes today, any future date, daily, weekdays/weekends, and recurring cycles.

For frequently repeated trips or business travels, you can quickly duplicate an entire itinerary. Within a single itinerary, you can naturally set up multi-day schedules. You can also assign different colors to distinguish between itineraries. The app also integrates with Apple Calendar to display events. Overall, the feature set is very comprehensive.

You can download Hour by Hour for free from the App Store. A one-time purchase of 68 RMB unlocks premium features, including unlimited schedules (the free version is limited to three), AI image generation (currently in testing), and more. Natural language input currently supports English only.

Voicebox: Clone Your Voice

Platform: macOS / Windows
Keywords: AI, Voice Cloning

@化学心情下2: Have you ever had this experience: wanting to record your own podcast, but stumbling over your words in front of the microphone, or making mistakes even when reading from a prepared script? This kind of nervousness when facing an audience has troubled content creators like me as well. But in the age of AI, cloning your voice and turning your written scripts into podcast content is no longer difficult. For example, a tool I recently discovered called Voicebox makes it easy for you to “appear” with your voice.

Simply put, Voicebox is a tool that can clone your voice and generate audio with the same tone. After opening the app, you first need to download a local AI model for speech generation and transcription. For instance, I directly chose the Qwen TTS 1.7B parameter model, though you can select one based on your computer’s hardware and the language you need. Once the download and model loading are complete, you can start voice sampling.

Before cloning your voice, you need to create or import a voice profile, which will be used to generate audio with the same tone. After clicking “Create Voice,” you’ll enter the recording interface. Paste the reference script into the “Reference Text” field, choose the target language and local model, and then start recording.

Once the voice profile is created, you can let the local speech model clone the “voiceprint” from your recording. In the “Voice Profiles” section, select the profile you just recorded, then paste the text you want to convert into speech into the input box below. Choose the language, local model, and voice effects, then click the generate button on the right side of the text box. After a short wait, you’ll hear audio generated based on your voice profile.

The generated audio can also be further processed. For example, you can apply effects—Voicebox offers presets such as “Robot,” “Radio,” “Echo Chamber,” and “Deep Voice.” The “Audio Channels” feature lets you manage output devices and channels. In “Settings” under “Generation,” you can also configure options like automatic chunking limits, fade-in and fade-out between segments, and audio normalization.

Beyond generating individual audio clips, Voicebox can also combine multiple audio segments into a story to create a complete audio project. For example, you can import multiple voice profiles with different styles and turn an eBook into an audiobook.

You can download Voicebox for free from its official website, with support for both macOS and Windows platforms.

SwiftMTP: A Better Way to Connect macOS and Android via Cable

Platform: macOS
Keywords: MTP, Android, macOS, File Management

@克莱德: With the combined push of national subsidies, local AI models, and tools like OpenClaw, many Android users—myself included—have gradually moved from the familiar Windows ecosystem to macOS. If you haven’t fully committed to Apple’s ecosystem, or simply prefer Android over iOS, transferring files between Android and macOS is something you’ll inevitably have to deal with.

For small daily files, we do have wireless solutions like LocalSend or Blip. But for syncing media libraries or handling large file imports and exports—the “heavy lifting”—a wired connection is still the way to go. And wired options are actually quite limited. If you don’t want to spend big money on simple tasks, nor bother with outdated tools like HandShaker (which hasn’t been updated in years) or the rather plain-looking OpenMTP, you might want to try SwiftMTP, brought to us by SSPAI contributor @Neighbor_Z.

From my less-than-a-year experience using a Mac, anything with “Swift” in its name tends to feel very “native,” and SwiftMTP is no exception. Compared to OpenMTP, which I had been using before, SwiftMTP adopts a UI design more in line with the visual style of macOS 26 Tahoe. It also embodies the lightweight and responsive nature of native Swift apps (with an installed size of around 15MB, as checked via mole). On top of existing open-source MTP backend solutions, it fixes several key performance and functionality issues. For example, in similar tools, transferring files or folders sometimes led to encoding problems when filenames contained emoji or extended CJK characters, resulting in garbled text or even missing files. SwiftMTP improves the backend encoding logic, making it more reliable—especially for users working with Chinese-language filenames.

In terms of user experience, SwiftMTP offers favorites and device management in the sidebar. The favorites section comes preloaded with commonly used directories such as Photos, Bluetooth, and Downloads, and you can also add frequently used folders from the right-hand pane. If you manage multiple Android devices, you can connect and control several devices simultaneously via the bottom section.

On the performance side, SwiftMTP improves the file traversal logic, significantly reducing the time previously required to prepare for file transfers. Transfer speeds are noticeably better than similar tools, and you can cancel transfers at any time. Also worth mentioning is the device information panel on the right—it lets you clearly see the connection protocol and transfer speed between your device and Mac. In scenarios involving long-duration, high-speed file transfers, having this kind of visibility is reassuring.

SwiftMTP feels like an enhanced and polished version of existing macOS + Android MTP solutions. With its native design and more stable, feature-rich transfer experience, it quickly became my go-to replacement for OpenMTP—a must-have app for macOS setups. The only drawback I’ve noticed so far is that the preview view in the right-hand browsing pane is still somewhat limited at this stage.

You can download SwiftMTP for free from GitHub.

Haven: An Open-Source All-in-One SSH Tool

Platform: Android
Keywords: Remote, SSH, VNC, RDP, Development

@大大大K: If you ask what’s trending lately, it’s definitely “raising shrimp” and “raising horses.” I set up an Ubuntu Server virtual machine on my NAS and deployed OpenClaw and Hermes Agent just to experiment. But they’re not always well-behaved—sometimes they inexplicably break themselves. Whenever that happens, I have to check the gateway status or manually fix things. Most of the time, though, it only takes a few commands. Booting up a computer just to SSH in feels like overkill, so I found Haven, a tool that lets me SSH remotely right from my phone.

Although it’s an SSH client, Haven doesn’t compromise on aesthetics. It adopts the Material You design and supports dynamic color theming. Functionally, it’s more than just an SSH client—it also integrates a local terminal, supports remote desktop connections via VNC and RDP, and includes file management features. This all-in-one approach really suits my needs, since these are all essential tools for remote operations.

Using a terminal or SSH on a phone isn’t exactly convenient, and Haven makes several optimizations to address this. For example, terminals often require key combinations, so Haven pins commonly used keys like Tab, Esc, Ctrl, and Alt above the keyboard. It also provides directional controls including Home and End, along with copy-paste shortcuts. Even better, Haven can natively call virtual terminal tools to maintain persistent sessions. If you’ve installed tools like tmux or screen on your remote system, you should definitely enable this feature in settings—it prevents processes from being terminated when the connection drops.

Beyond basic SSH connections, Haven includes a built-in file browser and SSH key storage, allowing you to interact with the remote file system through a graphical interface. Even more impressively, it supports running a Linux VM directly on your Android device (provided you have a local terminal tool installed), greatly expanding its versatility.

On the security side, Haven supports fingerprint unlock, screenshot blocking, tunneling, and other features. If you’re connecting to production systems, having these extra layers of protection certainly provides peace of mind. Overall, Haven is an excellent SSH client: open-source, free, and powerful enough for advanced users, while still being easy to use for beginners like me. If you need to manage SSH from your phone, you can download Haven for free from GitHub or F-Droid.

Gradient Weather: A Beautiful Yet Practical Weather App

Platform: Android
Keywords: Weather

@Peggy_: Generally speaking, a weather app is something every mobile operating system comes with by default. Even so, a wide variety of weather apps continue to be developed, each offering its own differentiation—for example, CARROT Weather, known for its sharp wit, or HeWeather, which is trusted by many for its data accuracy. Of course, there is also a category of apps that focus on design as their main selling point, and the Gradient Weather we’re introducing today stands out with its visual appeal.

When you first open the app, you can choose whether to grant Gradient Weather access to your location. If you prefer not to, you can still add cities by searching for them manually. After completing this step, you can customize the app’s appearance on the onboarding screen—from theme colors to font selection, offering a fair degree of personalization.

On the main interface, in addition to the most important current temperature, Gradient Weather places emphasis on the hourly forecast for the next 24 hours. You can tap on any specific hour to view additional details such as wind speed, UV index, and humidity. Following that is the more familiar 7-day weather forecast, helping you understand upcoming weather trends.

Scrolling further down reveals more detailed information for the current day. Gradient Weather adopts a card-based design, combining large text with colorful icons to effectively present different types of weather data. Each category uses a distinct chart style, reducing visual clutter. Of course, if you’re not satisfied with the default layout, you can customize it to prioritize the information you care about most.

In the settings interface, Gradient Weather provides even more customization options centered around information display. From the size of weather elements on the home screen, to the layout of future forecasts, to the number of days shown—you can adjust everything. The app also lists its data sources in the settings, making it easy to assess their reliability. A particularly clever touch is the built-in collection of weather-themed app icons: you can either choose your favorite manually or let the icon change automatically based on current weather conditions.

In addition, Gradient Weather offers different notification types for various weather conditions, which you can later adjust based on what matters most to you.

If you’re interested in Gradient Weather, you can download it from the Play Store and give it a try.

Kaori: Keep a Journal of Your Perfumes

Platform: iOS
Keywords: Perfume

@Snow: Although China’s perfume market has grown rapidly in recent years, compared to some Western countries, perfume is still a relatively niche consumer product domestically. Enthusiasts often share scent preferences in WeChat groups or on Xiaohongshu, and record their testing notes in local journals or apps like Fragrantica. But when it comes to deciding which fragrance to “wear” before heading out, you probably still have to go through a bit of an internal struggle. Earlier this month, an app called Kaori launched on the App Store—it may help you manage complex scent memories while also easing the dilemma of choosing what to wear.

Open Kaori and tap the “+” button in the bottom right corner to “Add Perfume,” and you can start registering your collection. Kaori supports customizing details such as perfume name, brand, volume, scent profile, concentration, purchase location, purchase date, usage preferences, related memories, and more. It isn’t limited by third-party databases, so whether it’s a niche fragrance or a custom blend, it can have a place in your personal archive.

When entering a perfume name or adding an image, the app will automatically call a large model for matching. If a match is found, Kaori will provide suggestions, letting AI fill in part of the data for you. The AI can also analyze uploaded perfume images and isolate the main subject—so long as the shooting angle isn’t too unusual, Kaori can maintain a clean and consistent visual presentation.

One thing to note is that the “scent profile” field in Kaori does not refer to listing top, middle, and base notes. Instead, it uses the “fragrance wheel” model for classification. For those new to perfumes, if the AI fails to match automatically, you may need to familiarize yourself with how the fragrance wheel works.

The user preferences set when registering perfumes include three dimensions: season, time of day, and personal liking. These serve as the foundation for Kaori’s intelligent fragrance recommendations. The app combines real-time weather, temperature, and seasonal data from your location to suggest three perfumes best suited to the current moment. You can tap an item to quickly log it, or tap the “+” button in the bottom right to manually select a fragrance based on scent categories.

In the “Memories” section, you can review all your recent wearing records and understand your latest scent preferences. Within the perfume archive, you can also track usage frequency for each fragrance and gain insight into the contexts in which you tend to favor them—this may also help inform your future purchasing decisions.

In addition, Kaori offers beautifully designed sharing templates. You can place your daily outfit photos, travel experiences, or casual perfume snapshots into these templates, add your olfactory notes and text, and share them with fellow enthusiasts.

However, as a newly released app, Kaori still has some limitations. For example, its AI model currently cannot match Chinese names— even for well-known fragrances like Chanel Bleu, you’ll need to input “Bleu” to get a match. Additionally, Kaori does not distinguish between “tested” and “owned” fragrances like Fragrantica does. If, like me, you’re very cautious about purchasing full bottles but have a large collection of samples or decants, Kaori may feel somewhat limited for managing them.

Kaori includes an in-app subscription: 8 RMB per month or 68 RMB per year. The paid version unlocks unlimited perfume entries, a full calendar feature, watermark-free sharing, and iCloud backup.

You can download Kaori for free from the App Store.

App Brief

OpenAI has released the GPT-5.5 model, focusing on stronger capabilities in programming, computer operation, and deep research.
DeepSeek has unveiled a preview of its next-generation V4 model and open-sourced it simultaneously, emphasizing enhanced reasoning, programming, and Agent capabilities. It supports up to 1 million tokens of context and aims to directly compete with flagship models from OpenAI and Google at a lower cost.
The standalone chat app XChat from X is now officially available, allowing login via X accounts. The app is not yet available in mainland China.
The read-later tool Matter introduced API and CLI support this month.

SP-Life