SSPAI Review | Best New Apps to Try This Week

Halide: Mark III Officially Launches

Platform: iOS, iPadOS
Keywords: Camera, Film-Style Photography

@ElijahLee: After 18 months of development and refinement, the renowned mobile photography app Halide has officially launched Mark III. We introduced the preview version of Mark III earlier this year, and now the final release is finally here.

The core of Mark III is its film-style system, known as Looks. Unlike traditional filters, Halide’s Looks dynamically adjust the image rendering pipeline based on shooting parameters, including color tone, contrast, highlights and shadows, film grain, film-like highlight bloom, HDR rendering behavior, and more. Lux specifically highlighted its collaboration with Hollywood colorist Cullen Kelly in developing the Looks for Mark III.

Currently, Halide Mark III includes five primary Looks:

Valencia: Designed for landscapes and urban photography, featuring strong contrast, high saturation, and clear color separation.
Rembrandt: Designed for portraits, emphasizing facial structure with pronounced midtone contrast and natural, consistent skin tones.
Nova: Ideal for vibrant landscapes, night scenes, and urban neon environments. Colors are highly saturated, highlights lean toward peach tones, and the overall look delivers a strong cinematic feel.
Zephyr: Suitable for a wide range of scenarios, offering gentle film-style contrast and natural skin rendering.
Chroma Noir: A black-and-white style characterized by moderate contrast and noticeable film grain.

The second major highlight of Mark III is that every Look supports HDR rendering. While preserving a film-inspired aesthetic, HDR allows significantly more highlight detail and richer shadow gradation. Lux also revealed that each Look actually has both SDR and HDR versions, meaning every style is powered by two separate rendering pipelines. Users can freely choose between them and enable or disable HDR within the settings.

The newly added Photo Lab introduces manual photo editing capabilities. Rather than being a full-featured image editor, it focuses on providing a fast and streamlined editing experience. Users can quickly switch between different Looks, toggle HDR and film simulations, adjust exposure, and use real-time previews to find the most suitable result. For those who need more control, a swipe through the tabs at the top reveals advanced editing options, including various photographic parameters, white balance adjustments, cropping, and horizon correction. Photo Lab also supports iPad, allowing users to edit photos on a larger screen.

As we mentioned in our earlier coverage, Mark III completely redesigns the app’s interface. After downloading the latest version of Halide from the App Store, users can tap the new ③ button on the screen to switch to Mark III. The default interface is now cleaner and more streamlined, keeping core functions such as focus, focal length selection, and RAW capture readily accessible, while moving most other controls into the “…” menu on the right.

Overall, Halide Mark III pushes innovation in digital film-style photography even further. By leveraging modern imaging technology, it significantly enhances the film photography experience while remaining easy to use. With just a few adjustments, users can create images that feel far more like finished photographic works. Halide can be downloaded for free from the App Store, but a paid subscription is required to access Mark III. Pricing is ¥68 per month, ¥148 per year, or a one-time purchase of ¥398.

Raycast for Mac v2: A New Era for Productivity Launchers

Platform: macOS
Keywords: Launcher, AI

@Vanilla: As one of the most successful newcomers in the Mac launcher space, Raycast has firmly secured its place among the top-tier productivity tools. With the recently released Version 2.0 update, Raycast has undergone another major round of improvements and refinements, pushing launcher applications into an era where they feel both all-in-one and indispensable. In the following sections, I’ll highlight some of the most important additions and changes in this release to help you better understand the new Raycast experience. If you’re unfamiliar with launcher tools or Raycast itself, you may want to start with our previous introduction article.

Related Reading: Raycast, the Rising Star Among Launchers That Wants to Become Your Mac’s Default Search Tool

First, Raycast 2.0 introduces an entirely new design language, primarily created to align with the Liquid Glass aesthetic of macOS Tahoe. The interface is now more compact and streamlined, allowing more items to fit within the same window size. At the same time, Raycast has improved data interoperability across its ecosystem. For example, information retrieved through AI Chat can now be saved directly into Raycast Notes without leaving the workflow.

Second, Raycast’s file search functionality has become a genuine replacement for the system Spotlight search. In the new version, Raycast has upgraded its indexing engine, making file searches noticeably faster. More importantly, file searches can now be initiated directly from the main search interface, eliminating the need to first invoke a dedicated file-search command before entering keywords. This significantly improves workflow efficiency.

The Quicklink feature has also received a comprehensive overhaul. First, Quicklinks can now be pinned, allowing users to access them directly without searching by keyword. Second, multiple tags can be assigned when creating a Quicklink, making it easier to organize and filter results. Third, a new “Prefer Existing Tabs” option has been added to the settings; when enabled, Raycast will reuse tabs that are already open in the browser instead of creating duplicates. Fourth, when Finder or a browser window is active, creating a Quicklink automatically populates the current local file path or URL.

AI has also become a central pillar of the Raycast experience. In Version 2.0, Raycast not only redesigned the AI Chat interface, but also introduced features commonly found in modern coding assistants, including Agents, Memory, and Skills.

Finally, Raycast has launched a new speech transcription feature. It automatically detects the spoken language, transcribes the content without requiring manual language selection, and can automatically paste the result into the currently active application window.

Raycast v2 is currently available in beta. You can visit the official website to learn more about the update and download the client. I would recommend every Mac user give Raycast a try. It brings together nearly every productivity tool commonly used on macOS, works out of the box, and requires no knowledge of scripting or automation commands to get started.

Mactracker 5.0: Build Your Own Apple Product Collection Database

Platform: iOS / iPadOS / macOS
Keywords: Apple Product Database

@化学心情下2: As one of the world’s most influential consumer electronics companies, Apple’s extensive lineup of products released since its founding effectively tells the story of the evolution of modern consumer technology. Because of this, developers have compiled detailed information on Apple’s products over the years, making it easier for digital archaeology enthusiasts like us to explore some of the company’s most fascinating historical devices. Mactracker is one of the most well-known Apple product databases available today, offering comprehensive information through its Mac, iPad, and iOS apps. Recently, its mobile version received the major v5.0 update, introducing several noteworthy new features.

The most eye-catching addition is the new comparison feature, which works similarly to Apple’s own product comparison tool—much like when you’re considering a new iPhone in the Apple Store and want to compare it with the previous generation. In Mactracker 5.0, after locating a product, you can tap the “Compare” button in the upper-right corner to add it to a comparison list. Then, from the comparison page, tap the search button in the upper-right corner to add another product and compare both devices side by side on the same screen. Tapping the marker icon near the top of the screen highlights specifications that differ between the two products, making it easy to spot the key differences at a glance.

Another new feature is “My Models,” which is designed to catalog the Apple devices you currently own and use. Switch to the My Models section, tap the add button in the upper-right corner, and select “Change Model” to search the product database for your specific device, or allow the app to automatically retrieve information from the current device. You can also record details such as serial numbers and exact model identifiers, gradually building a personalized Apple product collection of your own.

As a feature that debuted in v5.0, My Models still feels somewhat basic at this stage. Beyond displaying your collection, the “Summary” view in the upper-right corner provides statistics on device categories, color variations, and release-year distribution. Thanks to iCloud Drive integration, this information can also be synchronized across Mactracker installations on your other Apple devices.

In addition, Mactracker 5.0 expands and refines parts of its database, including new MagSafe battery information for the iPhone Air and detailed entries covering the latest Apple operating systems.

If you’d like to carefully organize your own Apple hardware collection—or if you’re simply interested in Apple’s product history—it’s well worth giving Mactracker a try. The app is available as a free download from the App Store.

Caffeine Health: Maybe It’s Time to Cut Back on Coffee

Platform: Android
Keywords: Coffee Logging, Caffeine Tracking

@Peggy_: As the coffee market continues to expand, coffee drinks—once a relatively niche interest—have become increasingly mainstream. Coffee is now marketed much like milk tea, and many consumers casually drink two cups a day without much thought. At the same time, caffeine levels in milk tea products continue to rise, while energy drinks are being promoted more aggressively than ever. We have likely never consumed as much caffeine as we do today.

Caffeine has long been celebrated for its stimulating effects, but every coin has two sides. Excessive caffeine intake can disrupt sleep quality and negatively affect digestive health. Caffeine Health is an app designed to track caffeine consumption. By recording both the amount of caffeine consumed and the timing of intake, the app makes caffeine’s effects on the body visible and presents them clearly through charts and visualizations.

When first launching Caffeine Health, users are asked to answer a series of questions. Information such as age and body weight is used to estimate a personalized caffeine baseline. Users also provide their typical sleep schedule, allowing the app to recommend an appropriate time to stop consuming caffeine each day. To improve the accuracy of its recommendations, Caffeine Health also asks about habits such as smoking and alcohol consumption. Impressively, the app even cites scientific literature to support how these factors may influence caffeine metabolism.

Most caffeine-tracking apps focus solely on recording consumption data, but Caffeine Health also takes factors such as liver function and medication use into account—variables that many people tend to overlook in daily life.

After completing the setup process, Caffeine Health generates personalized recommendations. Based on my own data, for example, the app estimated that caffeine has a half-life of approximately five hours in my body, while the residual caffeine threshold likely to affect my sleep is around 44 milligrams. Of course, these values are only estimates. If you have a better understanding of your own physiology, the app allows you to adjust them later through the settings menu.

On the app’s home screen, the most prominent element is the chart displayed at the top. As you begin recording caffeine intake, the chart visualizes the timing of each consumption event and provides intuitive recommendations. Tapping “Add” allows you to start logging beverages. Caffeine Health includes a wide range of common coffee drinks for quick entry, as well as many popular energy drinks available on the market.

If you also enjoy caffeinated beverages such as cola or hot chocolate, Caffeine Health provides estimated caffeine content for those drinks as well. Since the app was not developed specifically for the Chinese market, some beverages and milk tea brands commonly found in China are not included in the database.

Using today’s coffee intake as an example, I had a homemade pour-over coffee at 9 a.m. and an Americano at 1 p.m. After accurately logging both the quantity and time of consumption, the home screen chart clearly showed how the caffeine from each drink was metabolized over time. It was easy to see that the caffeine from the morning pour-over had largely been processed and was unlikely to affect my sleep. The afternoon Americano, however, pushed my caffeine level significantly higher and would most likely have an impact on my sleep later in the day.

The greatest strength of this chart is that it quantifies caffeine metabolism in a meaningful way. Advice such as “don’t drink coffee in the afternoon” transforms from a generic warning everyone has heard into a concrete, data-driven visualization that is far more convincing. Additionally, whenever caffeine is consumed during a period that may affect sleep, the app provides appropriate warnings and recommendations. Over time, users naturally develop a better understanding of when they should be more cautious.

If Caffeine Health sounds interesting to you, you can download it through F-Droid and give it a try. The app is open source and completely free to use, although it does not currently offer a Chinese-language translation.

PairPods: A Simple Audio Sharing Utility for macOS

Platform: macOS
Keywords: Audio Sharing

@Snow: Two people sharing a pair of wired earphones has long been a classic romantic trope in movies and TV shows. But in a world dominated by true wireless earbuds, sharing a single pair no longer brings people physically closer—instead, it often means dealing with mono audio and uneven ear pressure. Fortunately, since Apple introduced Audio Sharing for AirPods in 2021, other manufacturers have gradually followed suit, giving wireless earbuds a much more elegant way to share audio.

Perhaps Apple has yet to realize the enormous potential of the Mac as a portable streaming machine, because enabling audio sharing on macOS still requires more than simply pairing Bluetooth headphones. Users must open Audio MIDI Setup, create a Multi-Output Device, and manually select the desired audio outputs before sharing can work. For average users, that’s a fairly high barrier. PairPods simplifies and visualizes the entire process. Whether you want to listen to music with a friend on a train or watch a horror movie with someone special in a tiny rented apartment, PairPods makes shared listening easy.

*Audio MIDI Setup Multi-Output Device Configuration Page*

Before using PairPods, I have one piece of bad news and one piece of good news. The bad news is that you still need to follow the instructions and pair all Bluetooth headphones you want to share audio with manually through macOS. The good news is that PairPods is not limited to a specific ecosystem—any Bluetooth audio device compatible with macOS can be managed through the app.

Once your Bluetooth devices are connected, click the PairPods icon in the menu bar to open its pop-up panel, where all connected audio devices will be displayed. PairPods provides individual volume controls, sharing checkboxes, and sample rate information for each device. Some devices can even display their remaining battery level. Simply enable the “Share Audio” switch at the top of the panel, and the menu bar icon will turn blue while all selected devices immediately begin receiving shared audio.

When Audio Sharing is enabled, the system volume controls are disabled and PairPods takes over volume management entirely. Turning off the switch immediately stops sharing and routes audio to the device marked with the illuminated crown icon, while restoring the system’s normal volume controls.

That said, in the current version, switching audio output devices while Audio Sharing is disabled is not entirely seamless. On my MacBook Air, changing the crown-designated device alone had no effect; I had to toggle the Share Audio switch off and on again before the new output device became active.

To improve stability and usability when multiple Bluetooth devices are connected, the app also includes an automatic reconnection feature. Users can enable automatic reconnects and configure timeout intervals of 5, 10, or 30 seconds. In practice, however, this feature mainly helps reconnect headphones when you briefly move out of Bluetooth range and then return. It cannot solve connection drops caused by highly congested environments such as train stations or shopping malls filled with countless wireless devices.

PairPods is completely free and open source. You can download and use it from its GitHub project page.

MedTimer: An Open-Source, Local-First Medication Reminder

Platform: Android
Keywords: Medication Reminders, Medication Tracking

@化学心情下2: After being diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), I found myself needing long-term medication and began searching for a tool that could remind me to take my medication accurately and consistently.

At first, I relied on to-do list apps for reminders. The biggest drawback, however, was their inability to provide detailed medication statistics—such as total doses taken over a week or the exact time each dose was actually taken. Later, I switched to dedicated medication reminder apps like Medisafe. Compared to the bare-minimum functionality of a to-do list app, Medisafe felt almost perfect: it includes a built-in medication database, allows users to search for medications and add daily reminders, offers multiple reminder methods beyond standard notifications, provides detailed usage statistics, and even unlocks professional medication guidance with its Pro subscription.

For someone like me, however, who has already been undergoing long-term treatment, Medisafe’s premium features and account synchronization weren’t particularly useful. What I really needed was a medication reminder app that worked entirely on-device. Since Android is my primary platform, the open-source MedTimer eventually caught my attention.

At the time of writing, I’ve been using MedTimer for over a year. The two features that impressed me most are its open-source nature and local-first philosophy. Being open source means there are no bloated commercial features that I’ll never use. Being local-first means I don’t need to synchronize account data—having reminders delivered reliably to my Android phone is all I need, and it perfectly matches my workflow.

Of course, compared to commercial alternatives, MedTimer still has some limitations. The most obvious one is that medications must be entered manually by name. In Medisafe, entering a brand name is usually enough to retrieve detailed medication information and dosage specifications. That said, manual entry has its advantages as well—you can organize medications however you prefer, and after all, the reminders are meant for your own use.

The next step is creating recurring reminders. Tapping the “New Reminder” button in the lower-right corner presents several reminder types, each accompanied by Chinese-language explanations. For my own needs, I selected “Scheduled Reminder.” Simply entering the dosage and time in the dialog box is enough to create a reminder. Afterward, tapping “Advanced Settings” unlocks additional options such as reminder status, recurring schedules, weekday-only reminders, reminders on specific dates each month, and more. There’s also an “Enter Actual Dosage” option, which allows users to record the amount actually taken when a reminder appears. This is particularly useful for tracking remaining medication supplies—especially psychiatric medications—and helps remind me when it’s time to schedule a prescription refill.

Once everything is configured, the MedTimer home screen displays the day’s medication schedule: when reminders were triggered, when doses were actually taken, and which medications still need to be taken today. In addition to the current day, users can also review records from the past week. There is also an “Add One-Time Medication Record” button on the home screen, making it easy to quickly log unscheduled doses.

The “Record Analysis” section provides a comprehensive view of recent medication history. The summary view shows overall adherence and completion rates, the list view displays individual records with medication names, dosages, reminder times, and actual intake times, while the calendar view organizes medication history by day. The entire treatment process becomes easy to review at a glance.

Overall, MedTimer is already a remarkably complete open-source, local-first solution. It not only delivers reliable medication reminders, but also records and analyzes medication history in detail, helping users avoid missed doses during long-term treatment. It even supports special scenarios, such as “sleep-in reminders” for weekends and holidays, allowing the first daily reminder to be postponed when sleeping later than usual. If you’re looking for a medication reminder app without excessive commercial features, MedTimer’s open-source and local-first approach makes it an excellent choice. The app is available for free with all features included through both the Play Store and F-Droid.

GitSync: Making Git Synchronization Easier on Mobile

Platform: Android
Keywords: Git

@大大大K: Originally designed for software development, Git has gradually found its way into many everyday workflows, from synchronizing knowledge bases to backing up configuration files. As these use cases become increasingly common, the demand for using Git on mobile devices has grown as well. Unfortunately, working with Git on a phone is rarely straightforward: command-line tools like Termux can be cumbersome, while traditional third-party Git clients often feel too geared toward power users. When I was looking for a Git-based solution to synchronize my Obsidian vault, GitSync turned out to be exactly what I was looking for.

Unlike many Git tools that overwhelm newcomers with complex terminals and command-line interfaces, GitSync adopts a clean and intuitive graphical interface. That simplicity doesn’t come at the expense of functionality, however. The app includes virtually all of the Git operations most users need on a daily basis. In addition to the standard workflow of cloning, pulling, committing, and pushing, GitSync supports full branch creation and switching capabilities. It even includes a visual interface for resolving Git merge conflicts. What impressed me most was that GitSync comes with its own file manager and a lightweight text editor with syntax highlighting. This allows developers to perform quick code reviews directly on their phones, while regular users can make simple edits to Markdown notes without switching to another app.

Another standout feature of GitSync is its flexible synchronization system. The app can automatically perform background synchronization whenever a specific app is opened or closed, and it also supports scheduled synchronization tasks. For users who prefer manual control, synchronization can be triggered through quick settings toggles or the app icon’s context menu. Personally, I prefer triggering GitSync whenever I open or close Obsidian, as it helps ensure my knowledge base remains fully synchronized. That setup does require enabling Android’s Accessibility Service, however.

Configuration is also remarkably user-friendly. GitSync supports OAuth authentication for popular hosting platforms such as GitHub, GitLab, and Gitea. It can also connect to self-hosted Git services through HTTP or SSH keys. In most cases, you simply follow the app’s setup wizard step by step, and everything is configured without much hassle.

Beyond basic Git functionality, GitSync also supports connecting to large language models through API keys, enabling AI-assisted Git workflows and content completion. This makes lightweight development tasks on mobile devices even more convenient.

Although GitSync is not a brand-new app, the growing popularity of AI-driven tools such as OpenClaw and Vibe Coding has sparked renewed interest in “AI-ready” knowledge bases, particularly Obsidian, along with the desire to access and manage them on the go. In that context, having a capable Git client that can handle a variety of scenarios becomes increasingly valuable.

Thanks to its combination of ease of use and comprehensive functionality, GitSync was featured on Obsidian’s annual tools list in 2024. If you have similar needs, this open-source and community-endorsed tool is definitely worth trying. The free version supports connecting a single repository, while the paid version allows multiple repositories to be managed simultaneously. The Google Play version additionally supports Git LFS and filter features. GitSync is available for download from both GitHub and Google Play.

App Briefs

Previous rumors suggested that Apple plans to introduce a standalone Siri app in iOS 27, featuring both text and voice conversations, conversation history, and more. Last week, Mark Gurman stated that he had obtained several screenshots of the app and shared them with readers.

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