TikTok gets avatars and a Dutch app wins an important Apple design award. These are the apps of the week.

audio

Last week, Apple presented the winners of the Apple Design Awards: twelve apps that, according to the company, offer something special. Dutch Odio received one of these awards. This app provides soothing ambient sounds.

This goes a little further than the simple sounds of rain or the quiet babbling of a stream. The application uses spatial sound. When you’re wearing your AirPods or Beats headphones, it’s as if sounds are actually ringing around you.

Odio uses not only sounds but audio scenes composed by artists. The idea is to filter out the distractions in your environment by immersing yourself in such a sound scene. You can modify it yourself, for example by adding or removing sounds or moving them near or far.

The app is free, but a subscription is required to listen to all audio clips. To celebrate winning a design award, the Eindhoven team released a new soundscape 2 hours Added to the application. It is free for all users.

Download Odio for iOS (Free).

philly

Dealing with your feelings is not an easy task for many people, especially young people. Many youth aid organizations have joined forces to create an app that can help young people with this. The result is the Feelee app.

In the app, you choose an emoji each day that matches your feelings at that moment. This information is associated with automatically collected data. The app sees how much you move, sleep and spend on your phone. This should help young people understand what, for example, lack of sleep or staring at your smartphone all day can do to your state of mind.

The idea is that this information can then be used in a conversation with a caregiver. But even without additional help, the app can help you gain insight into your feelings.

Download Feelee for Android or iOS (Free)

tik tok

TikTok offers avatars: animated characters that allow you to show yourself in the video app without showing your face. These avatars are freely customizable. You can choose different hairstyles, makeup and accessories. Avatars are now being rolled out all over the world. Once you have it, you can find avatars in the effects corner of the app by searching for “avatar”.

TikTok assures that this is the first version and that the company will continue to improve the numbers. Inclusion is a top priority here. For example, TikTok offers a wide range of skin tones, hair colors, and clothing, such as hijabs.

Additionally, TikTok offers screen time breaks. Users can set these themselves, so they don’t keep swiping for too long in the app. A new screen time dashboard with stats has also been introduced. Users between the ages of 13 and 17 who use the app for more than 100 minutes per day will receive a notification with information about these screen time options.

Download TikTok for Android or iOS (Free).