Best Windows apps this week
One-hundred and ninety-three in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 8.x and Windows 10 in the past seven days.
This week saw quite the flurry of articles about the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Find out how to disable ads and tips, fix update related issues, or slow Internet speed after applying the update.
App of the week is Spinster, an interesting media browser for Windows 10 that displays collections -- images or video -- next to each other on the screen.
As always, if I missed an app or game that has been released this week that you believe is particularly good, let me know in the comments below or notify me via email instead.
Discounts this week
The following apps and games are discounted by at least 50 percent this week:
- Nebo, a note taking app with handwriting recognition, is free until August 31, 2016.
- SoundCloud Shadow, unofficial SoundCloud app, free for the next five days.
- Lara Croft Go, tactical turn-based game in the Lara Croft universe for $0.99
- Hitman Go, like Lara Croft Go, but in the Hitman Universe for $0.99
- Drawboard PDF, a PDF editor for $
- Media Player Gold, a media player for $6.99
- Screenshot Tool Pro, take screenshots, edit them, for $
- Daily Budget Planner, a personal finance app, for $4.99
- Total Manager Pro, a file manager for $4.99
- DjVu PDF Viewer, reader app for PDF and DjVu documents for $1.49
- Video to Audio Converter, for $5.99
- DigitalArtist, a PDF EDitor and graphics package for $6.50
App of the week
Spinster is a media browser with a twist. You may use it to display media collections, video or still images, simultaneously on the screen.
If you add a collection of six images to Spinster for instance, all of them are displayed next to each other in a grid when you open that collection.
The same is true for videos. The app works with all screen sizes, from tiny phone screens to 4K TVs.
The app supports a couple of options. First, you may use filters to display only some media files at the same time.
Second, it supports a variety of shortcuts to control the display of media on the screen.
Other apps
Forest Home is a puzzle game in which you help forest animals find their way home.
The two game objectives are to help each animal find its home, and to use all squares on the board once.
The game features two play modes: quick play, which has you play one level after the other, and adventure, which is a story driven mode that limits the number of moves you can make in each level.
Pixel Art Studio is an image editor that specializes in creating so-called pixel art.
Reminiscent of the 8-bit era of computing, when artists and designers had to work with a few colors and tiny sprites and canvases, pixel art enjoyed a revival of sorts with the rise of the independent game scene.
Pixel Art Studio provides you with controls to create and edit this type of art. It supports still images and animation, and ships with a great assortment of tools to assist you.
TraceRT Ping provides you with a GUI for tracert and ping commands.
Apart from that, it visualizes all hops of a route when you run the trace command on a world map. Ever thought that your connection to a particular server must be routed through Antarctica because of how bad it is?
This tool lets you find out right away. Startup of the app was abysmally slow though.
Zulu Star is a variant of the popular Zuma game in which you try to clear the board of colored bubbles by shooting at them.
Bubbles are removed when a shot ball sticks to a chain of at least two balls of the same color on the board.
The game offers more than 45 levels in its current form, and specials that you can pick up to bomb part of the chain or fire wildcard balls.
Notable updates
The compass application North is now free.