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My Favorite 3rd Party Apps That Use 3D Touch

Posted by Matt Birchler
— 3 min read

I gave The Verge a little grief for saying that most apps won’t have 3D Touch until the iPhone 7 is released. Well, it’s been 3 weeks and tons of apps have been updated with at least some 3D Touch goodness. Most apps only have home screen shortcuts so far, but others are going a little deeper (no pun intended). The big challenge is breaking years of muscle memory and using the feature whenever possible.

Below are some of my daily-use apps that have adopted 3D Touch in ways that I find particularly useful. What am I missing? What apps do you think are taking advantage of 3D Touch in particularly useful ways?

Tweetbot

One of the reasons I am back to using Tweetbot is because Tapbots has fully embraced 3D Touch. Not only do you get some incredibly convenient shortcuts from the home screen (new tweet, tweet last photo, reply to last mention, etc), they have also implemented peek and pop into the timeline. Peek and pop works with links, images, GIFs, and videos and it’s awesome for all of them.

I know this likely isn’t possible with the 3D Touch API at the moment, but I would love the ability to save links for later when I’m peeking into them (swipe to the side or something like that). Despite that one request, this is the app that I think nails 3D Touch right off the bat.

Spark

Spark is right up there with Tweetbot in really embracing 3D Touch. Jumping straight into search is quite useful. I hate email (so unique, I know) but I do have to search for messages sometimes, and this lets me pop into a search without seeing my inbox, which I like.

You can also peek and pop on messages in you inbox, but only when you're in smart inbox mode, not the standard inbox mode.

Lose It!

Weight/food tracking apps live and die by how much friction they put between you and logging what you need to log. Lose It! lets you pop straight into logging your food, weight, or exercise.

Instagram

Instagram gives you a few options, but New Post is easily my favorite.

Overcast

Overcast makes it easy to jump back into that podcast you were listing to last time. This is one of those apps that would benefit from being able to perform these actions without pushing you into the app, but it’s still really nice. I use this one all the time.

Fantastical

Fantastical was already the fastest way to add a calendar event, and 3D Touch makes it even faster. Love…it.

MacID

Unlock your Mac from the home screen. Love this app and love this implamentation. Just like Overcast, this is an app that would benefit from “passive interactions” since I would love to unlock form the home screen and be done with it.