Tech

The best new apps and updates of the month

Alex Heath

2016-01-30T17:25:24Z

Keeping up with all of the updates to your favorite apps is nearly impossible. And it can be even harder to keep track of all the cool new apps that come out every day.

That's why we've done the hard work for you. Here are the best new apps and significant updates to existing apps that came out in January:

Facebook gave every iPhone owner in the United States the ability to live stream video.

After testing the feature with celebrities and verified accounts, Facebook now lets anyone with an iPhone in the U.S. broadcast live video from its mobile app. Android users should get the feature soon.

When composing a status update in the app, you'll see a new option to share live video. The stream can be customized for anyone to watch or restricted to just your friends, and people who watch can leave comments as you broadcast. After you end a stream, it's saved on your profile.

Facebook also launched a standalone hub for sports in its app.

Facebook wants to be the place you get sports news and talk about games with your friends. This month it launched the standalone Sports Stadium hub in its main mobile app, which is accessible once you search for a specific game.

The hub shows you the live score at the top with a clock, and your feed becomes filled with other people talking about the game and relevant news.

The card game "Exploding Kittens" dominated the App Store.

neither steve or i really knew what we were doing so we just played random cards to see what would happen

A $2 game called "Exploding Kittens" quickly shot to the top charts of the App Store this month.

The game is based off the physical card game with the same name and it was created by famous cartoonist Matthew Inman, who is best known for his website The Oatmeal. Originally funded as a project on Kickstarter, Inman calls "Exploding Kittens" a "highly-strategic, kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette."

Pandora launched a new music discovery feature to help it take on Spotify and Apple Music.

The Pandora mobile app received a new "Browse" tab this month that recommends artists and music based on what you've already listened to.

It's Pandora's attempt at taking on the growing threat of competing services like Apple Music and Spotify with a more on-demand approach than its algorithm-driven radio stations.

Tinder started letting users send each other GIFs.

Flirting on Tinder went to the next level with the app adding support for sending animated GIFs in messages. The update also added the ability to upload a profile picture from your phone's camera roll, the ability to like an individual message, and larger emojis.

Lonely Planet released a travel guide app that looks super useful.

The folks at Lonely Planet have a new travel guide app called Guides for dozens of cities around the world. The guides consist of expert reviews and tips for exploring a new city. There are also other perks, like offline maps and the ability to bookmark places.

Apps