Free iTouch Apps

The Best Free iPod Touch Apps

Nearly five years since Apple's first iPod touch (Best Deal: $272.99 at Walmart.com) hit the market, its core mission remains intact: iPhone without the phone. It's perfect if you don't want the high monthly costs of a cellular voice and data plan, but still want a top-notch pocket-size music and movie machine—that has the ability to run about a half-million third-party apps.
It turns out that's mighty smart for your wallet. Compared with the same-price ($199) iPhone 4S, you don't lose all that much by going with a current-generation iPod touch. The iPhone 4S has a better camera, GPS, sends and receives SMS text and MMS picture messages, and makes calls. That's pretty much it. The iPod touch runs almost all of the aforementioned 500,000+ apps in the App Store, plays music, videos, games, records high-definition video, and handles Web browsing, email, and other Internet-based tasks with aplomb when connected to a Wi-Fi network.

So what are the best apps to get right away? Here's a roundup of 15 great, free programs that we consider must-haves. In this roundup, we'll pay particular attention to things an iPod touch owner might be interested in, such as Wi-Fi calling apps, additional music and video options, and apps with plenty of offline functionality for those moments when you're nowhere near a wireless hotspot.
A few caveats: The iPod touch is a killer mobile gaming machine, but games costs money. Most of the best titles aren't exactly free, although many of them are available in no-cost "lite" versions that either offer just a few levels of game play, or are supported by advertisements. We didn't include games here, but there are tens of thousands of them in Apple's App Store. Finally, to keep this list as useful as possible, we also left out some completely obvious apps that you probably already have, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Apple's iBooks.

Dropbox
Perhaps the ideal iPod touch app for synchronizing your documents and viewing them offline, Dropbox lets you access file versions that are always up to date. You get 2GB of free online storage, which is plenty for just about any recent set of projects short of music and video editing. View, play, or share any of your files with a single button tap, even if you're nowhere near your desktop or laptop PC.

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Epicurious
There are many recipe apps available for iOS, but Epicurious is the only really good one that's also free. For instant help in the kitchen, it offers access to over 30,000 recipes from such highly regarded sources as Bon Appetit, Self, and Gourmet, among others. We have trouble just browsing through this app without immediately wanting to run to the kitchen and try something, as the photos alone are enough to set our stomachs rumbling.

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Evernote
Evernote has built up quite a following, thanks to its all-in inclusion of text, audio, photos, and other notes. Anything you think of or find on the Web, you can "jot it down" by adding it to Evernote. The app also lets you configure which notebooks are available offline, upon which they're downloaded right onto your iPod touch. Once you reconnect to the Web, the app will sync any changes you made on the iPod touch back to the online version.

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Feeddler
RSS reader fans can be very particular, but if you just need a fast one that syncs smoothly with Google Reader, Feeddler is a great choice. It offers robust offline support, which means it's perfect for iPod touch users; simply power it up, and you'll see all of your news available for offline reading. From there, you can save, share, or star articles, upon which everything is synced the moment you rejoin the Internet.

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Google Voice
Sign up for a free Google Voice account, and you can send text messages to U.S. phones, and make VoIP calls with your specially assigned (and, often, area code-relevant) Google Voice number—all for free. You can also access voicemail, including Google Voice's immensely useful (and oftentimes not completely accurate) text transcriptions. It's not always the most reliable app, and there's noticeable latency during audio calls, but its pros far outweigh its cons.