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June 14, 2025
8 Free Apps I'm Using This Summer to Pick Up New Skills
This summer, I've committed to trying a bunch of apps to help me learn new skills, without spending a fortune. These eight apps can be used from the comfort of your phone and can help you nurture your new fixation in no time.
1 - Skillshare for a Bit of Everything
Skillshare is a resource and app that you can use to discover, watch, and learn new creative skills such as drawing, animation, calligraphy, music, photography, and more. The app offers online courses through guided content and professional-led classes, making learning skills and creative software accessible for beginners.
What I like most about Skillshare is that, with a free trial, you can preview the first class for all courses available (and see details such as instructor, course duration, project details, and level), then decide if you're up for committing to the app and its offerings.
If you want to unlock subscriber-only classes, you can upgrade your free plan to Skillshare Premium ($31.99/month or 169.99/year). This will allow you to download videos offline and participate in discussions with classmates. You can also track your achievements and pick up classes/videos where you left off.
Skillshare has a web app and is available on the App Store and Google Play Store.
2 - Babbel for Learning New Languages
Want to move away from Duolingo as your preferred language-learning app after its heart system update? Try Babbel! This is a user-friendly language-learning app that offers 13 languages, including French, Italian, German, and European Spanish up to varying CEFR levels.
Babbel is available on the App Store and Google Play Store.
3 - Mimo for Coding
Mimo is a fun, gamified education app to help you code, whether you're starting with your first line of code or just want a refresher to strengthen your foundations. You can learn HTML, Python, JavaScript, SQL, and more, completing short projects to improve your coding skills.
You can track your progress by earning XP with every lesson completed and maintaining a learning streak. Another feature that cemented Mimo as one of my most visited education apps is its "Playground," which allows you to code and test projects and environments as you learn.
With a premium subscription ($9.99/month or $89.99/month), you can skip ads, access more paths and projects, and get certificates for completed courses.
Mimo is available on the App Store and Google Play Store.
4 - Yousician for a Virtual Music Companion
The app isn't intimidating, even for beginners and you don't have to worry about falling behind on fast instructions. The app can help you learn basics like tuning and chord progressions if you're just getting started with a stringed instrument. Singers can use karaoke-style lessons to sing along to melodies and learn new techniques, while an instructor-led guide is available in most lessons. Yousician also has a virtual coach who listens to your progress and gives feedback, making the experience feel more two-sided.
As someone who has trained in singing for years, I found Yousician to be a good way to warm up my vocals and go through some foundation lessons to keep my vocals in good condition. Picking up and playing the guitar was also relatively easier than other music apps I've tried before, and even when I'm not scrolling through lessons, I use the app to quickly tune my instrument.
Yousician is available on the App Store and Google Play Store.
5 - Planta for Better Gardening
Planta is the perfect app for wannabe green-thumbs looking to pick up gardening as a hobby. As a beginner plant parent, I wanted to do a decent job growing my outdoor garden and be consistent with plant care, which is when Planta came into the picture. This gardening app helps you cover all the basics. Create a virtual garden to keep track of your plants, get reminders for watering (depending on each plant), find ideal locations to keep plants, and take photos to check your garden's progress over time.
Planta is available on the App Store and Google Play Store.
6 - Kitchen Stories for Spicing Up Cooking
Kitchen Stories is a virtual recipe library that can help you keep track of and discover new recipes that you want to try cooking. Whether you're hosting a dinner party for friends or trying your hand at cooking different cuisines, searching for recipes and finding a reliable blog or video can take some time, and may not always turn out the way you want. Kitchen Stories can help streamline your cooking process, storing all your recipe cards in one place while also creating shopping lists for ingredients you would need for your favorite recipes.
After trying the app's recipes for about a month of meal prep, I was successfully able to switch up my meal plan and try new recipes from Kitchen Stories chefs that were easy to follow (and tasted delicious). My meals also turned out consistently tasty without any disasters, unlike what happens when I sometimes try out new viral recipes.
Kitchen Stories is available on the App Store and Google Play Store.
7 - Sky Guide for Stargazing
If you're a novice to stargazing, Sky Guide can be a good app to help you get started. This AR constellation app helps you identify and learn about stars, constellations, and planets, helping you quickly level up your knowledge. The AR mode on this app is extremely user-friendly and lots of fun to use, and is suited for whichever level of stargazing you're on. It comes with a compass that makes navigation easier (especially if you're, say, out hiking).
Sky Guide has in-app resources about moon phases in your location, alerts for aurora or ISS sightings, and takes you through what's visible in the sky for the night depending on what you're using to see (including telescope, camera, binoculars, and the naked eye). What I like about Sky Guide is that the app's AR mode can be used even if you're not outdoors, so you can continue discovering constellations and stars (and their placement) sitting on your couch. You can use Sky Guide on Apple Vision Pro for a better experience if you have one.
Sky Guide is available on the App Store.
8 - DailyArt for Improving My Art Knowledge
DailyArt is an art history and education app tailor-made for art nerds. This app delivers daily tidbits about art history through one piece of fine art every day, accompanied by a short story detailing its history, praise, and artist. The app is also a free resource to learn more about your favorite art pieces, artists, and art styles, hosting over 4,000 collections of art that you can scroll through.
Along with DailyArt, I use apps like Poesie (which delivers you a poem a day) to read and learn more about art history in a condensed, quick way. I've also added the DailyArt widget to my iPhone home screen, not only to make it look much prettier but to quickly access my art dose of the day.
DailyArt is available on the App Store and Google Play Store.
Browsing the education category in your phone's app store can help you find some valuable, free apps that can help develop (or revisit) a skill in your free time. You can also try online learning platforms like Coursera or Harvard University's free courses if you're looking for something more academic.
Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/free-apps-im-using-this-summer-to-pick-up-new-skills/?utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=HTG-202506140700&utm_source=HTG-NL&user=amltLm5hZ3kyQGdtYWlsLmNvbQ&lctg=02f46df6687a5c6b6c6a51453f460af32dc1bbe4d7321e3d7b193ec97761583e
May 22, 2025
Fender’s New Music Creation Software Supports Linux
Fender, a company synonymous with music thanks to its iconic guitars, amps and other audio equipment, today launched its own music creation software — and it supports Linux!
Called Fender Studio, the app is free (but not open-source) and available for all major desktop and mobile operating systems.
Fender Studio is based on pro-grade DAW Studio One Pro, with a simplified interface
It works with most audio interfaces across mobile and desktop, meaning it’s easy to start recording vocals and other instruments without specialist gear.
While there are a number of digital audio workstations (DAWs) for Linux, e.g., Ardour, REAPER, Bitwig Studio, Tracktion Waveform, et al, their workflows, UIs and feature sets target pro producers. Aka people who know what they’re doing.
Fender Studio tacks mainstream, catering more to casual creators looking to ope the app and start recording, playing around, and learning the basics of mastering and production – more GarageBand rather than Pro Tools.
Arguably, Linux has been crying out for an accessible music creation option like that, which is why I’m sure the arrival of Fender Studio will strike a chord.
The company say the app shares a basis with the pro-grade Studio One Pro DAW—which came to Linux in 2023—but with a simplified interface, a mobile version and fewer overall bells and whistles.
It still looks like a DAW, just a little more streamlined. I understand what I’m looking at when I open a tool or add a track. I don’t feel like I need six hours of YouTube tutorials to bring me up to speed just to figure out where everything is!
Simplicity comes with a cost.
Out of the box, Fender Studio only supports a max of 8 tracks which is not a lot. Registering for a (free) Fender Connect account unlocks 8 additional tracks. Most budding music makers should 16 tracks is enough – limitations are opportunities for ingenuity.
That aside, the rest of the feature set on offer is capable. Fender Studio is fewer-frills, not no-frills.
As one might expect, Fender Studio comes preloaded with digital distillations of Fender’s iconic amps, pedals and tuners (see list below). Lots of on-screen knobs, sliders and buttons provide advanced users ample—pun intended—controls to shape sounds and tones.
Amps:
- ’65 Twin Reverb
- Rumble 800 v3
- ’59 Bassman
- Bassbreaker 15 Medium Gain
- Super-Sonic
- Redhead
- Tube Preamp
Pedals:
- Overdrive
- Sine Chorus
- Mono Delay
- Small Room Reverb
- Modern Bass OD
- VariFuzz
- Vintage Tremolo
- Stereo Tape Delay
- Small Hall Reverb
- Triangle Flanger
- Simple Comp
Vocal effects are also available, including de-tuner, vocoder and vocal transformer, as are standard audio processing essentials, like compression, reverb and EQ, are present. Editing and mixing provides FX sends, fades, panning, transposing, and more.
Want to Download Fender Studio?
Fender Studio is free (as in beer) software, available to download as Flatpak1 (only) on Linux from the company website, with links to macOS and Windows versions on those system’s respective stores, and links to the iOS and Android apps.
Linux system requirements for Fender Studio are listed as:
- Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (or higher) with Flatpak installed
- 2 GB RAM (or more)
- 64-bit Intel/AMD or ARM64 processor
A few features (the italicised amps and pedals listed further up, 8 extra tracks, and access to the “jam” presets) do require you to register for for a (free) Fender Connect account, so keep that in mind (use a masked e-mail or throwaway, like I did).
If you’re feeling inspired, go try this out — and let me
know what you think of it (or how it compares to other DAW software
you’ve tried in the past) by leaving a comment!
Source: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/05/fender-studio-linux-audio-recording-app
Official video from Fender (mainly focuses on the mobile version)