Seven apps, one idea
One job.
Done properly.
Small Apple apps that each do one job properly and then get out of the way. No accounts. No tracking. Nothing you make is uploaded, because there is no server of mine to upload it to. None of them charge by the week, and most of what they sell you buy once and own outright.
Runlow
On the App StoreYour Claude, Codex, Gemini, Cursor, Copilot and OpenRouter usage limits at a glance, before the rate limit finds you first. iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro.
Refast
On the App StoreAn intermittent fasting timer you can actually correct. Forgot to start it last night? Nudge it back two hours and carry on, the thing every other fasting app makes hardest. iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch.
Recast
On the App StoreConvert or compress anything on your own device, images, video, audio, PDFs, GIFs and Live Photos, to a size you pick. Your files are never uploaded. iPhone and iPad.
Reprompt
On the App StoreA teleprompter that never loses your take. Reads at your pace, and with Pro records while it scrolls, writing to disk every few seconds so a crash can't cost you the shot. iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch.
Merestone
On the App StoreProtected sites, habitats and heritage designations on one map, from official data, with a radius search, a dated PDF and an Apple Watch app. The UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium. iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch.
GainScout
On the App StoreFind land with biodiversity net gain potential in England, with the habitat and constraint data already layered on the map. iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Gridsong
On the App StoreMake music by tapping a glowing grid. Locked to a musical scale, so nothing you play can sound wrong. Ten instruments, drums, loops and audio sharing, with more in Pro. iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Why it works this way
Free to start, and paid for once, on purpose.
Weekly subscriptions now drive most of the money on the App Store, and a lot of them are charging by the week for something your phone can already almost do. That model needs you to forget you're paying. These do not work that way: most are free to download, and anything extra is a single purchase you keep, so if a new version is better, you already have it. The exceptions are two professional tools built on live government data. GainScout offers a Pro subscription alongside reports you buy one at a time, and Merestone offers a subscription for every country alongside a one-off unlock per country. Both say so plainly.
No account, ever
Nothing to sign up for, nothing to sign in to, no email address collected. Open the app and it works.
There is no server
Every one of these apps does its work on your device. Your files, scripts and takes never travel anywhere, except through your own iCloud.
No tracking
No analytics SDKs, no advertising identifiers, and nothing sold to anyone. Recast offers an advert, provided by Google, that you can choose to watch in exchange for an extra file. It is never required, Recast never asks to track you, and Recast Pro removes adverts altogether.
The promise
Buy it once. It keeps working.
No trial that quietly becomes a charge. No feature you already paid for moving behind a new tier. If one of these apps stops earning its place on your home screen, delete it, and that is the end of it.