We asked Victor Valley College students to tell us about their top five favorite apps. Some students had similar social media apps while others had some that most people have never heard of. The top three discovery apps were Reddit, Spotify Stations and Waze. All these apps can add some value to your life in making convenient choices of music, a detailed description of how to get to places or to keep you in the loop for news on certain posts.

1. Spotify Stations

Spotify Stations is an app that allows you to conveniently turn on the app, pick a station and listen to the newest and most popular songs from that artist or genre. All you have to do is download the app and login with your Spotify account or create an account if you do not have one. After this you are good to go and can start listening to music. 

The app is user friendly, it gives you a quick tutorial the first time you boot it up, having three basic controls that make the app very easy to use. This app is free and allows you to have six skips per hour, so after you skip the six songs for the hour you have to wait until the next hour to skip more songs. You can also pick stations such as “Fresh Rap,” a station that will have newer rap from artists such as Juice WRLD or anyone that is relatively new to the rap scene. 

It could be a great way of discovering new artists and checking out the newest rap songs.You could do this with your genre of choice and enjoy new music for free. The best part of Spotify Stations is there are no ads so it is all just pure music.

2. Reddit

Reddit is an app that allows the user to pick genres of communities such as sports, video games, photography etc. You can customize the app to your specific interests. 

On Reddit be ready to see comments from negative to positive comments of all types of items within your community. Users post to their community, and whichever post gets the most votes and comments rise to the top of that community for all to enjoy. This way there isn’t a bunch of random posts popping up everywhere, like a Twitter feed. Another advantage to this app is you get involved in communities rather than following certain people or companies like other apps. 

The App is relatively easy to navigate. On your base feed, it has three categories: news, home and popular. In the news category, expect to see news about certain communities you picked when you first started up the app. On the home category, expect to see the most voted Reddit post of the communities you picked, and on the popular category, expect to see the most popular posts on the app. This could be posts outside of your communities. Overall this is a great app to find interesting news and post about popular interests in your communities.

3. Waze

The Waze app shows you how to get to where you’re going. It gives you the most descriptive and accurate information it can. It shows traffic patterns and redirects you though short cuts or smarter routes to avoid traffic.

The app asks to use your location so it can get all of the accurate information. If you are uncomfortable with apps knowing your location do not use this one. If you do not have a problem with this, then this is a top tier navigation app. When you first start up the app, it prompts you to accept Waze’s terms of agreement and make an account. 

After these steps are complete, it gives a quick tutorial of all the controls that may seem complex at first, but once you play around with it, it’s actually very easy to use. Type in a destination and the app will speak to you saying, “You’re all set.” After this a screen pops up showing you the best time to leave, gas stations along the way and other useful information that could help in a traveling experience. After you press the “Go now” icon it starts navigating you on the fastest route to your destination with each milestone at the top of your screen on where to go. It says something like, “in 1.2 miles turn right onto Bear Valley Rd.” If Bear Valley is full of traffic, it gives you rerouting options that help you arrive to your destination faster.

Another feature of the app is that actual users can put icons on the map warning other users of traffic or police or other issues on the road. It is an intuitive way of navigating and allows users to help the app gain information to get users to their destination as fast as possible. Overall a great app to explore all the features in navigating to your next destination.