🆕 There is already a range of killer apps for Apple’s new iPhone Duo
👐 Some apps have genuine utility, such as the redesigned Netflix UI and the Flighty flight tracker
🎵 Others lean into the gimmicky side, such as Tiny Computers and Deck-Man
📅 The iPhone Duo launched on Friday, and starts at $1,999
The iPhone Duo was released to the wider world on Friday, and developers have been making some fun and unique apps for Apple’s first foldable.
If you’ve been wondering what apps are out there for you to download beyond the usual scope of apps you may already have on your phone, then here are 10 of the best iPhone Duo apps out there, ranging from the useful to the plain silly.
Netflix
It might seem like a silly inclusion, but Netflix is one of the only mainstream apps so far that works well for Duo – no surprise, as it’s one of Apple’s hand-picked launch partners for the phone’s launch.
The app’s UI for Duo has been redesigned, with the outer screen allowing you to scroll through Netflix’s short-form ‘Clips’, while the inner screen adapts this to its bigger size seamlessly when you unfold the phone.
Flighty
Flighty is a very clever Apple Design Award-winning travel app designed to tell you everything you need to know about your upcoming flights, and has some neat tricks up its sleeve for the iPhone Duo.
The app takes full advantage of the phone’s form factor, spreading the map to the edges. When you open the Duo, your flight information moves to the left side, leaving more room for the globe so you can easily zoom in on different flight paths to plan your travels.
Flighty also works in split-screen so you can keep track of your flight while doing something else, and it even has a unique mode for Duo. Called En Route Mode, it works when you fold the Duo into its tent mode, and then place it on a flat surface. With it, you can watch your flight’s progress via Wi-Fi while you do something else, such as listening to music.
Deck-Man
If any app sums up what the Duo’s hinge is for, it’s Deck-Man (previously Duo-Man). Built by indie developer Vidit Bhargava, it turns your music library into a Walkman-style cassette player, with albums shown as tapes you load into the deck.
Fold the Duo shut, and the interface looks like the front of a Walkman. Open it up and the cassette sits on one side with the album art on the other. Play, pause, fast-forward and rewind all come with clicks and whirrs recorded from a real portable player. It’s pure nostalgia, but it’s also a feature that couldn’t exist on a normal slab phone.
TypeDraw
Closed, the Duo looks a bit like a pocket notebook, and TypeDraw leans into that completely. It’s a digital journal with an elastic closure band, and you can type in your own handwriting or choose from a dozen fonts designed by its creator, Phil Traut.
You can pick your paper (lined, grid or dotted) and ink colour, and add sketches alongside your text. Pages curl as you turn them, and you can even tug the elastic band for a twang animation. It’s a daft detail, but it makes the app feel like a real object rather than another notes app.
Wakeout
Former Apple App of the Year winner Wakeout, which serves up short movement breaks that feel more like mini games than workouts, has put real thought into the Duo. Rather than stretching one layout across the screen, it has a different interface for each way you can hold the phone: closed, open like a book, open like a laptop, and propped up in tent mode.
Book mode puts the exercise videos on the left side of the hinge, while laptop mode moves them to the upright screen. Tent mode is ideal for propping the phone on your desk during a stretch break. Even on the closed outer screen, the navigation tabs shrink into a slim side menu so the video gets as much room as possible.
Tiny Computers
Built for the Duo and aimed squarely at tech nerds (who, let’s be honest, are the phone’s early adopters), Tiny Computers is a collection of ten retro machines to poke around on. The line-up includes the Macintosh, Commodore 64, Amiga 500, Windows 95, iMac G3, ThinkPad and Windows XP.
You’re meant to use the Duo open like a laptop, tapping away on clicky keyboards, using working command lines and paint programs and loading floppy disks. There’s a game hidden in there too, with secret files and commands to find for medals. There are no ads, subscriptions or in-app purchases either, just a one-off $3.99 fee.
Sky Guide
The stargazing favorite Sky Guide is one of the apps Apple name-checked in its Duo launch announcement, and it’s easy to see why. Telling a planet from a star is far easier on the unfolded inner screen, where the sky map stretches edge to edge and shifts as you move and turn.
It’s a simple case of the bigger screen making an already good app better, and it’s one you’ll be glad to have on a camping trip or late-night walk.
MD Vinyl
Another one for the retro music crowd, MD Vinyl already had a loyal following thanks to its home screen widget, with a tiny spinning record showing the track and artist. On the Duo, that virtual turntable gets far more room to breathe.
The best bit is the tonearm: you can pick it up and place it on the record to start the music, then lift it off to stop. It’s a small touch, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that makes the extra screen feel worthwhile.
Pico Cam
Pico Cam was a fun novelty even before the Duo. It’s a Polaroid-style camera app where pictures eject from the Dynamic Island, and you can shake each one to speed up the ‘developing’ before decorating it with stickers and sharing it with friends.
On the Duo, it works whether the phone is open or shut. Closed, the outer screen gives you extra room to browse your gallery of snaps once you’ve taken them.
Toastie
Let’s be clear: this isn’t a ‘killer app’, and it isn’t trying to be. Toastie is the Duo’s answer to those old iPhone novelty apps that pretended to let you drink a pint when you tilted the screen. Billed as the ‘world’s most expensive toaster’ (a dig at the Duo’s price), it has you build a grilled cheese or toastie with butter, cheese and other toppings, then close the phone to let it cook.
The catch is that opening the Duo too early leaves you with undercooked toast and no five-star rating. You don’t need it, but at $2.99, it’s hard to argue after what you’ve already spent on the phone. It’s a bit of fun, after all.
Up next: iPhone Duo cases: protect your foldable with the best we found
Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.