Have you ever set and thought that your iPhone apps are simpler and quicker to use than their Mac counterparts? The same task that’d take 15 seconds on your phone often seems to take a half-dozen clicks on the Mac, especially if you’re using a web app. There’s the counterpart problem, of course, that mobile native and web apps often have less features than their desktop counterparts, but if you’re just wanting to check your Twitter feed or Gmail, the mobile feature set is often perfect.
So why not bring all of that to the desktop? Actually, there’s a number of menubar apps on the Mac that are essentially a tiny window for the mobile web app of a particular service, such as Gmail. Then, there’s the just-launched GoodDay. From the team that brought us Moneybag, GoodDay is an interesting shot at making mobile-style apps makes sense on the Mac desktop.
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The Mobile Web, Appified
Getting started, webapp style
GoodDay, essentially, is a wrapper for the most popular mobile web apps — including Gmail, Outlook.com, Facebook, Twitter, G+, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Flickr, and Pinterest — as well as a few GoodDay specific tools for keeping track of notes, tasks, expenses, and a journal, all in one place. As such, after going through a quick intro before the app itself launches, the first thing you’ll see is a Gmail login screen. By default, Gmail’s the first “app” in GoodDay that will open when you launch the app, and while you can turn on or off the different services and apps in GoodDay from its settings, there’s no way to change the service order — something that I think they should change going forward. At any rate, you’ll likely want to check your email first thing each day anyhow, so signing in with Gmail off the bat and seeing it each time you launch GoodDay shouldn’t be too big of a deal.
Apps, neatly tucked away.
When you’re ready to move on from email, GoodDay has a unique take on the side-menu behind a button with 3 vertical bars — one you’ve surely seen a million times on your smartphone apps — to let you switch between each of the apps that GoodDay has to offer. Tap the menu, then select any service or built-in tool you want. The experience is surprisingly nice, actually, letting you browse through your social network accounts and even tap links and view their contents right inside the app. It works great, and other than its slightly high memory usage (~300Mb) there’s nothing to worry about here. In fact, I happened to like the mobile Twitter view in GoodDay better than Twitter’s own mac app (though I still prefer Tweetbot).
GoodDay’s own apps are a bit more lacking.
If you branch out beyond the mobile web apps, though, GoodDay’s own built-in apps for notes, journaling, tasks, and expense tracking are basic at best, buggy at worst. They’re fine for keeping up with basic stuff, but since they’re fully trapped inside GoodDay and can’t be exported or synced to any other service, you won’t want to rely on GoodDay for the notes and data you want to keep forever. They’re a nice extra, but definitely not worth buying the app over.
Conclusion
GoodDay’s a whole ton of apps in one (press image from GoodDay team)
If you like the idea of GoodDay but want another option, there’s obviously a number of apps in this category, ranging from SocialButterfly for the major social networks to the FIPLAB team’s many individual menubar apps for everything GoodDay does — notes, Gmail, and more. But if you want it all together, GoodDay is a great option. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best shot at moving mobile web apps to the menubar we’ve seen yet. And, it’s a pretty simple tool that makes it easy to check in on a number of services — and reply to emails what I’d say is Gmail’s nicer interface — without having a dozen apps or browser tabs open. Mobile web apps are surprisingly nice alternates to heavier Mac apps, and you’re likely to find that you like GoodDay for that if nothing else.
GoodDay is on sale for just $0.99 to celebrate its launch, but it’ll be back up to it’s normal price of $9.99 very soon. There’s a free trial you can take for a spin to see if you want to use it, too, which is very nice to see. So try it out, and let us know what you think — and what you think of mobile web apps in the menubar.
Or, How About a Free Copy?
We’ve also got 5 copies to giveaway to our readers — just share this post on Facebook or Twitter and leave a comment with the link to your shared post to enter the giveaway! We’ll close the giveaway on Friday, September 13, so hurry and get your entries in!
Envato staff or those who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm are ineligible to enter.
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