Everyday September 2026

5 apps for your lunch break

A lunch break is the one hour in the working day nobody else has claimed, and it usually goes to the inbox anyway. These five each take a piece of it back: a cheap lunch from a café that would otherwise throw it out, ten quiet minutes with a meditation you already like, the plant you walk past every day, one book’s central idea, and a sketch that is not for anyone.

The apps for your lunch break are Too Good To Go, Meditation Pal, Seek by iNaturalist, Blinkist and Sketchbook®. I built Meditation Pal; the other 4 are other developers’ apps.

MiaAppLog— an iOS developer who reviews other people’s apps
Published September 2026 · apps and prices last checked 6 October 2026

Four stars is my score for how well an app answers this moment. An app I built gets four and a half — that is a rule, not a comparison. The App Store’s own average is on each card beside it.

1. 

   Too Good To Go

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Food & Drink · App Store 4.9 (587,556)

   Pick up unsold food from nearby cafes and shops at a lower price.

   Skip it if you might miss the pickup window or have an allergy — missed pickups are not refunded, bags are a surprise with no allergy filter, and stores are sometimes closed or sold out when you arrive.

   Official site ↗More lists with Too Good To Go

   
2. 

   Meditation Pal Editor’s pick

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.5 · Free · Productivity · App Store 5.0 (7)

   Ten minutes with your own meditation audio, a session timer, and no ads.

   App Store ↗More lists with Meditation Pal

   
3. 

   Seek by iNaturalist

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Education · App Store 4.8 (30,909)

   Point the camera at a plant or bug on your walk and find out what it is.

   Skip it if you want a confident ID for animals or anything you hold in your hand — reviewers say identification has become less reliable lately, often stopping at a broad group or logging your hand as a human.

   Official site ↗More lists with Seek by iNaturalist

   
4. 

   Blinkist

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Education · App Store 4.8 (156,427)

   The key ideas of a book as a 15-minute read or listen.

   Skip it if you might forget to cancel the trial — it rolls into a full annual charge and reviewers report refunds refused; others find the summaries flat and offline downloads unreliable.

   Official site ↗More lists with Blinkist

   
5. 

   Sketchbook®

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Graphics & Design · App Store 4.8 (220,520)

   A full set of brushes for a quick drawing, free of distractions.

   Skip it if you work on long pieces on a phone — reviewers report crashes and update bugs that lost unsaved drawings, and the mobile version has no animation tools.

   Official site ↗More lists with Sketchbook®

   

Meditation Pal is one of mine — everything else on this list is someone else’s app. How that works.