Are you always scrolling through your mobile app store, desperately trying to find great new applications to put on your phone?  Truly useful apps – especially free ones – can be particularly hard to find.  But there are many of them and here are five you should absolutely download and use daily: Cardio Trainer, Google Music, HopStop, Dropbox, and Yelp.

Cardio Trainer: If you are like me, you are always searching for workout inspiration.  Most of us are locked in an eternal battle to find the self-motivation to develop a workout plan, actually get on the treadmill, and keep it up!Cardio Trainer is free and can help you get there.  You can set up a dietary and workout plan based on your weight loss goals, track your progress, and chart your success to keep finding motivation.  Even better, it syncs to your music library so, once you click on it, you can get to working out without distraction!

Google Music: If you want a good way to listen to music without paying for it through a Rhapsody subscription or streaming it through Pandora, check out Google Music.  The service lets you use your music across multiple platforms.  Plus there are perks: you can download from a selected list of free songs and share some of your purchased music with your friends on Google+.

HopStop: This app is useful for users in cities across the world.  But it’s a must for both residents and visitors of Manhattan!  HopStop tells you how to get from A to B without a hassle: just enter the best version of your start and destination addresses and the application will tell you the best way to get there. When I moved to Manhattan it was like a big maze but it’s almost impossible to get lost with HopStop.

Dropbox: It’s the easiest way to store and share files with your coworkers.  Once you set up a Dropbox account, you can simply drag and drop files, images, and more into your app folders and they are sharable with everyone who needs to see them. So, it’s great both for additional storage and for easy sharing.

Yelp: It’s the new place to go for ideas and reviews.  Need a place for dinner?  An idea for a date? Check out Yelp and see what other users liked.  Sometimes it’s great to double-check (because anyone can review anything) but Yelp is always a good first place to look!
So check out those five free apps.  It’s a great way to add some fun, useful functionality to your phone today.