free or close to it

Black History Month lasts through the end of February, but you'll need to act by Friday if you want to grab free downloads of three important audio books by Black authors. Offered as a gift from Cool Mom Tech-recommended audiobook compan…

It's no secret that we are huge fans of Star Wars here at Cool Mom Tech, so when we heard that Headspace just launched new mindfulness and meditation content for kids 5-10 called Find Your Force with Star Wars , I rocketed over to watch …

This year, we want to stream the 2020 Tokyo Olympics but of course, we happened to have cut our cable cord years ago. Instead, we rely on several streaming services — mainly Netflix, the free HBOMax subscription that came with our phone …

I love giving the gift of photos, videos, and heartfelt messages for Father's Day (or any special day, really), but they're not exactly the easiest things to give long distance to say, a grandpa. Do you attach a video to an email? Send a…

Who else is thinking about gardening this spring? Along with our own Liz and Kristen who recently hosted the We Time Project and took a food gardening course (yay!), it seems like everyone is ready to put down the sourdough starter and g…

We're huge board game geeks in my family. Our stack of strategy games is up to the ceiling. And while we're always up for a new game, they're expensive. So my new solution has been playing board games online before I buy! I get the full …

I am not exaggerating when I say that I cried after watching a presentation about Apple's new, totally free, Make Your Holiday at-home family program . Our kids have been through so much, and whenever I think of all the companies that ha…

This weekend, inspired by the Cool Mom Picks book club video chat about How to Break Up with Your Phone , I decided to try one of author Catherine Price's tips to help me be more mindful about my screen time, and more aware of how much I…

If you're looking to add some new books to your summer reading list, you'll want to head over to Amazon right now and download the 9 free Kindle books they're offering today in honor of World Book Day. But hurry, you've got about 30 hour…

If you're an Amazon Prime member like me who also happens to have a Nintendo Switch , you'll definitely want to check out this awesome offer from Twitch Prime (which, if you didn't know, is owned by Amazon). All you need to do is connect…

With all the not-so-great news coming out around YouTube recently -- from their pedophilia problem to the horrific content spliced into kids' videos to the infamous Momo challenge -- I've been looking for some YouTube alternatives. From …

One of my very favorite movies this year was the Fred Rogers documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? , which simultaneously shed new light on the TV personality I loved as a child and sparked a passion for me to show my kids every favorite…

If there's ever a time when we deserve some extra hours parked in front of a screen, it's the week after Christmas when we are all coming down from the excitement of the holidays. And if you are a Roku customer, make sure you check out R…

As my son gets older, I'm starting to look for cool educational apps to give him a leg up on counting and letters and other basic skills. The clear favorite for now? The brand new Khan Academy Kids , a free learning app from Khan Academy…

Podcasts can promote your child's creativity and imagination without spending more time in front of a screen.

Life is short, and now is the best time to do something for yourself and your health.

Because if you're saving money, you don't want to start by spending on another app.

It's not always easy for us parents to find time to focus on our mental and spiritual health, but it's critical to being good parents for our kids. So, set aside the guilt about "me time" and download these free self-care apps now. They'…

Harness your thoughts (and maybe a New Years' resolution) with one of our favorite free journal apps.

When I was a drop-out Brownie some 30-ahem years ago, my troop worked on badges like Basketry and Arts & Crafts. But now I'm kind of wishing I could go back and do it all over again because this fall, the Girl Scout organization has anno…

Just because breastfeeding is a natural process, it isn't necessarily all blissed out bonding time. But luckily, we live in a time where there are tons of tech to help nursing moms, like these 3 new breastfeeding apps that caught our att…

These camps are so cool that you’ll want to be a kid again! Well maybe temporarily.

Well this is cool, parents! Khan Academy is partnering with Disney and Pixar to offer free online classes in storytelling for kids of all ages to show them how STEM helps make movies. The initiative is called Pixar in a Box , and we're p…

We love finding cool toys and apps that do a great job teaching our kids the basics of coding, since it's a language we expect they'll want (and need) to know when they're adults. When they've got great design and fun play through too, i…

My family will be taking a trip to Seoul, South Korea, in the next couple months, and I'm a little overwhelmed trying to plan our itinerary. Pinterest is somewhat helpful, but there's a lot of link bait to wade through. That's why I was …

We parents know that science is everywhere and why it's so important. So we always love tracking down some of the best science apps for kids each year, to show kids how fun science can be, and how it's a part of pretty much everything th…

With three kids, one dog, and enough stuff to fill a suburban house, I quickly became a convert to the KonMari method of organization, or "tidying" as founder Marie Kondo puts it. Her simple and direct way of weeding through all the stuf…

Beyond cropping out background noise or scrolling through a few Instagram filters, I don't usually spend a ton of time messing around with my photos. But after downloading the new and free Prisma app for iOS this week, I've discovered ho…

This morning as I was flipping through my emails on my phone, I discovered an email with a subject "Your Prime membership includes a free Kindle book," which I clicked right away because who doesn't love free? And to my total surprise, I…

The kids have been out of school for a bit and chances are you've heard the "bored" word at least once. Or maybe you have a toddler who is ready for a new activity approximately every three-and-a-half minutes. Either way, check out the f…

Summertime is the perfect time for the kids and I to explore nearby Boston--hey, we need to do that Freedom Trail someday, right?--but, oy, do I hate driving around looking for parking. So, when a well-traveled friend told me that she'd …

It must be the week of class action lawsuit settlements. First with Ticketmaster , and now Apple, who's required to fund over $4 million dollars in credits to eBook customers. That means if you bought eBooks on Amazon between 2010 and 20…

If you've seen posts floating around telling you that you've got free Ticketmaster tickets to claim, it's totally legit. Due to a huge class action lawsuit that just settled, if you bought tickets between October 21, 1999 and February 27…

If there is one gift I could give to all new parents, it would be the ability to make their baby fall right asleep on command. But since my super powers were never really strong in that area, I'll have to settle with telling you about a …

Mis Amigos! One of our favorite early-reading apps, Endless Reader , has gone espagñol with the Endless Spanish app , an adorably playful and educational preschool app for both iOS and Android users. Similar to the awesome Endless Reader…

Summer nights are perfect for staying up late, lying on the lawn (or roof deck if you're a city dweller) and looking up at the stars. But, often, streetlights and other ambient light can make it hard to see everything that is up there cl…

If you're into taking video, have I got a reco for you! It's AfterCam , a sort of "after-the-fact" video recorder that helps you capture the past 5, 10, or 20 seconds in time without clogging up your phone with tons of extra video data. …

With all the time I spend outside of the house waiting for my kids to finish a class or practice, I'm always trying to find something new to do on my phone. You know, other than continually refreshing my Facebook feed or checking to see …

I sometimes think I have the sense of humor of a ten-year-old, which comes in handy since I do have a tweenage son who thinks things like talking cupcakes and singing basketballs are pretty hilarious. What's even more hilarious is when w…

I have fallen into a dinner rut, relying on a few tried-and-true recipes that I can whip up before the kids get too peckish at the end of a busy day. But now that I've download the free and gorgeously designed Yummly app , which is avail…

It's Sunday morning and your kids' friends just had to cancel their afternoon playdate. Or, you are on vacation with your toddler, and rain has just ruined your plans to visit that cool new park you read about online. What to do? Well, n…

Though your kids may not be able to find their shoes when you are running out the door, they are sure to love finding the solutions to the problems posed in Alien Assignment , a fun, free app for kids as young as three. Created by the Fr…

If you're going to Instagram your Easter eggs today, why not try Instagramming a Pinterest-ready Easter egg with a Twitter icon, then save it on Flickr? Or something. Well, you can do that if you're crafty enough to emulate these amazing…

The first word that pops into my head after I hear "spring" is "cleaning," probably because three kids plus one dog equals a lot of cleaning at any time of the year. And with today being the first day of spring (yay!), my free app of the…

When your preschooler wants to play, but you really need a few uninterrupted minutes to finish some work or get dinner on the table, we've found an entire menagerie of adorable friends who will be happy to set up a playdate at any time. …

Whether your travels this year take you halfway across the world, to your favorite beachside resort a few hours away, or to the campground you've been visiting since the kids were toddlers, I've found an easy, beautiful, and free app for…

At first glance, Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector may look like a cute cartoony app for young kids to waste a few minutes of their day. Yet, it's one of the few apps in my household that has the parents, teens, and my younger tween all hooke…

As much as I love the vastness of the internet, sometimes I just want to find the perfect little black dress (should Liz and Kristen not be around to tell me just what to buy!) or the name of a great family restaurant at the beach withou…

Whenever my husband and I manage to squeeze in a date night dinner, I have to be very conscious of my iPhone usage. He does not appreciate the lemme just check this one thing real quick business, not in the slightest. I get it, though. H…

My kids get really excited about President's Day because it means a day off from school. But I'd like to make sure that they spend a little bit of time reflecting on our former presidents too, so I love an app that helps with just that. …

Since starting to Konmari, or "tidy," my home almost a year ago, I've found myself avoiding certain categories of stuff left to purge, like the four large bins of CDs we've had stored in our basement since switching all our music over to…

Welcome to our new weekly series on Cool Mom Tech that introduces you to some of our favorite free apps to download to your devices. Because as much as we love all the useful, fun, and entertaining apps we recommend here, admittedly we l…

If you're tearing through the list of snow day activities to keep the kids occupied when you're stuck indoors, allow us help you with two beautifully designed, really fun new apps we've discovered from Seedling . As in, the same company …

We're big fans of Santa around here, as you might have guessed. What, us risk making the naughty list? Never!) So if you're looking for some fun Santa apps to help bring the big guy to life on your phone, tablet, or laptop and make belie…

Each year around this time, we love sharing our favorite shopping apps with you. Because who doesn't love going shopping and landing a fab deal? Exactly. And how much do you love it when you land that fab deal in the middle of the madnes…

When I'm driving around running errands, I usually have NPR on the radio, unless I'm listening to Spawned , of course. The stories that almost always end up with me in tears, searching for a Kleenex in the console, are the reports from S…

We like to joke about the poor kids who get stuck sitting over at the kids' table on Thanksgiving when, really, they are all having a blast on their own without having to listen to all the boring grownups talk about boring grownup things…

H i Cool Mom Tech, Have you written about a tech solution that gathers photos from all the family computers and phones into one place for backup purposes? - James We've been exactly where you are, James: looking at all the options and sc…

This is a sponsored message from Hobnob With the holidays right around the corner, the free Hobnob app for iOS makes sending invites to your holiday events, and sharing the photos afterwards even easier. Plus, you could win a $200 Target…

Its pronunciation may be in the tomayto/tomahto zone, but when it comes to GIFs there's no debate about their popularity. So, last week when our favorite social network rolled out the Boomerang app that basically lets you produce and sha…

If your kids are having a hard time waiting for Halloween to hurry up and get here, we've got a fun treat to share with you that will keep them busy and challenged this week. Developed by Kano , whose DIY computer kit wowed us earlier in…

It's not like my kids need any additional reasons to get excited about Halloween -- the costumes and candy and thoughts of staying up extra extra late do that for them -- but still, it's nice that there are so many fun Halloween apps for…

This being the year of the emoji , of course someone was going to rock the emoji pumpkin carving idea in a big way. What's better, is that it's BHG and they're making it easy for you to follow along with a whole bunch of cool, free emoji…

Shopping online has been Captain Convenience for so many of us for years now, although when you're shopping for clothes, it can sometimes lean into "this is such a hassle" territory if you've got six open tabs to compare prices at six di…

Where would any of us be without our to-do lists? Probably reclined somewhere on a beach having sweet nothings whispered into our ears by our hot-to-death boyfriend Idris Elba. (Okay. That's just me. Big Driis and I have history.) The po…

When it comes to teaching my kids history, I'll use anything I can get my hands on, from Crash Course and Brain Pop videos , to cool apps like History Here that help us learn the history of places we visit. And now I've found a lighthear…

As the days start to get shorter (sob) and we realize some of us will soon be heading home from work or walking around a college campus in the dark at just 5PM, it's nice to know that walking home alone just got a lot less nerve-wracking…

Warning: It's a jungle out there. No, really. There's a crazy, colorful jungle filled with wild animals and plants for kids to explore, and it's right there on your smart device. Since we always love the kinds of educational apps that ki…

Often, when I see something that claims to be made "for kids, by kids," my suspicious brow goes up and I prepare myself to be underwhelmed. Not the case with #MetsKids , a new website that is -- ahem -- made for, with, and by real life k…

Let's hear it for organizational apps this time of year! What would we ever do without them? After all, back to school also means getting back to routines, which can highlight some of our old systems for staying organized and keeping the…

Every summer I vow that we're going to do enriching activities to keep everyone's brain sharp, but then my resolve melts faster than ice cream on a hot day once we start enjoying the lazy, unscheduled days of summer. But, I've found a gr…

Along with the diapers and burp clothes and countless other pieces of baby gear, perhaps the most valuable things that new (and newish) parents can receive are the BTDT words of wisdom from other parents who are boldly and actively doing…

If we asked you to count the things you'd rather spend a day doing than iPhone photo organization, what number would we be talking about here? Fifteen? Fifty? Eleventy hundred other things you'd rather do? Yeah, wrangling the tons of pho…

I recently found myself caught out there without portable, backup battery power . I mean, I had a Plan C -- my iPhone charger in my purse -- which was more like a Plan E, because trying to locate a conveniently-placed wall outlet at a ma…

When the director of our ad team, Lisa, tells me to try a new app, I know it's going to be a good one. She has good taste. And this time it's Brain Dots (for iOS and Android ) which happens to be fun, challenging, infuriating, and someti…

Getting our kids on board with STEM early in the game seems like a great way to go. And just because it's summer doesn't mean that gentle parent-ly nudge in the right direction has to take a break. An easy way to get kids hyped about thi…

They say every picture tells a story, which makes my six-year-old a master story teller. We get a book's worth of drawings from her each day and the explanations of her creations are always mind blowingly crazy awesome. So imagine our ex…

Our young children may not entirely understand why mom's Facebook avatar is covered in rainbows or what all those happy tears on Friday were for, but quite simply, kids can understand the basic premise that all of us here share, that lov…

School's out (finally). Time to really sink into summer's sun and fun. But for many parents, summer also means tackling this gnawing question, how are we going to keep these children entertained? Well, for your tech-head kid, we're happy…

Before your next summer road trip or family barbeque, we have a little gift for your ears: Free kids' music! Ready to amp up those playlists? Then you have to check out these 10 Cool Mom Picks approved songs from some of our favorite kin…

I am a longtime, shameless, all-things-Apple fan. But that doesn't mean I don't tip my hat frequently to cool, non-iOS products. And, when it comes to this new Google Photos app? I'm basically standing up and doing a slow-clap, because t…

With an estimated 37 million Americans hitting the road on the Memorial Day holiday alone, it's going to be the biggest travel weekend in a decade. Clearly, after enduring a long, miserable winter, folks are super hyped for the (unoffici…

We're very pro-photo book around here. Actually, we support any service or app that helps us get all the digital pics we snap off of our devices and on display for all to enjoy. And with Father's Day and graduation season officially unde…

From Vered 's beautiful new album Hello My Baby , her song Thank You is just what we need to hear on this Mother's Day. Because, even if our kids are too young to speak the words, we know just what they mean when they reach out their han…

I have a close-knit family. My sisters and I talk a lot any given week. The thing is, we all live in cities spread miles (and countries) apart, so we rely on social media, texting and, when time zones line up nicely, video chats. And wit…

Bless the big-hearted Star Wars fans of this world, for on May the Fourth Be With You Day, they are always an extra-giving bunch. Like Jason Yang, the designer and illustrator behind Invisible Element, who just offered up this wonderful …

W e are a house divided. My husband is an Android user (but I love him anyway), and I am an iPhone user. We need a calendar app that works with both, allows for the importing of Google calendar an iCal and automatically refreshes it. Is …

Hey Cool Mom Tech! Do y'all know of an Instagram app for iPad that allows you to add text or make a collage? -Delilah, via Twitter Hey Delilah! The short answer to your question is: Indeed we do. And we totally get it, too. Sometimes you…

When I first heard about the V.ALRT personal emergency alert device I immediately went to I've fallen and can't get up. I figured it was just some newfangled version of those Life Alert medical bracelets and it turns out, it kind of is -…

I didn't even know there was a term for it, but of course there is. O versharenting . It's that thing that so many of us parents do on social media -- especially on Facebook -- where we share, or overshare, info about our kids that range…

The selfie stick struggle is real, friends. From major museums, like the MoMA and The Met in NYC to the Palace of Versailles in Paris, to sports stadiums, to musical festivals Coachella and Lollapalooza, the ban on selfie sticks shows no…

You know how bouncy your kids get after eating too many jelly beans? We've found the musical equivalent with this awesome new tune from Mista Cookie Jar and the Chocolate Chips that's a perfect choice for our weekly kids' music download …

We are so excited about (and kind of in awe of) so many of the things that computers are doing for our kids, but the reality is, sometimes we need help managing their screen time. So many readers have written to us thanking us for tips l…

Just last year, we gave you the straight intel on the best Instagram collage apps . And now, finally (some might say, including us) Instagram has jumped in the game with Layout from Instagram , their very own app for making photo collage…

Spring is (finally) rounding the corner. That also means that prime travel season and spring break is about to begin, and when it comes to family vacations -- be it a long weekend or a 10-day stretch -- there are plenty of moving parts t…

As parents, we are not shy about our love of cool camera apps since that's easily half the reason we all own smartphones in the first place. And we've experienced first-hand how a really great camera app -- like the Camera+ 6 app -- can …

I know I don't have to tell any new parent about the importance of sleep, but with Sleep Awareness Week beginning tomorrow, it's only appropriate I feature a sweet new lullaby to mark the occasion. And this lovely little song comes off a…

As a Brooklyn resident who falls squarely within the lucky Brooklyn-Manhattan delivery area for the new Amazon Prime Now app ( iOS and Android ) I downloaded it stat. It is a genius premise, functioning essentially like a Fresh Direct ki…

I cannot tell you how excited I am about the new YouTube Kids app that just launched today. Over the years, we're continually asked how to find great videos for kids on YouTube by parents, and while we've shared various safer YouTube app…

As another blizzard rages outside my suburban Boston window, Caspar Babypants' wishful song, I Wanna Be A Snowman , will be running through my head as I shovel this afternoon. But since my kids still love the fluffy white stuff, and this…