"Hack Your Life": What to Install on the Phone You Give Your Parents

Apps, from QDaily's "Beat Boredom With Curiosity" series. The whole QDaily smart-devices team wishes moms and dads, aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas a fine time with their new toys!

Don't install their apps one by one; teach them how to download apps

For reasons everyone knows, Android phones in China can't download apps from Google Play. You need to find your parents somewhere else to get them: Wandoujia, Yingyongbao, Baidu Mobile Assistant, 360 Mobile Assistant and assorted others. There are a few catches. Check that each app is the genuine official version, and warn first-time senior users about rogue ads and in-app purchases.

Bought them an iPhone, so no problem? You still have to show them how to use the App Store: tap the search bar at the bottom, type the name of the app they want, tap "Get," and the whole world opens up.

And if your parents' English isn't great, don't casually switch them to the US English store.

We strongly suggest you use downloading the QDaily app as the practice lesson. If it doesn't stick the first time, register and log in to an account for them, and the problem is solved for good.

Teach your parents the basics of WeChat, and be there whenever they're stuck

On the morning of Lunar New Year's Eve, I was teaching my dad how to put money into a WeChat red envelope. And then send it to me.

From then until the morning of New Year's Day, my dad kept pressing me to put money into his WeChat "Wallet." He got such a kick out of sending red envelopes that he couldn't stop.

We're used to grabbing red envelopes on WeChat, Alipay, QQ and Weibo. But parents and grandparents with a brand-new phone may not even know how to send and receive WeChat messages yet.

You don't need to hand-draw a WeChat manual for your parents. Just be on call when they run into trouble.

To turn on mobile payments or not: that is the question

The fact is, e-commerce has yet to fully win over the group with the most buying power: our parents.

Usually it's Mom on the phone: "Buy me an XXX online," or "Auntie Li's daughter bought her an XXX online, and I want one too." Use the holiday to install JD.com, Taobao, Tmall and every other shopping app they need, and let Mom buy whatever she likes!

Then open accounts for them on the shopping sites and set up their delivery addresses, so they can happily spend the cash they collected in the Spring Festival red-envelope frenzy.

A word of family advice: some parents worry about security and won't turn on online payments. For the trend-setting, online-shopping-pro kind of parents, drill them on payment safety again and again!

Your parents may follow the weather in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou more closely than you do

Many mornings, while I was still lying in bed, my parents back home had already texted me: "A cold wave is coming, wear more layers," or "It's going to rain today, take an umbrella." A weather app is a must for your parents' phone, but we recommend one that saves them a bit of worry.

Lanren Tianqi (Lazy Weather) gives a live forecast for the next 48 hours. Will it rain in the next 12 hours? One glance tells you.

If the temperature falls more than 5 degrees from the day before, it shows a sudden-drop alert. That is far more considerate than forecasts that only call a 10-degree drop a cold wave. The app's main selling point is that it saves you worry. The type is big enough to read easily. The alerts are clear, so you don't have to keep jumping between screens.

It also doesn't keep pushing notifications for weather warnings nobody needs. And caring reminders such as "remember your umbrella" and "remember to wear more layers" can be forwarded by text or WeChat with a tap. We suggest you install it on your own phone too. Yes, it really is that thoughtful.

TV dramas, variety shows, films: they can't miss a single one

When parents get a new phone or tablet, their first question is almost always how to watch mainland, Japanese, Korean, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwanese dramas on the thing. Follow our instructions below to the letter; we accept no responsibility for accidents. Forward this card to your parents and you won't have to give the lesson yourself.

First, download an app for watching TV from one of the app stores. Each video site has its own exclusive shows, so we suggest installing all of them.

The search button is usually at the top or bottom of the app. Your parents type the name of the drama they want into the search bar. And if they're already seasoned binge-watchers: below the video there is a download button that looks roughly like a downward arrow with a line under it.

If you bought your parents a 16GB iPhone, which will certainly run out of space, then besides being scolded a couple of times for being so unfilial, you'll have to teach them how to delete the dramas they've finished. Developers put this under personal settings or "Downloaded," so be sure to show your parents the right way to find it.

Investing, stock trading and bookkeeping: install them for whoever holds the purse strings

Your parents may believe their memory is as sharp as ever. They can tell you, item by item, what they spent at the morning market three days ago. But when the year-end reckoning comes, you still wonder whether they can work out a whole year of income, spending and debts.

A personal finance app on your parents' new smartphone does more than sort out daily expenses; more importantly, it helps them keep spending in balance. Besides the amount of each income and expense, it records the details, such as the spending category and changes in account balances.

Personal finance apps look complicated, but really it's just filling in one form after another. Set up the accounts and budget to suit their situation (you can do this part), then fill in the rest step by step. We recommend Suishouji, Pennies and DailyCost; for the last two, see our detailed reviews.

Mom has cooked all her life; give her something new

If your parents also care about healthy living and recipes, then rather than letting them read dubious articles forwarded on Moments, install Guorizi and Xiachufang on their phones.

Think of Guorizi as a magazine on your phone that recommends seasonal food and health-minded menus. One fun feature: when you open the app, you first take a body-constitution test, and it then recommends the fruit, vegetables and meat that suit your constitution at this time of year. The interface is beautiful, but the best part is that you can add the constitutions of several relatives, which makes it easy to look after your family from a job in another city.

Xiachufang is another app for older relatives with the time, the money and a kitchen to tinker in: plenty of good recipes, easy to use, and a wide range of dishes. Trying new dishes alongside a health-minded menu could be a fun pastime for them. And they'll never again be stumped by some mysterious ingredient a friend sends them.

Mind you, the odds of my mom cooking up a kitchen disaster have gone up too.

Exercise matters for their health; get them a fitness band

Middle-aged and older people care about everything to do with health. To nudge them to walk a few more steps, consider buying your parents a fitness band. There are far too many to choose from: Fitbit, Xiaomi, Bong, Lifesense, Codoon... We have no particular buying advice,

because most bands on the market today don't count steps very accurately,

but they are still useful for parents.

About six months ago, QDaily reporters bought bands for their older relatives and set up step-counting apps on their phones. Unlike young people, who try things for the novelty, older people do it for their health, and every day they pay close attention to whether they've hit their step goal. So with a band, the elders really did walk more, and they have kept it up.

If you're also a heavy user of Walkr, install it on your parents' new phone too, and you can harvest new planets every day with their exercise data!

Share half the novels on your phone with your parents; they may like them too

Your parents have started grumbling that most Chinese TV dramas are unwatchable now, and that even a novel passes the time better. Install a reading app so they can leaf through magazines when they're free. Xiongmao Kanshu (Panda Reader) is a good choice. Every week more than 200 publishers, companies and individuals supply it with news, magazines, books, novels and comics. It also supports many common document formats, so you won't have to give up a book you like because you can't find the right format.

Eye exercises, an eye-friendly night mode and adjustable screen brightness help prevent the eye strain that comes from staring at a screen. When their eyes get tired, they can listen to audiobooks stored on the phone without using mobile data. Perhaps one day what your parents forward on Moments will be summaries of health books rather than health rumors.

Then again, you could install the Kindle app on your parents' new iPad and put a few hundred yuan into their Amazon account. When their unfilial children have no time to download books for them, they can buy whatever they want with one tap.

Install a radio app: for exercising, for strolling, for whenever they like

One key rule when buying tech for your parents: the text must be big. Their eyesight may keep getting worse, and even if they still see clearly now, their eyes will tire after looking at a screen for a long time.

So there's a reason older people love listening to opera and storytelling. When their eyes limit them, their ears become an important way to enrich their lives. I remember breakfast at home as a child always came with my grandfather's radio: I'd listen to the "morning news" while worrying about being late for school.

Install an app for radio and audio novels on your parents' phone, so that when they don't feel like looking at a screen, they still needn't be bored.

A small suggestion: if your parents left their hometown to work and build a life elsewhere, look in the radio app for programs in their home dialect. Older people are nostalgic, and the accents of their childhood will feel close to home.

We wish our elders good health, but a medication reminder is a must

As parents grow older, they may need to take medicine on a schedule. But with several drugs a day, some three times a day at two tablets a time, others twice a day at half a tablet, keeping track can be hard.

That's when their phones need a medication reminder app, set with the times and doses, so they don't miss one. For conditions such as diabetes, where taking medicine on time matters most, it's best not to miss a single day. You should also install the same app on your own phone, so you can check in now and then and see whether they're taking their medicine on time.

We recommend the medication reminder apps on Android and Family Medicine Cabinet on the iPhone. And as their child, you should also keep DXY (Dingxiangyuan) on your own phone for emergencies.

Finally, we wish all the moms, dads, grandparents, aunts and uncles good health and no need for medicine at all.

Take them around the world, the way they took you everywhere when you were little

Every holiday, in fact, my mom's imagination runs wild and she tells me she wants to go to Japan, to Phuket, to London, to...

I wouldn't feel easy letting my parents set off around the world with nothing but a dictionary, but you can install reliable trip-planning apps for them. Right now my mother is already saying: "The guide says the local specialty snacks here are XX, XX and XXX. Take! Me! There!"

Yes, Your Majesty.

QDaily introduced a number of travel apps back in 2014; a click will take you to them. For instance: Most Beautiful Routes for choosing a route; EyeEm for editing photos before posting them to Moments; Dark Sky, a weather app accurate to the minute; Human, which draws a map of your city from your own movements; and Heads Up, a must for group trips and get-togethers.

If you really can't travel because you have to visit every last relative, that's fine too. Use RoundMe, an app for seeing the world without leaving home, and it will feel as if you're already on the road.

Home for Spring Festival? Time to upgrade your parents' smartphones

"Hey, how can you get Wi-Fi in the car?"

"I turned on a hotspot on my phone."

"What's a hotspot?"

That was one of my conversations with my dad on the way home from the airport. In the six months I'd been away, my parents had stored up a pile of questions like this about their smartphones. I heard that after we bought him his new phone, it took him several days to get a young guy at his office to set up his account ID.

Hence this list. What matters is not which apps you think your parents' phones should have, but which apps they need. Some want to listen to the radio on their phones, some want to read novels, some badly want their TV shows... But first, let me drag my mother away from her phone to talk to me.

Hey, Mom, Dad, your daughter is right here! I finally made it home! Stop chatting on your phones!

Careful! Phones are so much fun that the whole family has turned into heads-down screen-gazers.

Thanks, too, to everyone on the smart-devices team for putting this list together. A share of the love we show our elders here is theirs.

Cui Qiwen, Tang Yiyuan, Gao Yuxin, Wang Jiefu, Wang Jiajun, Li Shuoming and Xu Tao also contributed to this article.

Well, if you'd like other topics

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Beat Boredom With Curiosity: The Workplace

Beat Boredom With Curiosity: Reading

Beat Boredom With Curiosity: Travel

Beat Boredom With Curiosity: Recharging

Beat Boredom With Curiosity: VICE

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