Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Archived Post

Three great apps for tracking a package

It’s Apple Watch day! Many people will receive their shiny new Apple Watches today while many more will play the waiting game. Apple hit the April 24 delivery target for quite a few customers, while others still have weeks of waiting ahead of them. This post is for the latter group.

There are many apps available for tracking a package, and these are our favorites by far.

Deliveries ($4.99, universal) has been my favorite for years. It offers support for more than 25 delivery services, including UPS, FedEx, USPS, Amazon and more. Pending deliveries are color-coded to match each services’s branding, so it’s easy to see what’s coming from UPS (brown), FedEx (purple) and so on at a glance. Deliveries also supports the Today widget in iOS 8’s notification center. It’s a great little app.

Posted ($1.99, universal). This great-looking app features pretty icons and support for over 180 delivery services. You can get push notifications when your package’s status changes, estimated delivery dates and barcode scanning to track packages you’re sending. Posted has been featured by Apple in the App Store.

Parcel (universal, free with in-app purchase) from Ivan Pavlov is very well done and actively updated. Parcel can track packages traveling with 250 delivery services, so if you can’t track your package with Parcel, it must be strapped to a pigeon. Parcel supports bar code scanning, iOS 8 Notification Center and clever notification management: it will only ping you between 8:00 AM and 10:00 PM local time, so a 2:00 AM status change won’t wake you up. A $1.99 in-app purchase lets you track more than three items at a time.

You’ll find carrier-specific apps, but these alternatives are so inclusive and useful, we recommend using them instead. In the meantime, enjoy the anticipation of that sweet new toy. It will be here soon.

Steve Sande
the authorSteve Sande
Steve is the founder and former publisher of Apple World Today and has authored a number of books about Apple products. He's an avid photographer, an FAA-licensed drone pilot, and a really bad guitarist. Steve and his wife Barb love to travel everywhere!