What is Appcyclopedia?

What the site is for

I build apps for a living, so I know how little of an app’s behaviour ever makes it into the help pages. Appcyclopedia is where I write that part down.

The site answers practical questions about everyday apps. How to take back an email you sent too soon. Why your YouTube home page keeps showing the same kind of video. Each answer comes with the steps to follow.

Guides for one task at a time

Each guide covers a single job in a single app. You get the short answer first. Then the steps in order, with every button and menu named the way it appears on your screen. If your case is not the simple one, the guide covers that too: what to do when a step is missing or the result is not what you expected.

If I had to pick three to start with: recalling a message in Outlook, unsending an email in Gmail and resetting your YouTube recommendations.

How guides are checked

Apps change all the time. Every guide is checked against the app maker’s own help pages before it is published, and wherever possible one of us works through the steps on a real device. At the end of each guide you can see when it was last checked and who tried it.

When an app changes, we update the guide and its date. I care about that date more than anything else on the page.

A page for every app

Each app has its own page that brings its guides together, so you can see everything we have written about it in one place. The first are Gmail, Outlook, YouTube and Canva, and more are added as new guides go up.

Free tools for small jobs

Some jobs need a tool rather than a guide. The tools section has a password generator, a username generator, a subscription calculator that adds up what you pay each month, and a reminder that warns you before a free trial turns into a charge. They all run in your browser.

Who pays for it

App makers do not pay to appear on Appcyclopedia, and the site carries no advertising. The disclosure page has the details.

What comes next

New guides go up every week. Reviews and comparisons will follow.

If there is a task you keep getting stuck on, I would like to hear about it. Write to info@appcyclopedia.com. If you know a group of apps well and would like to write for us, see the join us page.