Pick up new skills with these five apps

It’s never too late to learn new skills. Whether you’re looking to enrich your work or personal life, your computer is your ticket to online classes and inspiration. Here are five of our favourite apps for broadening your knowledge base.

Whether you’re looking to try a new recipe, brush up on your marketing skills or just learn how to perform better at your next interview, Udemy is your destination. Browse a seemingly endless library of courses, each featuring its own quizzes, Q&As with the teacher and learning reminders so that you don’t miss a thing.

Sketchy Wi-Fi signal? Long flight? Download classes for offline learning.

Learn piano from the basics all the way to reading complex sheet music with fun, easy tutorials. Simply Piano tunes into your own instrument or the in-app keyboard to get you started on your musical journey: as you play a tune, you’ll see the notes highlighted each time that you press the correct key.

There’s plenty to learn with the basic version, but updating to Premium gives you access to an expanded library of popular songs, advanced chord structures and lead sheets.

Feeling guilty about dropping languages when you were in school? Duolingo forgives you and is here to help. Explore interactive courses in over 20 languages, from French to Korean to Greek. Each bite-size, animated lesson features quizzes and a quick-reference guidebook of phrases and grammar tips. Earn in-app rewards as you learn, like being able to skip a day without breaking your streak.

Tap the bell icon at the bottom of your screen to access language-related articles from Duolingo, plus helpful tips for sticking to your lessons.

Learning to code is easier than ever thanks to Codeacademy Go. Master engineering essentials at your own speed with web-based courses in languages like Java, Python and C++. Then, head to the app to hone your skills with quick reference cards, challenge your knowledge with tests and catch up on pertinent tech articles.

Use Codeacademy Go’s streak tracker to challenge yourself to practise every day.

This powerful all-round photo editor makes it easy to get your ideal look. Edit photos using dozens of presets, or play around with tools for dehazing, sharpening, colour, noise reduction and more. Store and manage up to one terabyte of projects in the cloud, where they’ll be automatically organised thanks to Adobe’s artificial intelligence.

Upgrade to Premium to access even more presets and tools like Masking, which micro-adjusts one specific area of the photo as opposed to the whole image.