For logistics reasons, we've split our applications directory for Windows Phone 8.1 into two, with a natural spin-off section being anything to do with imaging, camera, media and music/voice. This is the mid-January 2018 update. The original applications directory excludes these categories. Note that Windows 10 UWP applications are now hosted in their own directory.

See the bottom of this table for some helpful notes and background.

Directory updated 16th February 2018

This is a bookmarkable pair of pages of the top 1000 or so applications that should be a useful aide-memoire after a hard reset if rebuilding a phone from scratch or, perhaps more appropriately, a great place for a new Windows Phone 8.1 user to start.

This is a companion page to this one, with all the general, news, reference and utility applications.

Some notes:

• FAQ: I don't mark new entries as 'new' in any way because there's no point - you already know what they are as we've featured them on the front pages of AAWP over the last month. These reference pages are just that - for reference. For newcomers and for people looking up recommendations.
• Thanks to the AAWP community for suggestions so far (e.g. in the comments below), this is a crowd-sourced project!
• Not included (obviously) are games. They're here. Also not included are applications which come with every phone, such as the core Windows and Lumia apps.
• Yes, I know that a couple of entries are in two categories. Just trying to be helpful!
• Implemented as a table, I've kept the width right down, now with just two columns, in order to be phone-friendly. In other words, you can view this article on your phone and, depending on the link and the item, dive right into an app, its page and then download it. In theory!
• I've broken down our recommendations into categories, to be helpful. No doubt things may get tweaked in time! 
• See also our separate directory for Windows 10 Mobile (UWP) applications.

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