Lots of ink has been spilled about how discovering apps in the U.S. App Store is a significant problem given the hundreds of thousands of apps currently available and the thousands of news ones released every week. We beg to differ.

One of the ways to discover the best apps for you is to use our robust database and filters. This article gives easy to follow step-by-step instructions on how to find the right apps for you using our app database.

Our Apps section has four tabs:

1. Most Popular
2. Explore All
3. Top Rated
4. On Sale

Each tab has the same set of powerful filter tools including:

1. Platform: iOS or Mac
2. Device: All, iPhone, iPad, Universal
3. Category: Books, Business, Utilities, etc. The Games category has 19 subcategories
4. Price Type: All, Paid, Free
5. Maker: Enter the name of an app maker (i.e. Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Chillingo)
6. # Stars: 0.5 increments ranging from 0 to 5
7. In Rating Type: AppPicker, Users, iTunes, Average
8. With At Least X Ratings: User entered number
9. Search for an app according to words in its Title or Description

So let’s say you want to find a free card game for iPad with at least 500 user ratings. This is what the inputs would look like:

In lickety-split fashion, all the apps meeting the selected criteria will be displayed. In this case, there are 77 apps who currently meet the selected criteria. As you can see, Universal apps, in addition to iPad only apps, are displayed since they are optimized for iPad.

In the Explore All tab, the default sort is “Release Date” with the most recent released apps displayed first. All of the columns are sortable so if you want to instead sort the apps alphabetically according to the app maker’s name, simply click on the “Maker” header column.

Let’s show you one more example. Every day hundreds (sometimes thousands) of apps go on sale or become free. Our “On Sale” tab is updated dynamically daily and the same filtering tools are available to find the most interesting good deals for you.

Let’s say you want to find all iPhone apps turned free with at least 1,000 user ratings and a 4.5 star average in iTunes. This is what the inputs would look like:

As you can see, 4 apps meet the criteria today. Jetpack Joyride shows 5 stars under Average Rating but it’s iTunes average rating is 4.5 stars. You can see this by clicking on the icon or title to be taken to a page full of details.

There you have it. Discovering the best apps for yourself is easy as 1-2-3. So next time someone complains about how discovering apps is a big pain in the butt, just tell them about AppPicker and what you’ve learned today from this article.