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Here’s what you’re looking for on the Apple App Store, when buying on your smartphone.

Not all tech gifts have to be pieces of hardware — it’s just as easy to gift software and streaming directly to someone’s email inbox.

Odds are, your friend or family member already has a smartphone. But if they are refusing to use a new app or streaming service, giving it as a gift might be just what that person needs to make the plunge.

It varies for the specific app stores, but we’ll break down a few ways to gift apps and streaming services to your family and friends.

You’ll find the option to gift a specific app on the main download page for the app on Apple’s App Store. It’s equivalent to the same steps as buying a normal app (though you’ll find the option at the bottom of the page on your smartphone), and then you plug in an email address for the recipient.

(Update: Apple today added gifting apps back to the iOS 6 experience, but there are also two new parts to it: you can gift the app for a future date, and have the app delivered on that future date. You’re charged when you purchase it. There are themes you can add to the email for your recipient.)

If you can’t decide which app to gift, you can always opt to purchase an iTunes gift card, which the recipient can use to purchase any number of apps (or movies, or music tracks) on the App Store. The same is true for Google Play, Google’s app store for its Android devices, works much in the same way.

Amazon also has a separate App ecosystem from Google and Apple, which means if your giftee has a Kindle Fire or Kindle, you’ll have to buy an Amazon Kindle gift card. Again, this works for apps or content for the Kindle Fire.

If you want to gift an electronic book for a device like a Kindle, you can do so much in the same way you purchase something through Amazon. Instead of purchasing outright at the product page, there is a button to gift the book. You send the book directly to an email address, which lets the recipient download it to his or her ebook reader.

There are already a number of streaming applications that offer subscriptions you can buy as gifts. Here are a few that are worth checking out:

Spotify is arguably the go-to service for online music streaming. You can purchase subscriptions for several months at a time, and doing so unlocks full access to the mobile application. Another benefit of Spotify: users can save the songs in their playlists to devices so they can listen to the songs while offline or out of service. A gifted Spotify subscription will cost around $10 per month.

Alternatively, you can purchase a subscription to Pandora, which is more of a radio-like experience that will let the recipient listen to music without advertisements. Pandora is better for discovering new music than Spotify, which relies on having a massive music catalog users can search for. A year’s subscription will cost around $36.

For the film or television buff, you can purchase months of subscription for about $8 each to Netflix, which gives the recipient access to hundreds or thousands of movies and shows. Netflix subscribers can also stream content from multiple devices, such as an Xbox 360. Alternatively, Hulu also has a large amount of streaming premium content that users can access from multiple devices for about $8 per month.


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