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12 Best Productivity Apps for Students to Stay Focused [2022]
There’s no doubt that students today face more distractions than ever before. With social media, Netflix, and games just a click away, it’s no wonder that it’s hard to stay focused on schoolwork.
Do you often start studying but then spend a few minutes reading on social media? These best productivity apps for students will help you complete your plans or block out all distractions.
Image: Matt Ragland on Unsplash
Best Productivity Apps for Students
Students today have access to a wide range of productivity apps, regardless of which device they use – the availability of these tools has increased dramatically in recent years.
We have selected some of the best productivity apps for students that we think they’ll enjoy exploring, optimizing for studying, and even taking a break from. Installing these productivity applications can make student life easier.
Best Time-management Apps for Students
Even if you’ve never used time management tools, you should set your alarm clock to wake you up in the morning. The alarm clock still strives to inform you of everything you need to do, so the goal remains essentially the same.
For various reasons, students need to learn how to manage their time well. These time management apps are best for increasing productivity. They help students plan their academic schedules, remind them when exams and final papers are due, and manage various tasks. There are several time management apps available on the internet.
Here are some of the best productivity apps for time management to help students on their way to more effective studies.
1. Google Calendar
Although there are many calendar apps, Google Calendar is the best scheduling app. It is by far one of the best productivity apps for students. You can set reminders, assign colors to your activities and events, and it automatically adds things from other apps to your calendar. As a student, it can be a challenge to remember a lot of information.
To help you plan more efficiently, Google has created a whole suite of helpful analytics, organization, and time management tools. Your calendar is accessible from any online browser at any time. However, if you are on the go, you can check your class calendar using Google Calendar app on your smartphone. With their iOS or Android app, you can easily browse and modify your class schedule and lessons.
Availability: Web, Windows, iOS, Android, macOS
Price: Free
2. Any.do
One of the best productivity apps for students who want to balance their obligations to family, friends, and studies is Any.do. This unified app allows users to manage their to-do lists, reminders, and other tasks. Students can also use Any.do to track their progress on tricky tasks.
Any.do users also have the ability to sync their devices. The app’s premium edition offers various sophisticated features, including color coding of tasks, recurring reminders, and configurable themes.
Availability: Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Web
Price: Free (Basic); $5.99 per month, $26.94 per six months, or $35.88 per year (Premium)
3. Trello
Trello is a well-known program that allows you to organize projects and to-do lists in visual boards. Trello is a robust tool with flexible features that lets you organize many facets of your life, including your personal and professional spheres. Besides, it offers multiple integrations with other services, including GitHub and Evernote, and it has collaborative tools that let you work with others on a larger group project.
Besides, you can personalize it alone or with other students. Organizing projects and tasks, collaboration, communication, and coordination are all possible with Trello. Trello is great for several professional, academic, and personal tasks, such as task management, creating bulletin boards at school, or planning and organizing the next family vacation. With this time management program, you can create different lists for different tasks and monitor task completion status. This program makes collaboration easy and pleasant, which makes learning even more enjoyable.
Availability: iOS, Android, Web
Price: starts at $17.50 per user per month
Best Note-Taking Apps for Students
Making notes is a very important part of student life. Some people go to great lengths to organize their notebooks with specific categories, subheadings, and bullet points. Others, of which I am one, prefer to take their notes wherever they can. Apps for note-taking, another set of the best productivity apps for studying, are available to meet all your particular quirks and note-taking needs, whether you prefer text-only notes or extensive scrapbooks.
1. Microsoft OneNote
Microsoft OneNote is one of the best, feature-rich, and free productivity apps for college students. It is Microsoft’s answer to Evernote, the next software on the list, but it is a free app and doesn’t require a monthly subscription unlike Evernote or Notion.
When it comes to taking notes, OneNote is remarkably flexible. Each notebook is set up like a ring binder, and each section has a page. Moreover, each page is a blank canvas where you can add any kind of remark. This means you can drag and drop an image into the document, click anywhere on the screen to write text comments next to the image, and draw mustaches on every person in the picture if your computer supports a pen.
It seems like a solution that’s more for students and others who need to take lengthy, discursive notes about anything rather than those looking for a digital notepad to collect short notes and disjointed thoughts.
Availability: iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Web
Price: Free for up to 5GB of notes; $1.99/month for 100GB.
2. Evernote
Evernote is a no-brainer when it comes to the best productivity apps for students to take notes. Therefore, its inclusion in this list should come as no surprise. Evernote is among the most robust programs on the market and can store notes in virtually any format you want. Text notes, audio snippets, photos, PDF files, scanned handwritten pages, Slack chats, emails, web pages, and anything else you can think of can be added. Evernote is fantastic because it allows you to store everything in one safe place (even in the free version).
But Evernote is more than just a trash can. It makes it easy for you to sort and organize your notes. Hence we say it’s even better than traditional options like Google Docs and Microsoft Word.
Availability: Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Web
Price: Free (20-day trial); $7.99/month for Premium
3. Notion
With Notion, collaborating on note-taking is easy. With the help of this special application, you can organize your tasks from different angles, arrange your tasks in a clean, uncluttered workspace, and create tables and databases to stay on top of things.
Notion offers real-time collaboration and a large feature set. Teams can collaborate, leave comments, assign tasks, and create reminders with this tool. This elegant and stylish app for taking notes combines standard business programs into one. You can annotate/save web articles and PDFs inside Notion, make to-do lists, scan physical documents, and retrieve text from images.
We have earlier covered some of the best Notion templates for Students that help you manage your resources and organize your life. Notion is indeed one of the best productivity apps for students.
Availability: iOS, Windows, Mac, Android, Web
Price: Free
Best Motivation Apps for Students
Read on if you’re one of those who always postpone completing their tasks until tomorrow. Avoid being idle and complete tasks quickly, so you don’t have to worry about them later. Consider it an advantage to get your work done quickly; afterward, you can go out and enjoy yourself with your friends. It’s time to get motivated. Take a look at these must-have apps for students that will help you stay focused and motivated while studying.
1. Forest
Forest is one of the best student productivity apps, especially for staying focused. It provides the user with a small tree that grows over time when you are not using your phone. Your tree starts to wither away when you glance at Facebook or browse your Instagram page. If people have a good reason to use their phones, they can safelist websites to prevent their trees from dying. Best of all, the app works with the group Trees for the Future to plant trees in response to user engagement. Forest is good for the environment and can help you stop being addicted to your phone.
Availability: Android, iOS
Price: Free for Android; $1.99 for iOS
2. Noisli
Noisli is another great productivity app for students to help them stay focused. Your concentration and productivity will increase significantly if you listen to relaxing sounds while working or studying, and numerous apps promise to provide just that.
However, Noisli is one of the best options if you want a complete system that produces soothing melodies. You can mix and match 28 high-quality sounds from Noisli. Moreover, you can change the volume of each ringtone and mix and match different ringtones.
Noisli offers more than just access to soothing sounds. You’ll be able to use oscillation to concentrate while amplifying specific sounds, access playlists specifically chosen for different moods and environments, set timers, and much more. There’s even a simple text editor that supports Markdown syntax. Although you can not do anything with it, you can pay $10 monthly to access all of Noisli’s features (for annual subscriptions).
Availability: iOS, Android, Chrome (web)
Price: Free; $10 per month (for annual subscriptions).
3. SelfControl
Next on the list of best productivity apps for students is SelfControl. Do you scroll through your social media feed first when you sit down to work? If so, you could be said to lack self-control. An affordable iOS app aptly named Self Control allows users to block unproductive apps and just about anything on the Internet. You can temporarily ban access to certain websites, certain apps, services, and even mail servers.
SelfControl is really easy to use. Users set a time limit and add websites to their block list. Until the time limit expires, SelfControl restricts access to certain websites. The program won’t let you access those websites until then, so you can focus on your work. Self Control is unfortunately only available for iOS.
Availability: iOS and Mac
Price: Free
Best To-do list Apps for Students
You’re responsible for managing your time in college, so keeping track of your calendar and other commitments are important. Try these To-do list productivity apps for students if you’ve never liked carrying around a physical schedule.
1. Todoist
When creating to-do lists, Todoist is the icing on the cake. Todoist is another one of the best productivity apps for students. This software uses a number of task management tools to combine simplicity and efficiency. Create reminders, set multiple priorities for your tasks, and create different to-do lists for different projects. Even set a one-time or recurring time for your task automatically using Todoist’s speech recognition. You can set a reminder for “do laundry” every Monday at 9 am by typing “do laundry Mondays at 9 am”. That’s pure power!
Availability: iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, multiple browser extensions
Price: Free for Starter Plan
2. Microsoft To Do
All the Microsoft 365 apps are available to you for free. With Microsoft To-Do working on all your devices, you can start each day with a clear overview of what you need to do. This is another one of the best productivity apps for students.
Microsoft To-Do is another of the best productivity apps for students that can help them get any activity done because, as a student, you have to juggle homework, clubs, errands, and daily tasks. You can add subtasks under each step if a task requires more than one! Enjoy the feeling of accomplishment after you get it done.
Availability: iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, web
Price: Free
3. Clickup
ClickUp is one of the best productivity apps for students, bringing everything under one project-oriented umbrella for the power users among you. Let’s say you’re looking for a single place to do everything you’d classify as “productive,” as opposed to a Subway sandwich overflowing with all the ingredients. In this case, the result works exceptionally well. You can send and receive emails directly from the app and also have access to task lists, documents, wikis, spreadsheets, event tracking, and project management tools. You can keep track of the time you spend on various tasks and goals. You can also take screenshots and record your screen.
Availability: Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, Windows, Web
Price: Free (limited to 100MB of storage)
The bottom line
So now you have a list of the best productivity apps for students to get started with crucial studying. Unfortunately, since some of these apps work on all platforms, you have no more excuses! In all seriousness, the time you spend in college is really important, so you must do everything in your power to stay focused and complete the assignments.
FAQs on Best Student Productivity Apps
Notion is a very useful app for students, and it works across platforms including Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. There are several Notion templates handmade for students which enable them to shoot up their productivity and manage their resources at their fingertips.
One way to improve productivity is to create a daily or weekly schedule. This can help students plan their time and ensure that they are using their time wisely. Another way to improve productivity is to set goals. Having specific goals can help students stay focused and on track. Finally, taking breaks can actually help students be more productive. Taking breaks can help students avoid burnout and stay fresh.
Any.do can be a great study planner app as it makes it a breeze to organize your school and personal work. You can sort tasks as per priority, make the best daily plan, and stay on top of everything at school.
There are a few things you can do to be productive at home while studying.
- First, try to create a schedule and stick to it. This will help you to focus on your studies and avoid getting distracted.
- Second, make sure to take breaks and allow yourself time to relax. This will help you to stay motivated and avoid burnout.
- Finally, try to create a positive study environment for yourself. This can include things like setting up a dedicated study space, having healthy snacks on hand, and listening to calm music.
Let us know your favorites among the best productivity apps for college students in the comments below!