35 Top Apps For College Students To Boost Productivity

There are mobile apps for just about everything these days, and it would be hard to find a student who doesn’t use them. While most will have their favorite apps, there are some apps that every student should seriously consider using.

And not just for entertainment purposes either. Many students use mobile apps to help them study, and Android and Apple provide hundreds of helpful apps that help improve the study process.

Todoist

Todoist is one of the top task management tools that take a detailed to-do list and turns it into something you can easily manage.

With Todoist at your fingertips, you can easily create tasks, organize them, set your deadlines, change them when needed, prioritize them, set goals, and track your progress.

Microsoft To-Do

Microsoft To-Do is an excellent task management app with plenty of features for all users, individuals, or teams.

The app is simple to use; create your to-do lists, group them into folders for easy access, and set your deadlines. You can also assign tasks to specific people, add notes, and get reminders.

Again, it is cross-platform, and while you can use it completely free, you have the option of subscribing for a few extra features.

Trello

Trello is a well-known name in productivity circles and one of the most accessible team apps. Based on the Kanban board, the apps allow tasks to be added and organized in three statuses – To-Do, Going, and Done.

Tasks may be grouped on boards and cards and assigned to specific team members or entire groups. Plus, you get an instant messaging feature that helps you keep in touch with your team to discuss the tasks.

Spark

Does your email inbox drag you down?

Spark is an email client that turns your inbox into a real asset. It categorizes every email that comes in, letting you see at a glance which ones are important and which can be left until later. You can sleep emails, assign some to other team members, and share draft emails.

Chat with your team, set reminders, and much more. You can even have several people working on one email simultaneously! Spark works on Mac, iOS, and Android.

Habitica

Who says that to-do lists and planning have to be boring?

With Habitica, you can teach yourself to improve your habits and productivity in a game-like environment.

Habitica turns the to-do list experience into a fun activity, starting by getting you to create an avatar, which ten gets bonuses and points for everything you compete on your to-do list.

More points equal a more muscular avatar, which helps unlock in-game rewards and features.

You can also schedule habits into good ones to develop and bad ones to avoid, and, as a bit of fun, you can use your avatar to battle monsters with other Habitica users.

Forest

Forest is a mobile app for iOS and Android, designed to help you minimize how much time you spend on your mobile device, and it innovatively does this.

When you come off your device, you plant a digital tree.

The longer you stay away from your device, the bigger the tree grows; stay away long enough, and you could even develop a forest! And you can earn virtual coins, earn enough, and produce real trees via the app.

So, not only are you improving your productivity and using your device less, but you also get to help improve the world.

Clockify

Clockify is time-tracking software at its best. 

Not only do you have the satisfaction of showing customers exactly how much time you worked for them, but you also improve productivity and, if you are a team leader, you can see what your team members are doing.

You can monitor where time is being lost unnecessarily, get reports you share with others, add reminders, alerts, and more. And if you use it on several devices, it is easy to sync the data between them.

Pocket

Pocket is one of the simplest productivity apps that is nothing more than a bookmarking tool. However simple, it makes a massive difference to your work.

Simply, it lets you save web pages you want to read for later. That is all it does, but if you come across interesting stuff in your work course but don’t have time to read it now, pocket it for later and move on with your work.

Loop – Habit tracker

Loop only works on Android and is something very different. Instead of trying to break bad habits that stop you from being productive.

Loop helps you to focus on spending more time on better practices. Those habits could be getting your admin up to date, dealing with your emails, or even spending time with your family outside of work.

The app lets you set targets for what you want to do, schedule your goals, get a ‘habit score,’ and set reminders. You even get to track your habits with statistics and graphs.

Slack

Slack is one of the popular messaging platforms for teams and is fantastic when you have remote workers.

You can organize channels to join and leave as needed, ensuring people only receive the messages they need. Members can also talk in separate threads outside of the leading messaging topics.

With Slack, you can easily share files and media, make voice and video calls, and share screens for easier collaboration. The free version of Slack is ideal for small teams to collaborate and improve productivity.

There are tons of productivity, messaging, and habit-tracking apps, but many require you to fork out a small fortune every month.

You can easily use these ten apps for free, although some give you the option of paying for premium service if you want to. Give these a go today; one of them may be the app you’ve been looking for.

iTunes U

If you use an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, iTunes U is accessible to you very quickly. The app gives you quick and easy access to tons of educational courses from all the best universities, and it’s all free. So if you dreamed of going to Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, or MIT, download this app today and get free access to all these fantastic courses on all different subjects.

Mint.com

Mint is one of the best money management apps available.

Most students have money problems at one time or another, and even if they manage to save money, it doesn’t take long to spend it. With Mint.com, you can monitor your money and spending and set a budget.

The app will show you at a glance where your money goes, helping you to cut back, be more responsible, and, hopefully, save a bit. As well as a mobile app, you can also take advantage of a web app.

Any.do

Any.do is used by millions worldwide as a kind of to-do list app, helping them organize their tasks. If you need to-do lists, if you need to sync your tasks with other devices for easier accessibility, or need to add new items to your list, this is the app for you.

Features include changing task priority, marking tasks as finished, or, if you want to remove everything from your list, shaking your device. The app has a home-screen widget for easy access. You can download apps like these and more from the AltStore AppStore for iPhone.

JumpCut

A macOS clipboard manager, JumpCut is an app that helps you access every text you copied and posted previously.

Most students frequently use the copy and paste buttons when writing their essays, and the application can save a great deal of time when you want to re-use something you copied and pasted before.

Cliff’s Notes

Cliff’s Notes is the ideal app for students studying literature and producing papers on how they have read.

This app provides all the information you need about the characters in the book, the theme or plot, and a summary of each book. You can also get an audio version of the app to listen to whenever you want to prepare for your tests.

Scribd

Scribd is, without any doubt, the most extensive online library in the world.

While it does require a subscription, new users get a free trial and access to millions of books and documents to help with their studies. This data is shared worldwide, and you can quickly sort them by topic, making it easier to find what you want.

Dropbox

With Dropbox, you no longer need to worry about losing your notes or coursework. You can upload your files, videos, photos, and documents to the cloud and access them from wherever you want to online—left your phone at home?

Simply log on to Dropbox on any computer, and your documents are right there.  All you need is a connection to the internet, and you can even share your files with others with a Dropbox account.

Chegg

Before a new semester starts, every student knows they’ve got many books to buy to get through their studies.

Don’t be too quick to spend all your cash, though. With a free application called Chegg, you can rent many of those textbooks, save yourself money and avoid having piles of unneeded books lying around after.

Please search for the text you want and order it. If you already have tons of books you no longer need, you can rent them to other students via the app too.

Clear

How many different to-do lists do you need to write? One for your exams, one for your essays, another for your social life.

With Clear, you can synchronize all your to-do lists so you can access them from wherever you are, no matter what device you are using, and all you need is access to the internet.

Mathway

There is nothing more challenging for some people than math, be it tests or homework, and sometimes working out the correct answer is not easy.

With a mobile app called Mathway, you can search for any math, geometry, or algebra solution just by inputting your task into the app and seeing if the answer you came up with matches what the app says.

Feed.ly

There’s nothing college students want more than to know everything that is going on but deadlines, essays, exams, and even part-time jobs get in the way of doing that.

The Feed.ly app is an RSS aggregator, bringing all your news together in one simple feed. Indicate what information you want and get a notification whenever something appears.

RealCalc Scientific Calculator

RealCalc Scientific Calculator app’s name is self-explanatory and is ideal for math students looking to solve equations efficiently and quickly. Now, if you leave your calculator behind, you always have the help you need to hand.

Venmo

Venmo is free to use and links your mobile device to your bank account. You can collect money owed to you, share payments with your friends, pay bills, pay back what you owe, and much more. This makes paying the money you owe back easier without handling cash.

EasyBib

Most students would probably agree that the most challenging part of writing an essay is doing the bibliography and citations.

Not only do you have to create the list, but you also have to do it in APA or MLA format. With EasyBib, you input the book’s title, and the citation is produced for you; all you do is copy it to your bibliography.

The Oxford Dictionary

One of the best apps for those who need to know what words mean quickly, the Oxford Dictionary app is free to use.

It lists all the words you expect to find in a dictionary, plus some rare words too, and it gives you a detailed definition. You can also get both US and UK English variations of words, audio pronunciations, and much more.

Snap2PDF

How cool would it be if you could convert any file you wanted into a PDF instantly? Well, Snap2PDF does just that. It’s easy to use; take a photo of what you want to be converted and use the app to convert it into a PDF with a single click; it’s that simple.

Studious

Studious is a helpful app that reminds you of upcoming deadlines, tests, lecture times, and even lecture subjects. All you have to do is input the information into the app, which will send you the reminders, so you don’t miss anything.

Viber

Viber is an excellent app for those studying far from home who often can’t get back to their friends and family. You can talk to people for free, share your news, videos, and photos, and never lose contact with anyone again.

Google Drive

Lots of students work with Google docs – and a lot of them. Therefore, it makes sense to have instant access to all your docs from any device and location. You can do that with the Google Drive mobile app and an internet connection.

Dictionary.com

Another dictionary app is the perfect one for those who read lots of books on lots of subjects with a high probability of coming across unusual words.

Dictionary.com will help you find definitions for comments you don’t know and also show you what words the people around you are looking for.

Duolingo

If you are studying foreign languages, Duolingo is the perfect app to help you learn the words you don’t know, prepare for tests and generally improve your knowledge of a language with lots of tasks to complete. It is ee to download and works on both iOS and Android devices.

TED

Most people have heard of TED talks, and this app contains conferences worldwide in the highest quality videos. You can listen to educators, business experts, music legends, computer geniuses, and many more on your mobile device.

SelfControl

We all know how easy it is to become distracted from what we are doing, and students are no exception. They look at social media, check out photos of their friends, tell the world how they feel when they are in a lecture, and much more.

The SelfControl app prevents specific websites from distracting you for a long time, allowing you to focus on precisely what you need.  When your lecture or essay is done, you can freely take a break and go back to your web browsing.

Lemon Wallet

How often have you dropped your wallet or left it somewhere on campus? Never again do you need to worry about losing your wallet on campus again.

With Lemon Wallet, you have a convenient mobile wallet and instant access to protection against identity theft.

YNAB – You Need a Budget

The name says it all; YNAB is an app that helps you build a budget and stay with it to get you out of debt. It tells you your financial situation, helps you make the right decisions in your purchases, and helps you become smarter about money. The app does cost $60 to buy, but you do get a 34-day free trial first.

These are some of the most excellent must-have apps for all students, making life much easier. Give them a shot; some are free, some require subscriptions, but they are worth a look.