Whether you're back at the office or still working from home, organizing family vacations or helping out a friend with a project, there's a good chance you'd benefit from using a productivity app. Heck, you're likely already using one. (We all use email apps, after all.)
But there are different types of productivity apps. Many of them. Also, it's not guaranteed that the default app on your smartphone, which you've been using all along, is the best one for you. From calendar apps to to-do-list apps, project management apps to note-taking apps, we’ve rounded up our favorite productivity apps for your home and workplace.
The Best Note-Taking Apps
Note-taking apps can be used to do everything from keeping a grocery list or jotting down random thoughts to doing something as robust as preparing an entire presentation. And since we have our smartphones on us wherever we go anyway, note-taking apps are just convenient. There are a lot of different note-taking apps out there, but they're far from all the same.
Evernote
Best note-taking app for power users
Evernote is the best note-taking app for power users because of its robust features and vast compatibility. It allows you to add almost any kind of file to your notes, including emails, PDFs, website links, written notes, audio clips and Slack conversations. If you're somebody with a lot of notes, there's a neat tagging feature to help you stay organized. And it doesn't matter what kind of device or which web browser you use — Evernote will work with it.
Notion
Best note-taking app for teams
Notion is way more collaborative than most other note-taking apps. In fact, it has similar features as many project management apps, like to Asana or Basecamp. Whether you need those collaborative features or not, you can still use Notion as note-taking app— and it's powerful. The only big drawback is that its variety of features can be a little intimidating for novices.LEARN MORE
Apple Notes
Best note-taking app for iPhone users
Notes it's great for anybody who uses all Apple devices — meaning iPhone, iPad and Mac — as it syncs seamlessly across all of them. It even works offline. The app lacks many of the organizational and task management features as some of the other options, but it's easy-to-use and still has some convenient features. It's also completely free.
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The Best Email Apps (That Aren't Gmail)
Gmail is the largest email service in the world. That said, it’s not necessarily best to use the Gmail app to access your email. Nor is it always best to use the email apps that come stock with your smartphone’s software, like Apple Mail. There are superior email apps available that can better align with your needs, whether you’re a Gmail user or not.
Newton Mail
Best email app for power users
Newton Mail is an email app designed for power users (as well as businesses). It's also a beloved email app with a loyal following; in fact, its users bought it and saved it termination back in May 2020. Today, its great organizational and time-saving features, along with its wide compatibility with many popular premium productivity apps, have kept its loyal userbase just as loyal as ever.
ProtonMail
Most privacy-focused email app
ProtonMail is an email app that's end-to-end encrypted, meaning nobody except you can access your data or emails — not even the government. It also allows you to do neat things, such set expiration times for messages or set a password for the specific email for non-ProtonMail users.
Microsoft Outlook
Best email app for businesses
Outlook has a rap for being the email app of choice for businesses — and it's true. It syncs brilliantly with Office 365, which a lot of business use, and its built-in calendar makes scheduling meetings and attaching important files super easy. That said, it's a good email app for really anyone, whether you have iPhone or Android, Gmail or Yahoo Mail.
The Best To-Do List Apps
A to-do list app can help you plan out your day by reminding you to knock out one task or chore at a time — no more procrastinating or forgetting to do something. There are many different to-do list apps out there, so it's important to find one that works for you.
Todoist
Best to-do list app for most people
Todoist is a great to-do list apps for knocking out your own tasks/chores. Its free version allows you to work on projects with up to five people — you can assign people tasks, send reminders if not completed on time, and even notes for commentary. It even has an offline mode in case you're working off the grid. It works across Mac, PC, iPhone and Android.
2Do
Best to-do list app for power users
2Do is a feature-packed to-do list app that works across Mac, PC, Android and iPhone. In addition to creating tasks and subtasks, you can also make projects and checklists, attach things like notes and images, and it has really great organizational and search tools, too. A premium subscription plan. allows you to integrate with cloud services, such as Dropbox or iCloud, too.
Google Tasks
Best to-do list app for Gmail users
Google Tasks is a pretty minimalist to-do list app, but it's the perfect app for people who are use Google's app ecosystem— such as Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Keep — because it integrates so well. It also works across PC or Mac, Android or iPhone.
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The Best Calendar Apps
A calendar app is a vital tool for staying organized, productive and on schedule. But you shouldn't just pick the default calendar app that comes on your smartphone (although it's likely a good choice) — you need to pick the calendar app that works best for you, which means the devices and software (including other productivity apps) that you use every day.
Fantastical
Best calendar app for power users
Fantastical is a powerful and wonderfully-designed calendar app that's optimized for the Mac. It's packed with intuitive controls and its intelligent AI, and it works well across all your other Apple devices. The app is free, but you'll have to pay a $5/ monthly fee for some more premium features, such as customizable task templates and integrations with conference calling apps like Zoom or Google Hangouts.
Google Calendar
Best calendar app for Gmail users
Google Calendar is the free app that's a great option the majority of Gmail users. It takes information from your emails, say if you have a meeting, or a hotel or flight reservation, and auto-populates them as events on your Google Calendar. It will send reminders for events, too. And the app is compatible with a most other productivity apps, such as Todoist and Evernote.
Apple Calendar
Best calendar app for most Apple users
Apple Calendar is the best option for most people who use all of Apple's devices and services. The app makes it super easy to create and manage appointments. The other cool thing is that it can sync with your other calendar apps, such as Google Calendar or Microsoft Exchange, which allows you to view other events you've created elsewhere.
The Best Habit-Tracking Apps
A habit-tracking app is designed to help you develop good habits and achieve your goals, which can range from exercising regularly to keeping in touch with family members. It can help break bad habits such as eating fast food or smoking, as well. There's a wide variety of habit-tracking apps out there, some with minimalist designs and some that are highly customizable. Pick the one that works best for you.
Streaks
Best habit-tracking app for iPhone users
Streaks is a great habit-tracking app for iPhone with two excellent features that set it apart. First, it integrates super well across all devices across Apple's ecosystem, including Mac and Apple Watch, and can be seamless integrated with Apple's Health app (if the habit can be tracked). And two, its robust charts and graphics give you a more detailed perspective of habit-tracking than most everything else out there.
Goalify
Best habit-tracking app for friends
Goalify is a more sophisticated habit-tracking app compared to other free options. It allows you to create goals for both positive and negative habits, and has features like dashboards and reminders that motivate you to stay on top of them. But it allows has more of a social element than other habit-tracking apps, which allows you to create goals with friends, check on each person's progress and even chat with them.
Habit-Bull
Best free habit-tracking app
Habit-Bull is an easy-to-use app that requires the user to manually create the positive goals to hit, or negative goals to break, and then be honest with themself as they log them. You can set daily, weekly or monthly goals of the number of times you workout, call family members, go out to dinner or even drink alcohol. It's compatible across macOS, iOS, Android and PC.
The Best Project Management Apps
Whether you're a small business or a group of friends working on a weekend project, a project management app is a great tool to help everybody stay connected and on the same page. There are a lot of different apps out there and they all do different things well, from sharing photos and files to creating projects and assigning tasks.
Slack
Best team chat app: Slack
If your teams aren’t communicating on Slack, you’re probably doing it wrong. Slack deserves all of the hype heaped upon it. It’s a beautifully built chat tool that allows teams to segment themselves by hashtag, easily search archived conversations and never miss a moment with customizable alerts and support for both mobile and desktop. It's free for small teams.
Asana
Best task management app for teams
Asana is one of the most popular productivity apps for teams working on larger projects. It combines all lines of communication into one place that everybody can see. You can create tasks for specific people, write notes or instructions for each task, and set deadlines. It also iOS or Android, PC or Mac. The best part is that Asana is free for teams of 15 people or less.
Dropbox
Best cloud storage app
Dropbox is a hugely popular cloud-storage service that's a great option for anybody who wants to back-up their important files, photos and documents from their smartphone or computer. It has a tight and seamless integration across Windows and macOS, and offers easy-to-use apps for Android and iOS. You get 2GB for free, and paid plans start at $10/month for 2TB.
The Best Scanner Apps
Thanks to smartphones, it's easier than ever to digitize your various documents — such as bills, receipts, newspaper articles and even photos — so that you can access them whenever you want. All you have to do is open an app, point your camera at it and — snap — it's saved in the cloud. Most scanner apps have built-in technologies that automatically cut, crop and (sometimes) color your scanned document so that it looks best.
Adobe Scan
Best scanner app for most people
Adobe Scan is one of the best scanner apps because of its simplicity and accuracy — it's also free. Adobe saves all these scans as PDFs, which might be a point of frustration for those who want to save as a JPEG so they can add to a Word document or PowerPoint presentation. Also, it saves all your scanned PDFs to its own cloud storage system, Adobe Document Cloud, and isn't the best if you use other cloud storage systems, like Google Drive or Dropbox. It's available on iOS and Android.
SwiftScan
Best scanner app for power users
If you're looking for a more powerful and feature-packed scanner app, SwiftScan is your best bet. It has a number of organization and search tools, and allows you to save scanned documents as PDFs or JPEGs, making them more easily shared; additionally it works with most cloud services, including as iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive. The downside is that it's pretty expensive (especially for iPhone users).
Stack
Best scanner app for Android
Stack is a new scanner app for Android owners who use Google Drive. It's lets you to digitize your various documents, saving them as PDFs and then automatically uploading to Google Drive. It has some fairly straightforward organization tools, making it really simple and easy to use. There's no iOS app at this time.
The Best Digital Wellness Apps
A digital wellness app is designed to help analyze your screen time across your various devices and ultimately help you change your habits. It allows you to set goals and limit your access from certain apps and websites throughout the day to help you stay more productive. Both iPhone and Androids have digital wellness features nowadays — you can learn more, here — but these apps are designed for those who want to take things a step further.
Space
Best overall digital wellness app
Space is an app that analyzes the amount of time you spend each day using your smartphone, and then creates a personalized digital behavior program to help you change your habits. It lets you set goals, establish limits and customize your program, letting you limit specific apps or specific contacts. It's available for both iOS and Android.
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Forest
Most creative digital wellness app
Forest is one of the simplest and most fun digital wellbeing apps. It has a simple concept: the more time you spend away from your mobile device, the bigger your digital forest will grow. It might not sound like much of an incentive, but it helps, and you get plenty of stats about your phone usage over time as well. Available on both iOS and Android.
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RescueTime
Best digital wellness app for computers
RescueTime is one of the best and longest-running time tracking apps out there. It's primarily meant for computer use — available on both Mac and Windows — and runs in the background, reporting on the apps and sites you’re using. It then presents the data in a useful, intuitive way. You can use the app to set yourself goals, log projects over time, analyze your productivity and block out specific distractions (from games to YouTube).
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The Best Budgeting Apps
You don’t need to be a genius to manage your money intelligently and invest it wisely. Thanks to a handful of apps, the black box that is money management is now slightly less opaque. These apps won’t make you Gordon Gekko, nor will they suddenly unlock your inner Soros, but they will help you to be smarter about your money and could even put an extra bit of cash in your pocket.
Mint
Best all-around money managing app
Mint is one of the best and well known — even before Ryan Reynolds — money management apps. It syncs across all your accounts (checking, savings, credit cards, etc.) and allows you track your spendings and investments, as well as set money spending limits. It's available on iPhone and Android. And it's free.
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YNAB
Best money managing app for future planning
YNAB — which stands for "You Need A Budget" – is a different type of money managing app than Mint. Instead of just allowing you to simply track your spending and budget yourself, it has more of an eye on the future rather than on the past. Whenever you get a paycheck, the app allows you to allocate the amount of money you want to save as well as set aside from various categories, like food, entertainment, education and more. It costs $15/month.
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PocketGuard
Best minimalist money managing app
PocketGuard is a money managing app that's designed to be dead simple. It syncs across all your various bank accounts, credit cards and loans, and then lets you set spending limits and goals. It's neat because of its simple design and ease of use, but PocketGuard is also unique because it lets you enter your information manually, say if you're sketched out at it automatically syncing across all your accounts.
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