Best Apps to Improve Every Aspect of Your Student Life

The student life is not an easy one, and the ever-expanding list of responsibilities, assignments, projects, lectures, essays, and tasks does not make it any easier.

Truth be told, students need a lot of help managing the various aspects of their lives in order to be as productive and as efficient as possible, while at the same time keeping their mental health intact. This is where apps come in, and the selection is massive. So much so that figuring out which apps are the right ones for the right jobs can be very time-consuming and tedious, adding unnecessary clutter to an already cluttered schedule.
 
With that in mind, we managed to put together a list of the top 7 most useful apps that students can use in order to make their lives easier.
 
Libre Office
Available on: PC, Mac, iOS, Android

An office suite is critical to student life from all points of view. Anything from homework, presentations, assignments, certain personal projects, even financial planning and basic accounting, will require the use of an office suite.
There are a lot of alternatives out there, some cheaper than others, some more advanced than others, but the one that stands out the most is the Libre Office Suite.

This is because it’s free, it comes with a complete selection of office programs and apps, and can also be used in conjunction with digital signatures and cloud storage solutions.

It gives the user the possibility to open text files, spreadsheets, presentations and base documents regardless of the file format, as well as save them in all the associated formats without losing functionality or data.
 
iTunes U
Available on: Mac, iOS

iTunes University, or iTunes U for short, is a digital library filled with courses, lectures, and presentations from a wide selection of top universities from all over the world.
 
This is particularly great for students that are looking for alternative takes on the subject, additional courses and study material. Some students were pleasantly surprised to find the courses and lectures from their own universities on the app.

The content is presented to the user as a mix of text, audio and video files, covering the whole curriculum that the user searched for, giving them access to all the information, as well as different sources, and the different versions from different universities.

Setapp
Available on: Mac

The Setapp suite is a collection of the highest quality and most efficient apps available on the app store, all bundled up into one neat package.

It contains apps that can deal with every single aspect of a student’s personal, financial, professional, and educational life. Everything from a calculator to a detailed planner, to research helpers, to financial management apps, and many more can be found in the Setapp suite.

While the app suite itself does cost $14.99/month, students get a special discount, dropping the price down to $7.50/month.

myHomework Student Planner
Available on: PC, Mac, iOS, Android

This app, while relatively simple, can be a real godsend for students.
It revolves around planning and scheduling, allowing students to keep track of their homework, while at the same time allowing them to create a balanced workflow which will allow them to meet the deadlines with as little stress as possible.
 
The app also allows the user to set up alarms and notifications, making it easier to switch tasks, as well as follow through with the daily plan.

It is free to use, and it even includes family sharing, allowing for up to 6 members of your family to share the same planning instance.

Sleep Cycle alarm clock
Available on: iOS, Android

While at first sight, this might look like a simple alarm clock app, it is actually a lot more than that.
 
It actually monitors the user's sleep patterns and cycles using the phone's microphone and accelerometer. When the app learns what your pattern and cycle are, it will choose the lightest state of sleep that it can detect in order to wake you user up.
 
This makes waking up overall easier and a lot more enjoyable for students, thus they are a lot more rested, a lot more relaxed, and a lot better coordinated throughout the day.
The app is free, easy to use and highly intuitive.

Todoist
Available on: PC, Mac, iOS, Android

This is a more accessible, and easy to use, spin-off of Evernote, but highly effective for keeping up with the student life.
 
This app is built around the idea of proper time and task management, allowing the user to easily make lists and memos, arrange them in a proper order, or under proper categories, and set scheduled reminders throughout the day.

Not only that, but it also allows the user to bookmark specific pages and insert them in lists, as well as allowing the user to connect it via plugins to email accounts and browsers.
Overall a great choice for students, especially the ones that study a heavily packed curriculum and are in need of help planning out their studies.

The premium subscription costs $28.99 per year, but students can enjoy this awesome app at half the price.

Google Drive
Available on: PC, Mac, iOS, Android

Cloud computing is a very important thing, and having the ability to access data whenever and wherever needed is something that can come quite in handy for a student.
Google Drive, in essence, offers that and a bit more.

First off, cloud storage space. You get 15GB for free, which is more than enough for documents, coursework, presentations, and spreadsheets. However, if more space is needed, the user can opt for an extra 100GB for $1.99/month, 1TB for $9.99/month, and 10+TB for $99.99/month.

Second, with Google Drive you also get access to Google Docs, which makes it easy to edit and create complex office documents, spreadsheets and presentations while on the road.
It is an invaluable tool for students that have to spend a lot of time traveling and in the field.

In Conclusion
There are a lot of different apps out there that are designed to make student life easier. We have selected the 7 most popular and commonly used ones, however, there are lots more that we have not mentioned.
We hope that this list will help you find the apps that you need in order to make your student life easier.
Do you have other favorite apps that you want to share with us? Let us know about the apps that you found to be useful and how they impact your day-to-day life.

Authors Bio: Eugene Kalnyk is a former ESL teacher. Now, he’s on the team behind Setapp, the first Mac app subscription service which gives students access to hand-picked apps for every job on their Macs. He’s passionate about Productivity, Education, and petting his cat first thing in the morning. He'll be happy to meet you on Twitter.