20 Apps and Digital Tools For Students

Being a student is an exciting journey filled with chances for growth. However, it can come with its fair share of challenges in trying to manage all of the responsibilities. A large component of being successful as you study is managing your time well by learning to prioritize. But you don’t have to do this all on your own; there are many amazing digital tools and apps for college students that can help you manage your workload and schedule more easily and efficiently.

Finding the Right Apps

While some students may still prefer a traditional planner, the majority of students now use their phones to manage their workload by using calendars and a variety of other useful apps. After all, having everything available at your fingertips makes it easier to keep up with the demands of both school and life. To find the best digital tools for you, start by identifying the areas that you need the most support in—whether it’s planning, organizing notes, or studying. From there, you can seek out the apps specifically designed to help you in those areas.

Before downloading an app or digital tool, check the following:

• Number of Downloads: A higher number of downloads can tell you whether or not it’s popular and trusted.
• Reviews: Read user reviews to see what people like and don’t like about the app.
• Cost: Look at whether the app is free, has a one-time payment, or requires a subscription.

20 Useful Apps and Digital Tools

We’ve rounded up some of the top apps and digital tools that are highly rated among students and have sorted them into the following categories:

• Productivity and Planning Apps
• Research Apps
• Organization and Storage Apps
• Security Apps
• Learning Apps
• Note-Taking Apps
• Writing and Grammar Apps

Productivity and Planning Apps

1. ISTUDIEZ PRO

Cost: $2.99 mobile; $9.99 desktop

School is a busy time for everyone with all of the lectures, assignments, tests, clubs, meetings, and a seemingly never-ending list of other time-consuming tasks. Using apps like iStudiez Pro can help you keep track of all your classes and corresponding assignments, as well as social engagements. It also sends reminder notifications for appointments and assignment due dates. It even keeps track of your Professors’ contact information, which could come in handy if you’re in a bind.

Special Features:

• Easy class scheduling
• Assignment tracking
• Exam management
• Calendar integration
• Custom notifications
• Grade monitoring

2. GOOGLE CALENDAR

Cost: Free

Schedule events, create reminders, share availability, and more using your Google Calendar. This can be a great tool to manage your school and personal life, especially if your school is already Google-based.

Special Features:

• Easily create events
• Manage multiple calendars (e.g., personal, work, school) and color-code them for easy viewing
• Share your calendar with friends, family, roommates, or classmates
• Schedule repeating events
• View your calendar by day, week, month, or agenda format to suit your planning style

3. SCANNER PRO

Cost: Free

The endless amount of papers that you get—course outlines, reading lists, assignment descriptions, deadlines, etc.—can become cluttered rather quickly. To make sure you don’t lose any important handouts, use Scanner Pro. All you have to do is take a picture of a hard document and it will be converted to a PDF instantly; then save to a cloud storage service of your choosing. This will give you peace of mind that you won’t lose any important documents. It also lightens your load by allowing you to go paperless.

Special Features:

• Scan PDFs, documents, IDs
• Edit and annotate documents
• Convert scans to text
• Share, email, and upload your scans anywhere with iCloud compatibility

Research Apps

4. GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Cost: Free

When it comes to writing essays or completing research projects, Google Scholar is an excellent tool for students. When used correctly, it can turn researching and looking for sources into easy tasks.

Special Features:

• Access to scholarly articles, theses, books, conference papers, patents, and court opinions
• Easily find citation information
• Advanced search options for refined results
• Export citation information for papers

5. EASYBIB

Cost: Free; premium features available with paid plans

No essay or research paper/project is complete without a bibliography. Of course, depending on your area of discipline, the bibliography format will vary. If you are using MLA, APA, or Chicago/Turabian citation styles, EasyBib is a great tool—it quickly and accurately generates your works cited page.

Special Features:

• Automatic citation generation
• Plagiarism checker
• Integration with Google Docs
• User-friendly design and process
• Mobile accessibility

6. SCRIBD

Cost: $11.99/month

Research almost always involves the need for a library; but what if you can’t find what you need at your school library or you don’t feel like leaving the house? Scribd is your solution! It is essentially the biggest online library—we are talking over 195 million documents and counting. It is frankly a tool that no student should live without.

Special Features:

• Refine according to your research topic or study interests
• Listen to a wide selection of audiobooks
• Ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts, magazines, academic papers, legal documents, manuals, and more
• Highlight passages, add notes, and bookmark pages for easy reference and studying

7. CLIFFS NOTES

Cost: $36/year or $9/month

Literature students will be amiss if they don’t consult Cliffs Notes at least once or twice. It’s not a good idea to rely on this alone instead of reading the material. But when you have five courses and a novel a week to read for each, Cliffs Notes can be a really good study aid to refresh on characters, plot, and themes.

Special Features:

• Comprehensive study guides for a large selection of literature
• Offers test preparation with practice questions
• Digital flashcards for quick review and memorization

Organization and Storage Apps

8. MICROSOFT ONEDRIVE

Cost: Free

If you use Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint frequently, then having a Microsoft OneDrive will allow you to seamlessly integrate your files. OneDrive backs up your photos and files across all devices and syncs with Outlook mail and calendar. The free version includes 5GB of storage, with options to upgrade to 1TB for just $6.99 a month.

Special Features:

• Seamless integration with Microsoft365 (Word, Powerpoint, Excel)
• Share files and folders using links
• Collaborate in real-time on documents
• Submit assignments to professors with easy sharing

9. DROPBOX

Cost: Free; $9.99 for Dropbox Plus

Say goodbye to carrying around an external hard drive or running out of computer storage. With Dropbox, you can store all your documents, photos, and videos in one place and access them across multiple devices. Just simply drag and drop files right to your Dropbox and rest easy knowing they’re safe and ready whenever you need them!

Special Features:

• File storage and backup
• Easily share files and folders using links
• Access and edit files offline
• Advanced security options available

10. GOOGLE DRIVE

Cost: Free

When you are working on important assignments, like term papers, having them easily accessible and safely stored is key. Google Drive is an online platform that allows you to store and access everything you need in one place, from spreadsheets and word documents to slide shows. It’s user-friendly so you can organize and access all your files seamlessly.

Special Features:

• Share files and folders while controlling permissions for viewing, commenting, and editing
• Seamlessly integrates with Google Workspace (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Meet)
• Monitor activity on all documents to track changes and contributions
• Access previous versions of files and restore deleted ones

Security Apps

11. LASTPASS

Cost: Free

Because you will have a login for your student portal, digital blackboards for each course, the library, your student email, and any clubs or societies that you are involved in, you can end up with a lot of accounts and subsequently, a lot of passwords. Many of these accounts also handle incredibly important and sensitive information, so creating strong and secure passwords is of utmost importance.

Using a tool like LastPass can help you efficiently create secure passwords for each account, while also storing them for personal easy access. It’s important to create different passwords and security questions/answers for each account, but we all know the struggle to remember all of those. This little tool will help you save time and give you peace of mind.

Special Features:

• Safely store and manage all your passwords in one secure place
• Autofill passwords on websites and apps
• Evaluate the strength of your passwords and get strong suggestions

12. BITWARDEN

Cost: Free; $10/year

From online shopping and takeout orders, to filling out job applications and working on assignments, so much of our personal information is online these days. Not to mention you have to create and remember so many passwords. With Bitwarden, you can store, manage, and protect your passwords, credit card details, and other sensitive information.

Special Features:

• Access your passwords on any device
• Generates unique passwords and stores them securely
• Includes data breach monitoring
• Features two-factor authentication
• Automatically fills in web forms with saved information

Learning Apps

13. ITUNES U

Cost: Free

iTunes U is a great portal for extended learning. It’s perfect for the overachiever who wants to learn a little bit more on a subject, or the easy-goer who needs to catch up before the exam. iTunes U is a portal offering lectures and course material from some of the best schools, so you’ll have access to exceptional content right at your fingertips.

Special Features:

• Access free courses, lectures, and educational materials from universities and institutions
• Keep all notes together in one place
• Play video or audio lectures while taking notes
• Integrates with iBooks and other apps

14. DUOLINGO

Cost: Free

Duolingo coins itself as “the free, fun, and effective way to learn a language!” Whether you want to learn French, Spanish, Italian, German, or Chinese, you can learn any of them with the little green owl. The best part? Just like they claim—it is actually fun to learn!

Special Features:

• Offers 35-plus languages
• Incorporates game-like learning
• Stay consistent with daily streaks
• Set notifications for practice reminders
• Experience no ads and unlimited mistakes through a paid subscription

Note-Taking Apps

15. EVERNOTE

Cost: Free; premium features available with paid plans.

Keep your notes and tasks all in one place with Evernote—journal, take meeting notes, create a planner, jot down class notes, scan in important files, or even take audio notes. Once you start taking notes with Evernote, you might just say goodbye to your traditional pen-and-paper journals.

Special Features:

• Sync notes across all devices
• Organize notes into notebooks and apply tags—making it easy to categorize, search, and retrieve information
• Offers pre-designed templates for different purposes
• Integrates with popular productivity tools like Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and Slack

16. MINDMEISTER

Cost: Free; premium features available with paid plans.

Want to visualize, collaborate, and manage your tasks with beautiful mind maps? MindMeister is a digital tool that allows you to mind map by yourself or with your team to plan projects, brainstorm, or manage meetings. The interface is easy and provides an infinite canvas to let your creativity flow!

Special Features:

• Create visually organized mind maps with a drag-and-drop interface
• Multiple users can work on the same mind map simultaneously
• Use various templates for different purposes
• Turn your mind map into presentations

Writing and Grammar Apps

17. GRAMMARLY

Cost: Free; $12/month for Pro Plan

You know when you just can’t get that sentence structured right, or you need help with spelling? That’s what Grammarly is for! This digital tool works across all platforms to help you with your writing—and in real time so you can work faster.

Special Features:

• Works across 550,000+ apps and websites
• Offers real-time grammar and spell check
• Suggests different words to enhance your writing
• Provides recommendations to make your writing clearer and more concise

18. CHATGPT

Cost: Free, $20/month with Plus

ChatGPT is an AI software system that can be a great tool for ideation and even sentence structure help. However, it is important to understand that this should only be used as a tool to spark inspiration and creativity, not to do your work for you. Many colleges and universities consider AI-generated work to be plagiarism.

Special Features:

• Helps generate ideas for essays, articles, and creative writing
• Provides suggestions for correcting grammar and spelling mistakes
• Improves sentence structure for better readability

19. HEMINGWAY EDITOR

Cost: Free; premium features available with paid plans

Want quick and easy help with proofreading? Hemingway Editor is an app that lets you paste what you’re working on and makes editing easy. Hemingway will give your writing a readability score which shows how easy your writing is to read. It highlights areas with a color code so you can make quick fixes. For example, yellow highlights indicate your sentence is hard to read, and red highlights mean the sentence is very hard to read.

Special Features:

• Matches your tone and word choice
• Gives insights and suggestions on your writing
• Uses different colored highlights to mark complex sentences, use of passive voice, and grammar issues
• Focuses on clarity and conciseness

20. POWER THESAURUS

Cost: Free

Sometimes we just can’t find the right word for what we are trying to say. Power Thesaurus can help with that! Not only is it easy to search for words, but all suggestions are from real users so you get more relevant and creative options to choose from.

Special Features:

• Provides synonyms, antonyms, definitions, and sentences
• Shows how words are commonly used in different contexts
• Filter words based on categories
• Provides crowd-sourced results

If you need help with your college workload, there’s probably an app for it! Whether you’re looking for an app to help with studying, organization, note-taking, research, writing and grammar, language learning, or time management, one of these apps is sure to come in handy. Don’t overthink it—just download it!

Speaking of helpful digital tools, did you know that College Raptor can help you find personalized college matches, estimate costs, check acceptance odds, and explore potential financial aid for schools across the U.S.—all for FREE? Get started today.