| Name of Application | Description | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Mind Mapping Applications | ||
| MindNode-Mind Map | Makes brainstorming and organizing ideas easier. It has an incredibly simple interface that closely resembles mind-mapping programs for PC or Mac. | FREE or $2.49/month or $19.99/year |
| SimpleMind | One of the highest-rated mind mapping applications. It has intuitive design and functionality, allowing users to gather their thoughts with precision and ease. The paid version is more polished and allows users to email the maps they make. | Free or $10.99 |
| Guided Mind | Relax and get guided through meditations on a variety of topics dealing with the stresses and challenges of day-to-day life. | Free & $0.99+ |
| Coggle.It | A website where you can take notes, brainstorm, create and share mind maps | Free and monthly memberships |
| Note Taking Applications | ||
| Notability | Taking notes with a stylus is starting to make sense. A couple of things that set apps like Notability apart are that users can write more freely as opposed to constantly worrying about spacing and can upload PDFs that can be highlighted as well as commented upon. | Free & $12.99/year |
| GoodNotes 5 | Another fantastic note-taking app that’s essentially Notability with a different interface. | Free & $.99+ |
| Evernote | A one-stop shop to collect notes, files, web clippings, and images with the ability to access them on virtually any device. Collect and find your information easily. It’s a great tool for researching, planning events and everyday organizational use. Collaborate with others on projects using the sharing features. | Free & $3.99+ |
| Sound Note | Type or write out your notes while the audio recording is synced to each word or pen stroke. Tap on the word and then the play button to playback what was being said at that moment in the audio recording. Share your audio recording and notes via email, Dropbox, or transfer directly to your computer. | $4.99 |
| AudioNote | Synchronize your notes with the audio recording of your lecture and take hand-written notesImport lecture slides as the background to your notes. Compatible with Apple/Android O.S. | $12.99 |
| Microsoft One Note | Take all your notes by typing, writing with a touchscreen, importing pictures, videos, web links and other resources. Divide up your classes and work by notebook, section, and pages. Using OneDrive online, share your OneNote document for others to work on and interact with and search your notes for the ability to easily find what you need. | Free (with USC) or $6.99/month or 69.99/year |
| NotesPlus | Very much like the prior two apps. The major difference is that NotesPlus offers users far more options for customization, and allows users to browse the web without having to close the application. | $9.99 |
| Note-Bytes | Turn your notes into podcasts you can listen to! | Free |
| Scheduling and Organization Applications | ||
| IStudiez Pro | User-friendly organizational app that helps keep track of a student’s courses, readings, homework assignments, grades, and overall schedule. Paid version is more refined and user-friendly. | Free & $0.99+ |
| Remember the Milk | This program sends you reminders about all the stuff you have to get done. It can be set to send either text messages or emails. RTM is available for PC or Mac as well. | Free & $39.99 |
| Microsoft To Do | A scheduling app that allows for list groups (folders), steps (subtasks), file attachments and sharing and task assignments. | Free |
| My Homework Planner | Track your homework, tests, projects, and lessons and set and receive reminders when assignments are due or tests are coming up. Set up your class schedule within the app. Sync your information with any of the available devices. | Free & $0.99+ |
| Todoist | Track big and small deadlines, personal tasks and goals as soon as they pop into your head. Prioritize your tasks with priority levels, track your progress and built habits with recurring due dates like “every Monday”. | Free & $48/year |
| TickTick | Schedule an agenda, make memos, share shopping lists, collaborate in a team or develop a new habit. Set recurring tasks, create checklists within tasks and label tasks by priority. | Free & $27.99/year |
| Google Keep | Organize thoughts into lists, reminders, or notes through the use of labels color coded notes on Google Keep. Attach pictures and audio to notes. Share with friends and sync across devices or access via web browser. | Free |
| Productivity Applications | ||
| Tide | A timer to assist with productivity, sleep and deep breathing. This app has a relaxing interface, minimalist design and calming nature sounds. | Free & $0.99+ |
| Forest | With every session that you remain focused on this app, a gamified tree will be planted! Leaving the app before the timer has finished, causes your tree to wither. Use this app if you need enhanced motivation to study. | $3.99 & $0.99+ |
| Focus Keeper | With this app, use a timer to stay productive and stay focused. | $1.99 |
| Productive | Productive helps you build a routine of life-changing habits. Set personal goals, track your progress, and motivate yourself. | Free & $5.99+ |
| Trello | Create boards to organize anything you’re working on, use them solo or invite coworkers, friends, and family to collaborate, customize workflows for different projects, and much more. | Free |
| Strides | Track all your goals and habits. It is also a SMART goal tracker, with reminders to hold you accountable and charts to keep you motivated. | Free & $4.99+ |
| BeFocused-focus timer | Stay on task by breaking up individual tasks with intervals, separated by short breaks. Create tasks, configure breaks and track your progress throughout the day, week or custom period. | Free & $4.99 |
| PomoDoneApp | Sync tasks, create tasks, break and switch between tasks within one timer. Stay focused then track and analyze how long things are taking. | Free & $24/year |
| HabitMinder | Form healthy habits by tracking your hydration, exercise, healthy eating, breathing/ mindfulness and much more. Reminders will notify you when it is time to complete your habit. | Free & $0.99+/month |
| Toggl | Time tracking: can track how long you work on certain tasks and how long you spent on certain websites. There is an auto tracker feature and can sync your calendar. | Free & $9.00+/month |
| Habit Tracker | Create and track your habits in the app. There an option for adding friends for additional motivation. | Free & $3.49+ |
| Pomodor | Timer/break system like the pomodoro technique. Allows for customization of labels for specific work sessions | Free (website) |
| Habitica | Track habits, goals, and productivity. Earn rewards and battle monsters with friends. A time management app that gamifies completing tasks | Free & $0.99+ |
| Focus to do | Modeled after the Pomodoro technique which allows you to split up tasks, set reminders, and practice time management” | Free & $1.99+ |
| Freedom | It runs on every platform and can block distractions—both websites and apps—on all of your devices. That means you can't, for example, block Twitter on your computer only to pick up your phone and look at it there. With Freedom, you can set up multiple blocklists, then start timers for any of them. | Free & $39.99/year |
| FocusMate | FocusMate allows for virtual coworkers to keep you on task | Free (3 sessions/week) & $5.00/month unlimited |
| Self-care Applications | ||
| Mint | Assists users with keeping track of their money. Sync Mint with your online bank statements, and access all of your accounts from one place! | Free & $0.99+ |
| Calm | This app uses realistic landscape scenes and guided meditations to help improve anxiety management, concentration, and emotional regulation. Using www.calm.com/usc you can receive a 10-day free trial of Premium! | Free & $14.99+ |
| Breathe2Relax | Ever been curious about breathing exercises and whether they will help you manage stress? This app provides an introduction to guided breathing as well as some of its potential benefits. | Free |
| Relax Melodies | Fall asleep using nature sounds, white noise, brainwaves, guided meditations and bedtime stories provided within this popular sleeping application. | Free & $9.99+ |
| Breathing Zone | A mindful breathing exercise that slows your breathing rate to calm you down and help you feel more relaxed. | Free & $3.99 |
| Sleep Town | Made by the same team as Forest, it helps build healthy sleep routines. If you use your phone during "bedtime: it destroys part of the town that is being built | $1.99 |
| Pillow | A sleep cycle tracker for apple watches that explores personal trends | Free & $6.99+/month |
| Medito | Available on iOS and Android, this free app is designed for people who are new to meditation and includes courses for different levels of experience | Free |
| HeadScape | Live a healthier, happier, more well-rested life in just a few minutes a day with meditation and mindfulness guided by Headspace | Free & $12.99+/month |
| Educational Apps | ||
| Quizlet | Allows users to make flashcards or use ones that have been made by others. Just search your topic, and use the study tools that others have published about it. | Free & $7.99+ |
| Ted Talks | Browse and view thousands of prerecorded talks to help with research, brainstorming, or to just relax. | Free |
| Khan Academy | A portable teacher of sorts. Users can search a topic and watch an audio-visual lecture regarding it. Lectures are first-rate, and are very good at breaking down difficult concepts. | Free |
| Wolfram Alpha | Input a math question, and this app will give you the answer as well as a step-by-step breakdown of how it got the answer. | $2.99 & $0.99+ |
| ModMath | Write and solve equations with a piece of virtual graph paper to improve speed and legibility. Virtual graph paper creates a pencil-free format in which to complete arithmetic. Solve basic and complex math equations. | Free & $0.99+ |
| Duolingo | A friendly and easy to use language-learning app that helps you learn and practice over 23 different languages through fun & bit-sized lessons. | Free & $4.99+ |
| Reading and Vocabulary Apps | ||
| QuickReader | App that trains users to speed-read. Comes with access to an online bookstore with over 2 million books, including all those classics you said you’d get to “one day”. | $4.99 |
| Capti Voice | Convert documents and webpages into text-to-speech. Upload documents from Dropbox, Google Drive, Clipboard, Instapaper, or Web Browser and listen to document immediately or save it into your playlist for future listening. Adjust speech rate along with the choice of built in voices; additional voices for purchase. | Free & $1.99+ |
| Spritz | Test your reading speed using Spritz to find your optimum reading speed to use in partnership with Readsy. Increase or decrease the test reading speed to find your balance of speed and comprehension. Spritz custom interface called the Spritzlet, adjusts word position and red letter placement for increased focus, attention, and comprehension. Various websites and apps have the Spritz/Spritzlet embedded in it. | Free & $29.99/year |
| Grammarly | Eliminate writing mistakes and contextual errors, spelling errors, and poor vocabulary usage. Find the right word you are looking for with synonym suggestions. Learn from your mistakes to avoid them in the future. Grammarly works anywhere on your Chrome browser, including emails, essays, social media posts and more. | Free & $12.00/monthly |
| Save the latest stories, articles, news, sports and videos from any device to read for later. You can read, watch or listen to any content while you work out, commute, walk or just relax. Think of it as a reward for cranking through your work. | Free & $44.99/year | |
| TexttoSpeech | Produces natural sounding synthesized text from the words that you have entered in. With 36 different voices to choose from and the ability to adjust the rate and pitch, there are countless ways in which the synthesized voice can be adjusted. | Free & $9.99 |
| Beeline Reader | Improves reading speed and reading ability for readers. | $4.99+ $0.99+ |
| ReadMe! | Has the ability to increase reading speed with ease. It dramatically improves reading fluency for readers of all levels, including those with dyslexia. | Free & $1.99+ |
| Browser Extensions | ||
| EquatIO | Write math expressions, formulas and quizzes. Dictate, type or handwrite math equations to have them automatically uploaded to a Google Doc or another document. Makes math digital and turns expressions into clear, accurate on-screen formulas. | Free |
| SwiftRead | Chrome extension. Helps to increase reading speed, greater focus and increase visual span. Both a free version and paid version. | Free & 4.99/month |
| Insert Learning | Transform any web page into an interactive lesson by inserting questions, videos, sticky notes and more. | Free |
| Feedly | For those that are subscribed to a lot of news article websites, this app helps organize all the articles by topic and prioritize which ones you may find the most important according to your feedback | Free & $72/year |
| TrackingTime | TrackingTime represents time in blocks or windows, just as if that working time were an event on your calendar. It's not the only app that lays out your time in this fashion (Timeneye and Toggl Track do it, too), but it does offer the most opportunities for customization. For example, you can choose between a day, week, month, or team view. | Free & $60/year |
