Get off of email. Stop wasting time in meetings. Work smarter, not harder. You’ve heard it all before. The advice and mantras all over the internet about making yourself more productive could fill libraries. But there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to being more productive. It depends so much on who you are and how you process information, not to mention the details of your work and life: What do you do, and how do you do it?
That’s why this list of the best Productivity apps is nearly 60 items long. Some productivity tools help you handle email because a big part of your life is handling email. Others automate various aspects of your life so you can get back to doing hard work that requires creativity and focus.
With the right Productivity Apps and services at your fingertips, you can increase your efficiency and get more done. People seem obsessed with productivity these days, but few actually think about what it is or what it means.
To me, the meaning of productivity is highly personal, but ultimately, it’s about achieving goals. It’s about making the most of your time so that you have time and energy left over to do more.
What Are Your Productivity Goals?
In the traditional sense, the phrase “increasing productivity” means making more money, making more goods, or both. But being more productive now has a much broader meaning. Your goal could be anything from maximizing profits in a business to getting a nine-to-five job done faster so that you have some mental and physical resources left over to pursue personal interests at home. Some people want to get out of the office faster each day to spend more time with their family. Some people want to put in two hours of work each night writing a movie script.
Being more productive is all about figuring out how you want to live your life and making it possible.
What Is Productivity Software?
An entire classification of software, productivity software, is devoted to making our work easier and ourselves more productive. It goes way beyond the more old-school definition of office suites, like Microsoft Office, and business applications.
If there’s a task to be done, whether it’s personal or for your job, there’s a productivity app that will help you do it faster, cheaper, and more efficiently. From browser plugins to services that help you maintain important relationships, productivity apps aim to do it all—or at least, try to help you do it all.
Productivity Apps for Individuals
In this age of DIY solutions and the accompanying focus on self-reliance, there are plenty of productivity apps that are almost more like self-help apps. Time-tracking programs, for instance, like RescueTime, help you figure out your work habits and patterns so you can hack your behaviors to make them more productive. Tools that minimize or prevent distractions, such as Stayfocusd, let you impose rules on your web surfing behavior, blocking sites that might distract when you want to get work done. A lot of these apps aim to help you be the focused, attentive person you wish you were but struggle to be.
Task-management and to-do list apps are also popular among individuals. With the ability to share and sync data through the internet, it’s easy to make lists of chores for your partner and kids, assigning them tasks anytime, anywhere. You can manage household chores and tasks from your home computer, or you can get it done from your smartphone the next time you’re stuck waiting in a doctor’s office or at the DMV.
Speaking of which, mobile devices are a huge part of the productivity movement. Being able to get a few little jobs done when you have natural downtime is a big part of what makes productivity apps so, well, productive. These apps let us juggle our time differently so that we aren’t necessarily working more, but we are getting more done, both in our jobs and our home lives, across all the hours of the day.
And while we’re on the subject of getting lots of things done at once, forget everything you think you know about the perils of multitasking. A growing body of research shows that multitasking makes you more productive, not less, as most people believe. There is a hitch, of course. You have to do the right amount of multitasking. Too much causes productivity to plummet. You’ve probably heard that multitasking prevents long periods of focus and interrupts our thought processes. Well, making use of natural downtime, like being productive while in a waiting room or while stuck on a train, are perfect examples of multitasking efficiently. Multitasking is a rather complicated topic, but the point is that it’s not all bad, and mobile productivity apps help you multitask in the right way.
Productivity Apps for Businesses
Of course, there are plenty of productivity apps that fit better for business cases than home and personal life. Project management services, for example, help teams keep track of work and assets so there’s less need to continually have meetings and make sure everyone is on the same page. They also give employees greater visibility into all the moving parts that make up a project. It’s incredibly more productive to be able to find out who is responsible for what and when with a few clicks of the keyboard than having to track down individuals and ask a million questions.
Invoicing and billing solutions—and really all kinds of online business accounting apps—do wonders for productivity, especially for very small business owners and sole proprietors. When you’re a one-woman shop and time is at a premium, you can’t afford to waste it messing around with accounting. You need tools that work efficiently and that get it right the first time, every time, so you can get back to the real work that makes your business tick.
And let’s not leave out traditional office suites. In this list of the 60 best productivity apps, you’ll find plenty of suggestions for word-processing programs, spreadsheet apps, and presentation tools as well. The best ones are now collaborative, letting multiple people work on the same document simultaneously. Quite a few are also free and include a good chunk of storage so you have a place to keep your documents while you work on them.
Problems and Solutions
At the heart of every great productivity app is a solution to a specific problem. Some look toward efficiency, aiming to take an existing product, such as email, and make it easier to use so we waste less time futzing with it. Others seek to silence the noise of the net, bolster collaboration, or unite disparate data.
The 60 programs, mobile apps, plugins, and services in this list are among my favorites for helping anyone be more productive, from office workers to students. It’s by no means a comprehensive list, but I hope it lets you explore your options among the truly necessary productivity tools, and also introduces you to some hidden gems that you might have missed while you were busy getting things done.
FreshBooks
From $15 per month
FreshBooks is the site to beat when it comes to managing and tracking invoices, time, and expenses for very small businesses that don’t need a full-blown double-entry accounting system. It’s ideal for owners of very small businesses and sole proprietors.
OfficeTime
$47
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Lawyers, freelancers, and small business owners who need to keep track of billable hours will find OfficeTime a productivity booster. This app has a timer for recording billable hours as you work. It generates invoices and reports based on your timer activity. You can buy OfficeTime for Mac or Windows for a one-time, reasonable $47 fee. An iOS app costs a few dollars more (as an in-app purchase), but there are no recurring fees for this great service and productivity app.
Altassian HipChat
Free; $2 per user per month for Plus
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HipChat by Atlassian (the same company that makes JIRA) is an online, real-time, team messaging platform. While HipChat doesn’t have the same popularity as Slack, it offers a very similar service for about a quarter of the price per person. If you’re searching for an app that will sway you and your team mates away from internal email, HipChat should be at the top of your list of considerations. With excellent features, including screen-sharing and video calls, for a very low price, it’s an Editors’ Choice.
Asana
Free; $99.96 per user per year for Premium
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Workplace tools for collaboration and communication are transforming how teams get work done together, and Asana was among the first to make a real splash. Asana helps teams keep track of what needs to get done and who is doing it. Unlike project management platforms, Asana is capable of handling ongoing work (whereas project management is meant for projects with an end date).
Google Suite (aka Google Drive)
Free
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With a tremendous amount of free storage and great integration options with other software and services, Google Drive is a productivity wonder. It offers online apps for creating and editing word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and online forms (Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms) that are fully collaborative, meaning two or more people can edit the same file at once. Google Suite also includes its own file-syncing service, letting you work offline. This online office suite delivers a wide range of essential business software.
Podio
From $9 per user per month
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Podio is a business collaboration and work management platform that’s super flexible and customizable. It’s a hub where work gets done. You add apps to it, such as those for invoicing or project management, to design an online workspace that meets the needs of your business. The ability to customize the platform by adding the apps you need is Podio’s main strength. It’s one of the most comprehensive productivity tools for small business communication and work management you’ll find.
Slack
Free; From $8 per user per month for paid plans
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Slack is a messaging platform for teams, facilitating discussions (and banter) across collaborators who are not necessarily in the same place at the same time. Great search functionality helps you find relevant messages that you may have missed the first time around. And because Slack can integrate with a ton of other productivity apps and services, it plays very well with others.
Teamwork Projects
Free; from $69 per month for paid accounts
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Teamwork Projects, an Editors’ Choice in the project management category (alongside Zoho Projects), is affordable and easy to use. Not all project management platforms are either of those things, much less both. Teamwork Projects actually makes project management quite easy to handle because the interface is self-explanatory. A huge plus for this app is the one flat price for unlimited users. For teams that are on the small side, it’s an excellent value.
Trello
Free; $119.88 per user per year for Business plan
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Trello is a kanban-style work management app. It helps teams visualize their workflow. In Trello and other kanban apps, you create cards (think of them as sticky notes on a board) and arrange them into columns. Each column can represent whatever you want. You move the notes to different columns as the work progresses; or you can design your own method for using Trello ad hoc. Trello’s charm comes from its simple interface and fun stickers, all of which add a touch of lightness to even the heaviest kinds of work.
Wrike
Free; from $117.60 per user per year for paid plans
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When you need a project management service yesterday, turn to Wrike. Wrike offers a flexible solution for small businesses and enterprises alike that isn’t as feature-rich as some other options, but lets you get up and running extremely fast. With plenty of ways to integrate with other apps and services and very quick setup, Wrike is a great project management platform for small businesses.
Zoho Projects
Free; from $25 per user per month for paid accounts
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Zoho Projects has kept pace with the world of project management extremely well, freshening up its look and adding features that all teams need to work collaboratively. It offers a truly free level of service, so you can try it out fully and without any time restrictions before you buy it. Zoho Projects is a great productivity platform with ample add-on tools and services to grow with your team or business.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking
$99.99 Home; $199.99 Premium
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Dictating reports and controlling your computer with your voice can be a huge productivity booster if you have an app that’s smart and extremely intuitive. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is. It’s not cheap, but it’s the best dictation software on the market. With Dragon, you can start dictating practically any text from day one, such as emails and speeches. Give yourself a few days to master deeper features to control your computer and browser, and you’ll be flying through your work.
IDrive
Free; $59.90 per year for Personal
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You’d be hard-pressed to find an online backup service as full-featured or versatile as IDrive, especially for the price. With this cloud-based syncing and backup service, you’ll be able to get the most recent version of your files no matter where you are, which means you can be productive no matter where you are, too. It offers not only some of the most attractive pricing plans, but also more nifty features than you can shake a stick at.
IFTTT
Free
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IFTTT (rhymes with “gift”) stands for “if this, then that.” It’s a website and mobile app you use to create custom automations between various online services and devices, and the real beauty is that you don’t need to know how to code to use it. For example, using IFTTT’s simple interface, you could create this automation: “If there is an upcoming event on my Google Calendar, then send me a text message reminder with the event name, time, and address.” Another example is: “If someone tags a photo of me on Facebook, then save a copy of that photo to Dropbox.” IFTTT is very similar to Zapier, but Zapier is a little more focused on supporting business apps, while IFTTT is excellent for personal productivity and smarthome hacks.
Microsoft OneDrive
Free
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Microsoft OneDrive has gone through many names over the years: SkyDrive, Live Mesh, FolderShare. Whatever you choose to call it, this service makes both your personal and office lives more productive by providing reliable file syncing and online storage. OneDrive includes attractive web and mobile interfaces, with offline capabilities, as well as music streaming, shared desktop-folder syncing, and perhaps most importantly, real-time collaboration in Office. It’s a wonderful service no matter how you use it or what you call it.
Snagit
$49.95
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When Photoshop is overkill for what you need to do with graphics and videos, Snagit is an excellent alternative app. It helps you take screenshots and record videos, mark them up and add effects quickly, and share them with others. Snagit gets those kinds of jobs done fast and on the cheap. A recently added animated GIF creator makes the app the perfect low-cost solution for bloggers and other online media creators.
Stayfocusd
Free
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Stayfocusd is a browser extension that keeps you productive by blocking distracting websites while you’re trying to work. You can set it to block distractions either for set times and dates that you choose (say, 9 to 5, Monday through Friday) or after a certain time limit (e.g., no more than 30 minutes of Facebook per day). It’s an extremely simple and free browser extension. And sure, you could get around it by simply using a different browser, but it’s still a great tool for helping you with your own self-discipline toward a more productive life.
Writeroom
$9.99
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Most word processing software welcomes you with menus, ribbons, buttons, and displays. The whole point of WriteRoom is that it gives you less. If you’re a writer who wants to get well-written text on the page, and you don’t want to be distracted by options that have nothing to do with the actual words you’re writing, then less is more. The fewer visible options there are on screen, the more you can concentrate on your writing. WriteRoom is for OS X only and available through the Mac App Store.
Zapier
Free; from $20 per month for paid plans
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Zapier lets you creates automations between apps and services you use, much the same way IFTTT does. For example, you can use Zapier to set up this kind of automation: “Every time I write a new blog post on WordPress, save a copy of that document to Dropbox.” The beauty is that you don’t need to know a lick of code to do it. Zapier differs from IFTTT in that it offers more connectivity among business apps (think Salesforce, JIRA, and the like), whereas IFTTT is better for personal use and smarthome hacks. The two have plenty of overlap, however, and both are Editors’ Choice productivity apps.
Any.do
Free; $28.99 per year for Premium
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Any.do is a collaborative task-management app for iOS, Android, and Chrome. It’s a beautifully designed to-do app with one unique feature called the Any.do Moment. This feature helps you make a habit of reviewing your daily tasks first thing in the morning, everyday, so that you’re never caught off guard by surprise meetings, tasks, or other obligations later. Developing a good habit that promotes productivity is extremely difficult. The fact that Any.do takes it on is a big reason I love this app.
Boxer Pro
$4.99
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Boxer by VMware is easily among the best email client apps for mobile devices. This app for iOS and Android gives you access to not only your various email accounts, but also your calendar and address book. Because it merges those three pieces into one app, Boxer helps you stay productive. It’s faster and easier to check your calendar while replying to an email or to pull additional contact information to add to an appointment. It supports Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Outlook, iCloud, and Aol.
EasilyDo
Free; $4.99 per month for Premium
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EasilyDo is a personal assistant app that automates small tasks for you, everything from posting “happy birthday” on your friends’ Facebook pages on the right day to texting your significant other when you’re running late. EasilyDo is very easy to set up and use, and it comes with a wealth of functionality. For tiny time-eating tasks that you’d rather not get caught up doing, let EasyDo take the helm.
Evernote Scannable
Free
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With the Scannable app by Evernote, you can practically kiss your desktop scanner goodbye. This mobile app zips through stacks of papers that you need to scan and turns them into collated PDFs. It also works wonders on business cards. You don’t even have to press a button for Scannable to snap each picture, as it auto-detects edges and produces great quality images just about every time. Of course, it connects with Evernote for easy saving, although you can save files to other storage locations, too.
Inbox by Gmail
Free
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Casual email users, as opposed to power users, can breathe a sigh of relief regarding email management by using the Inbox by Gmail app. As the name suggests, this app works only on Gmail accounts. It slims down your inbox and works hard to figure out how you might want to automatically sort messages that you might want to save but don’t need to read, such as purchase confirmations. The app makes you more productive by showing you a version of your inbox that isn’t jam-packed with junk. That way, you can focus on messages that truly require your attention.
InboxVudu
Free
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If you’ve ever missed an important, deadline-driven email, then you really need to check out InboxVudu. This free mobile app, Apple Watch app, website, and browser plugin sends your Gmail through a language processing machine to find messages that are important. When it spots a new one in your inbox, it lets you know with a notification, and then uses boldface on the words that it thinks are most important in the message. Instead of previewing the first few lines of an email, you see important questions, calls for action, dates, and more. InboxVudu also works its dark magic on your sent mail, reminding you to follow up with people in case they’ve overlooked your messages.
Microsoft Outlook
Free
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Customizable swipe gestures, an integrated calendar view, and a Focused Inbox feature make Microsoft Outlook one of my favorite mobile email apps for productivity. Although the name on the app is Microsoft, you can pull in email from other accounts, too. Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, iCloud, and IMAP accounts are all supported, in addition to those affiliated with Microsoft Exchange, Outlook.com, and Office 365. The Focused Inbox feature separates personal emails from marketing messages and others that are less pressing. It’s quite similar to the Inbox by Gmail app, except that it works on a variety of email accounts, rather than just Gmail.
Mr. Number-Block calls, texts
Free
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Attention Android users! Get productive by stopping those annoying spam phone calls and texts, or all incoming calls for a time that you set, with Mr. Number-Block. This free and simple app comes with a surprising array of options to block specific people or even area codes. Not all Android phones come with call-blocking features, and those that do don’t always work well. Use Mr. Number-Block when you need extra protection against distractions.
OfficeSuite Pro + PDF
$14.99
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This $14.99 Android app is an entire office suite, and a wonderfully affordable alternative to Microsoft Office on mobile devices. With OfficeSuite Pro, you can view, edit, and create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, convert to and from PDF, and manage your documents. OfficeSuite Pro comes pre-installed with some phones, so if it’s already at your disposal, why not give it a try the next time you’re working while on the road?
Pushbullet
Free
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iPhone users who also have a Mac know the simple joy of cross-device syncing and sharing with Airdrop and iCloud. But syncing starts to come apart at the seams when you mix and match operating systems. Pushbullet (free) is an iPhone app and web browser extension that fills in the cracks. It lets you quickly push links, images, addresses plotted in Google Maps, and other information from one device to another in a matter of taps or clicks. It boosts productivity by facilitating sharing across devices and platforms.
SwiftKey Keyboard
Free
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SwiftKey is a PCMag favorite custom keyboard for Android, though it’s also available on iOS. When you install SwiftKey as your default keyboard, you can save typing time by swiping your finger around the keyboard instead of hitting each individual letter. The app’s predictive text feature is pretty smart and can tell what you’re trying to say, even with sloppy swipes. For answering emails, replying to texts, and writing documents from a mobile phone, it’s a great productivity helper.
Todoist
Free; $29 per year for Premium
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Todoist is a collaborative to-do app that would be impossible to use to any effect without the companion mobile app (for iPhone and Android). The free version of the app is good for single-person use, but to manage chores in a household or among a team, you’ll want Todoist Premium. Assign tasks to others, give them a due date, and get alerted when they’re done. I also like that it gives you color-coded spaces for managing certain types of to-dos, such as work, personal, and household.
ABBYY FineReader
$199.99
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When you need optical character recognition (OCR) help, that is to say, turning pictures of words into actual typed text, ABBYY FineReader is the number-one tool to use. In the OCR software category, it may be the one and only app worth your money. One amazing efficiency of this app is that it lets you start fine-tuning the results almost instantly, instead of waiting until the app has processed an entire document. While ABBYY FineReader is working on the final pages of a document, you can give it feedback on earlier pages, and that’s a boon for your productivity.
Do.com
Free; $10 per user per month for Business accounts
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Very few productivity apps target human behavior itself, but human behavior is the leading cause of bad meetings. Do.com tackles it head on with an online service for making meetings better. If you hold a lot of meetings or are the assistant for someone who does, Do.com guides you toward better practices. It encourages you to write and distribute an agenda, time your meetings to keep them only as long as they need to be, and archive meeting notes. It also helps you assign follow-up actions and track whether they get done.
Lucidchart
Free; from $5.95 per month for paid plans
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Hands down, the best alternative to Microsoft Visio is Lucidchart. With this moderately priced app, you create diagrams for business, educational use, or even personal use. One of its main strengths is its ability to support collaboration, letting more than one person edit a diagram at the same time. An incredible template gallery gives you ideas for charts and diagrams you didn’t even know you needed. How about an emergency exit plan, for example? Lucidchart is PCMag’s top choice for diagramming apps.
Microsoft PowerPoint 2016
$69.99 per year when purchased as part of Microsoft Office 365
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PowerPoint is the presentation app to choose when you want more, more, more! This app, which is included for a very decent price with five other apps in a Microsoft Office 365 subscription, is a powerhouse among slideshow creation and editing apps. With real-time co-authoring, new design suggestions, and other tools for supporting slideshow creators, it remains the best in its class.
RescueTime
Free; $9 per month for Premium
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RescueTime does for your productivity what calorie-counting does for weight loss: It brings incredible attention and insight to your actual habits. RescueTime is a time-tracking tool that records the apps you use, websites you visit, and breaks you take while working. This wonderful app does more than just create self-awareness through its reports. It also helps you stay on track while you work, blocking distracting sites and apps when you need to focus, and quantifying your productivity goals, such as spend less than one hour per day in email. It’s one of my personal favorite productivity tools, and I highly recommend every student and knowledge worker give it a try.
SmartDraw Cloud
$179.40 per year
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SmartDraw makes it easier than any other app to quickly create professional-quality diagrams. While its collaboration features aren’t as strong as those of Lucidchart, SmartDraw earns top honors for having the largest selection of templates and objects. If you spend a lot of time making diagrams and charts, however, the cost of this app will be money well spent because you’ll have a template (the templates are more like thorough sample documents) for practically everything you’ll ever need to create.
Strict Workflow
Free
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Any Pomodoro fans out there? In the 1990s, a new method for working called the Pomodoro Technique had people everywhere buying kitchen timers shaped like tomatoes (hence the name) to time 25 minutes of work followed by short break. With modern technology, of course, it’s easier to just install a free browser plugin instead. Strict Workflow is the best one that’s loosely based on the Pomodoro Technique. It can also block distracting websites while you’re in a work phase. If you like to experiment with new methods of working more productively, snag this app for help.
Prezi
From $59.04 per year
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If your ideas don’t come across well as a slideshow, stop trying to shoehorn your work into the wrong format. Try Prezi instead. With this presentation app, you create a huge whiteboard of material and move a camera around to highlight different parts. Making presentations with Prezi is more like creating a short film. It also has excellent collaboration features, similar to those found in Google Docs. Prezi is dynamic, and your presentations will be, too.
Microsoft Office 2016
From $6.99 per month
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Microsoft’s latest edition of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, and Access are designed to work on touch screens, as well as on desktops and laptops. What that means for mobile users is they get the same app on a mobile device that they get on their computer. More uniformity across devices means less futzing around with a different interface, and that can only help your productivity.
Pages, Numbers, Keynote
Free
Apple’s office suite comes in the form of three apps that are sold separately, but come included with the purchase of new Macs. The three apps are Pages for word processing, Numbers, an Editors’ Choice, for spreadsheets, and Keynote, also an Editors’ Choice, for presentations. Each one balances power and features with simplicity and ease of use. For OS X users, they collectively make up an excellent choice for an office suite.
Polaris Office
Free; $3.99 per month for Premium
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Polaris Office is a productivity tool for people who jump between devices frequently. Available for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS, this app and services lets you get at your files no matter which storage service you use. Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and others are supported. With Polaris Office, you can create new documents
