As a university student, you’re facing a lot of challenges. You have to deal with new professors, navigate a strange new environment, and make lots of decisions about a future that’s still very unclear.
That’s why it’s so important to have the right apps on your phone. The best apps can help you learn more efficiently, stay organized, and even keep your head on straight when things get tough.
To help you out, I’ve put together a list of the top 10 apps for university students in the U.K., as well as what makes them great.
best apps for university students uk
10 Best Apps for Students in 2021
How many times have your parents, grandparents and teachers made comments about how smartphones can be a terrible distraction?
And if we’re being honest with them, they aren’t entirely wrong. But in the modern world, there’s (almost) an app for everything, making it easier, cheaper and more fun to be a student in the 21st Century.
Whether you want help with finding the best note taking apps for students, keeping focus during study sessions, or even finding discounts to help keep you under budget each month, we’ve got a comprehensive list of apps for your smartphones, tablets and laptops, to help you navigate through your student years
Take a look below at our list of the 10 best student apps for 2022 – and turn your phone into the ultimate study buddy.
1. RefME
Best for: Academic reading and writing
Hate having to reference your essays and other research work? Join the club.
Referencing can be a tedious process, especially if you lose track of what books and resources you’ve used along the way. Fortunately, RefME has developed a clever app that makes the process of finding and citing resources much more efficient, saving you time (and endless headaches).
For new students, the app has thousands of open educational resources which can be a great place to start your academic reading and prompt further research. This saves hours spent scrolling through Google, trying to find relevant papers for your studies.
But its main highlight is the ability to automate citations, reference lists, and bibliographies with ease – again giving you plenty of extra time to spend improving your work. How? Simply scan the barcodes of all the books and journals you’re using and RefME will automatically generate the citations within seconds.
Even better, the app can export references into hundreds of different styles, including the most commonly used:
- APA
- MLA
- Harvard
- Chicago
- RSC
So you don’t need to worry about making sure whether your references are unified.
2. Evernote
Best for: Note-taking, task management
Looking for an app that helps you create, compile and organise notes, while also making sure you time manage all your other tasks? Evernote truly is an all-rounder and one of the best apps for students in 2021.
It’s also considered to be one of the best note taking apps for students; as these can be created from text, drawings, photographs, online web content, and even audio footage. Once you’ve created them, your notes will be stored in electronic notebooks which again, can be annotated, tagged with labels, edited, searched, have attachments linked to them, and even exported for you to use on other devices.
With an intuitive task management system, it’s easy to assign tasks within your notes and give them due dates, flags and reminders – so none of your academic work falls through the cracks. You can even connect your Google Calendar to the app, so you never miss a class or important appointment!
Available on all major operating systems, the base app is free to use with monthly usage limits, and also offers paid plans for those who wish to expand their usage of it.
3. Office Lens
Best for: Note-taking
How many times have you flipped through your notebooks from school or university, only to realise you can’t read your scruffy handwriting? Gone are the days of having to scribble down messy notes in class with the arrival of Office Lens from Microsoft Windows.
Office Lens has been specifically designed as an app for students, helping to make note-taking that little bit easier. With the ability to take pictures of documents, whiteboards, blackboards, journals, and other printed documents, it then converts them into editable, shareable text that you can doodle on and share with others.
Bad lighting? The app also has an auto feature that removes glare and shadows from your images and also allows you to read images that have been taken from a bad angle.
Available on iOS, Android, and other major operating systems, Open Lens is widely accessible, easy-to-use, and saves so much time on writing out notes.
4. Motion
Best for: Focus time
For university students, much of your study time will be spent on your laptop. Most often, this time is spent online, browsing academic websites and taking notes. Or, for many students, spent accidentally browsing our social media networks.
We know that notifications release dopamine – after all, their very design was backed by the intention to distract and draw you into their sites. So it’s no wonder that so many of us often struggle to get through a study session without having checked our notification tabs at least once.
Motion is a free web browser extension that will block distracting sites, including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, removing the temptation to click on them when your time should be better spent elsewhere. It’s totally customisable, allowing you to block certain pages on set times and days, or even certain types of websites, such as social media networks or shopping sites.
But what if you need to access a blocked site for academic purposes? Fear not, as the app will give you 60 seconds to quickly look for what you need before removing it from your browser again.
To help keep you motivated, you’ll also receive regular reports to let you know how much time online has been spent in either a productive or distracting way. It’s the ultimate study companion.
5. Oxford English Dictionary
Best for: Academic reading and writing
Fed up of carrying heavy books around with you all the time? Take your dictionary on the go with the free mobile version of the Oxford University Press’ Oxford English Dictionary.
With more than 150 years of research behind it, The Oxford Dictionary of English is recognised as the highest authority in the study and reference of the English language – and an essential tool for all academics.
The mobile app contains over 350,000 words, phrases and meanings, as well has over 75,000 audio pronunciation of some more difficult-to-pronounce words. You can even expand your vocabulary by learning a new word each day, courtesy of the apps’ daily notifications.
Not sure how to spell a word? The app even has an incredibly intuitive ‘voice’ and ‘fuzzy’ search feature – where you can find a word even if you don’t know exactly how to spell it.
6. Google Drive
Best for: Storage, task management
Google Drive is a cloud-based storage solution and one of the best apps for students currently available on the market. Save and store all of your documents online – and access them from any smartphone, tablet or computer.
Using a cloud storage service like Google Drive has plenty of advantages for students, such as removing the risk of your computer crashing and losing all your work (we all know someone that’s suffered that tragic fate).
You can store up to 15GB of files for free, including notes, images, PDFs, audio and video files. The Drive automatically saves as you go, so you never need to worry about losing your work without hitting that pesky save button. It’s also easy to share, edit and collaborate on files, which can be great for group projects and proof-reading your classmates’ work.
Know you’re going to struggle with WiFi? No problem. You can also select files to access ‘offline’ so you can download and use them on the go – great for those who like to work while commuting to and from college.
7. Forest
Best for: Focus time
How often do you sit down for a productive study session, only to find that 10 minutes into the process, you’re already on your phone and scrolling through Instagram?
Forest is a time management app, which takes a creative approach towards helping you stay focused and leave your phone alone during short periods of time. How? By encouraging you to plant a tree.
Whenever you want to start a study or focus session, you plant a tree in your ‘forest’ on the app. As you study (leave your phone alone), the phone will begin to grow. However, as soon as you pick up your phone and click onto another app, your tree will die. The more you focus, the more trees you can collect and add to your forest.
What’s even better, the company behind the app even plants real trees around the world based on downloads and app usage. It’s a win-win for both your study periods and the Earth!
8. Todoist
Best for: Task management
If you’re looking for the best planner apps for students, one that works across your devices, tracks your productivity, and lets you organise every aspect of your life, then you must acquaint yourself with Todoist.
Essentially, Todoist is a task management tool which combines tasks, projects, comments, attachments and more, so you can streamline your productivity and complete your work more effectively – without ever letting anything slip off your radar. You can add powerful labels, filters and tags to each of your tasks, which the app will then transfer into easy productivity workflows that work around you.
It’s clean, intuitive, and super easy to understand – making it easy to keep on top of your tasks and understand what you need to prioritise.
Planning group work? No problem. Users can also manage, collaborate and assign tasks to other members by sharing their boards or lists.
Even better, Todoist is a cloud-based app, where all your tasks and notes sync automatically to any device where you use the app. Even if you choose to use the app offline, such as when you’re on the move, your app will automatically sync the next time it’s connected to the internet.
9. Mathway
Best for: Solving homework headaches
For students who are likely to encounter number crunching and other Mathematics equations during their studies, Mathway is one of the best student apps for not only helping you solve problems, but also understanding how you get to the solution.
All you have to do is type your problem into the app (or upload a picture of it) and Mathway will solve it for you. You can also read the detailed step-by-step guide to help you understand how to solve the solution for similar equations in the future.
This feature is possibly one of the most rewarding. The explanation section of the app is like having a virtual tutor with you 24/7, who can help explain the workings of any equations you’re struggling to understand.
10. UniDays
Best for: Budget control
One of the great perks of being a student is getting access to discounts, freebies, and other exclusive offers – just for being an academic. Unidays is one of the most established apps in the student discount-world, partnering with some of the globe’s biggest brands to offer free discounts for sixth form, college and university students.
Unidays is a hugely popular student app, helping you to save loads of money on some of the things you love most! (It’s a firm favourite of ours, and one we’ve featured on a previous blog post too!)
Once verified – it’s as simple as signing up for an account with your student email address – you’ll have access to offers on food, clothing, technology, and more, from brands like Microsoft, Apple, Asos, SuperDry, Uber Eats, Pizza Express and more. There’s so many brands and offers to choose from, and all discounts can be applied simply by entering a unique code into the checkout which you can copy and paste from the app.
Although it was developed in the UK, the app operates across over 100 different countries around the world, including the USA, Australia, Canada, Japan and China. It’s free to use and available on pretty much every smartphone operating system.
best free apps for students
10 Free Apps All Students Should Download in 2022
In our recent study abroad survey, we asked 24,000 students about the best apps for college students they use during their studies. While there’s an app for almost anything, we narrowed down the responses to the most popular apps for students in these five categories:
- Finance / budget planning apps
- Time management / scheduling apps
- Study apps
- Language learning apps
- Travel planning apps
From this list, we’ve put together five different types of students:
- the Bargain Hunter
- the Planner
- the Bookworm
- the Language Lover
- the Jet Setter
Which student personality type are you? And which app do you love the most?
Here is our list of ten free apps that every student should download!
The Bargain Hunter
If you tend to share meals with friends, rent or buy textbooks secondhand, and have a strict loan repayment plan post-graduation, you might be a Bargain Hunter. Some of the best study apps for college students will help you track your spending, create a customized budget, and see all your transactions in one place.
Mint
For students who want to save money, Mint is one of the most popular budgeting apps for students. When you connect your accounts to the app, you’ll get a complete picture of your finances to help you create your ideal budget plan.
Because Mint automatically categorizes your spending, you’ll find out exactly how much you can spend on a weekend trip or night out after rent is paid. You can also plan for more long-term goals in your future, like paying off your student loans or next semester’s textbooks.
Available on: iOS and Android
This app is compatible with American and Canadian banks. More international apps are detailed below!
Splitwise
Splitting costs is an inevitable part of being a student. Whether you’re dividing the rent between you and your housemates or trying to find out what your friends actually owe you for drinks from the other night, things can get messy without an app to keep track of your expenses.
Splitwise is one of the top apps for students because it takes the awkwardness out of paying friends back for shared costs. Simply log each expense in the app and when you’re ready to settle up, you’ll see exactly how much everyone owes!
This app is perfect for group trips, making it easy to share the costs between housemates, friends, and even family.
Available on: iOS, Android, and web
Splitwise is available in multiple languages and 100+ currencies!
Are you planning to study abroad on a budget?
Check out our scholarship guide to help fund your studies!
The Planner
Every student knows that missing a class (or sleeping in) happens to the best of us. That’s why the Planner is a student who makes an effort to keep their schedule organized and easy to manage. The best way to go about this is with a time management or student planner app that you can access anytime, anywhere (even on the go!).
My Study Life
My Study Life is the perfect online replacement for the notebook planner you’ve been carrying in your backpack for all these years. The calendar function of the app was made for students, and can help you balance your academic and social life. Even the most complicated schedules will seem easy with this student planner app. Issues due to class conflicts or rotation schedules will be a thing of the past!
With their task manager, My Study Life solves the problem of trying to find that specific date you might have forgotten to write in your paper planner. Instead, pop an assignment’s due date or an upcoming exam into My Study Life, and the app’s dashboard will automatically remind you of upcoming tasks and events.
Available on: Desktop, iOS and Android
This app can sync across all your devices and is available offline!
2Do app
Are you the type of person who likes to write to-do lists to keep track of your responsibilities? Being a student often means juggling multiple activities beyond your coursework, and it can be hard to remember the little things. The 2Do app creates checklists for projects and tasks to help keep track of everything you need to get done.
Divide your 2Do lists by course subject, student clubs, or sports activity, and keep lists organized with tags. You can even use the app to make a checklist for the next month, or keep it simple and use it for making today’s grocery list. Having all of your to-do lists in one place will make it easier to prioritize tasks and check off things that you’ve completed. Stay on top of your schedule with this study app’s built in notification alerts if you need a bit of extra nagging!
Available on: iOS, Mac, and Android
You can add items to your checklist even when this student planner app is not running!
The Bookworm
If you have a favorite study spot in your school’s library, keep a highlighter and flashcards handy, and enjoy reading the course literature before every lecture, you might be a studious Bookworm. As you’re clocking long hours in your study circle, it’s clear that you love learning, and your good grades show it! Study apps will make your life even easier by placing efficient study tools at your fingertips.
Quizlet flashcard app
The Quizlet flashcard app is a quick and easy mobile study tool that will help you prepare for the next big test, examination, or presentation.
No matter what subject you’re studying, flashcards are an effective way to help your brain remember connections. With the Quizlet flashcard app, you can create customizable flashcards – helping you remember the key pieces of information you need to ace your classes!
If you’re running out of study time, this student planner app has a flashcard library with millions of pre-created flashcards available for free! This app is especially helpful for international students looking to learn some of the local language in their study abroad country. Browse the library to find a deck of flashcards in your subject area and add them to your daily study routine!
Available on: iOS and Android
Evernote
Evernote is more than a note-taking app: It’s one of the best apps for college students, helping you keep track of everything from lecture notes to bright ideas.
Tired of rifling through notebooks and folders for the right notes? Organize your coursework, track due dates, type notes, and save related handouts, websites, and whiteboard pictures- all in one place. Evernote also allows you to save webpages for markups, and can even be integrated with Google Drive and Outlook!
If you are always forgetting where you save things, you can search tags and text, even within uploaded photos of your handwritten class notes. You will never have to worry about losing connection, as this student planner app is usable even if you’re offline.
Available on: Desktop, iOS and Android
Your notes can be synced across all of your devices with this app!
The Language Lover
There are many reasons to learn a new language. Maybe you want to travel, communicate with new friends, or would just like the pleasure of learning something new. Whatever your current level of fluency is, study apps made specifically for language learning online can help you make progress outside the classroom. If your goal is to order a coffee on your next trip overseas or if you’re nearly fluent and want someone to practice with, these apps will make it even easier!
Duolingo
Whether you’re preparing for a semester abroad or are intensively studying a second language, Duolingo is a great way to learn a foreign language.
It’s a fun and addictive game-based learning platform where you earn points for correct answers, race against the clock, and level up. Exercises are adapted to your vocabulary and learning style, and you’ll receive feedback immediately as well as tips for improvement. Duolingo forums also provide a great way to talk to others about specific linguistic questions or language learning in general!
This app is ideal for Language Lovers looking for a fun, fast way to boost their language skills. A study has shown that just 34 hours of Duolingo is equal to 1 university semester of language courses, making it one of the best apps for college students who want to learn languages!
Available on: Desktop, iOS and Android
HelloTalk
They say the best way to learn a language is by using it with native speakers, and this app delivers the ultimate language exchange! HelloTalk allows you to learn a language while exploring new cultures and making new friends around the world.
The app hosts a worldwide community of users dedicated to helping you practice more than 100 languages. Connect with native speakers who will teach you their language while you teach them yours! Chat via text, voice recordings, voice calls, video calls, and even doodles.
If you like learning by doing, HelloTalk will help you practice your language skills in a unique, authentic way. Combined with Duolingo, these study apps will have you speaking like a local in no time.
Available on: iOS and Android
Do you love learning languages?
Immerse yourself in a foreign culture and learn from the locals!
The Jet Setter
Being a university student is complicated: Your class schedule may allow you to travel and see the world, but your wallet holds you back! Luckily, there are budget-conscious ways to travel as a student. Many of the best apps for college students to plan trips help you compare prices and work around your budget, so you can still explore the world without breaking the bank as a Jet Setter!
TripAdvisor
If you’re already using budgeting apps to save for your next big trip or weekend away, don’t forget to download the ultimate travel planner app!
Tripadvisor provides millions of travel recommendations, like reviews on hotels, must-do activities, the best places to eat, and other hidden gems from other travelers. You can stay within your budget by using the app’s price comparison for accommodation and flights. The planning tool allows you to schedule your future trip and visualize it on a map, with an option to collaborate with travel buddies!
If you love exploring new places during your school breaks, make your next trip both cost-efficient and full of the best restaurants, tours, and attractions thanks to the insider tips on Tripadvisor.
Available on: Desktop, iOS and Android
This app is available in many languages!
Roadtrippers
Sometimes the best (and cheapest) way to explore a new place is by car. Hit the road with the one of the best apps for college students with the travel bug and discover the coolest “off the beaten path” places along the way.
If you have a car or can rent one, use the Roadtrippers app to plan your next trip.You can search for specific places like breweries or museums while collaborating on a shared map with friends! Once you enter your destinations, the app will calculate trip time, traffic, mileage, and even the cost of gas. You can also get inspired by one of their premade trip guides! The app can also show you destinations along the way you didn’t even know about- like quirky roadside attractions or hidden scenic spots
Available on: Desktop, iOS and Android
This app is usable offline!
Conclusion
Now that you have seen the selections, so let us know what you think in the comments below. Tell us if you have used any and what your favorite is.
Check out other posts to gain access to more digital resources if you are just starting out with Flux Resource. Also contact us today to optimize your business(s)/Brand(s)
Conclusion
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Check out other publications to gain access to more digital resources if you are just starting out with Flux Resource.
Also contact us today to optimize your business(s)/Brand(s) for Search Engines