With the start of a new year, it can be tough to take on everything on your to-do list all by yourself. Between school, work, and everything else life throws at you, sometimes you could use a little help. Thankfully, our mobile marketing strategist has put together a list of 10 best mobile apps to help you get the most out of your new year. From helping you stay on a new diet, to keeping organized and even keep up with new trends, there’s something for every student on this list. Let us know which one you find most useful!
1. Swarm (Free – iOS & Android)
This app is built off of Foursquare and is sort of a location-based social media app. It allows you to share check-ins and converse with people to plan a meeting at a specific location. It even has a bunch of game-based features that make regular trips just a tad more fun.
Favorite feature: Stickers! Users can attach a sticker to any place they’ve checked in to as an expression of how they feel/felt about the experience.
**In full disclosure, a professor of mine, who became a friend, is an investor in this company.
2. Runkeeper (Free – iOS & Android)
Fitness junkies, unite! This isn’t your regular fitness tracking app. Runkeeper allows you to be a part of a community that keeps you focused. The community holds you accountable on your journey to become a runner. What’s especially cool are the unique challenges you can complete as well as the ability to train towards certain goals. The UI is simple and not too overwhelming like some fitness apps, making Runkeeper one of the best mobile apps to have in 2018.
Favorite feature: Challenges. Sometimes you can get bored of your workout routine, but there are challenges in the app that can help you change things up and get a new kick out of your workout.
3. Coinbase (Free – iOS & Android)
Don’t you wish you had gotten in on Bitcoin in 2013? Or even as recent as last week? Well, buying cryptocurrency doesn’t have to be complicated. Coinbase is one of the most user friendly apps on the market today that allows you to buy pieces of three of the biggest names in the cryptocurrency market—Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. The transaction fees are pretty reasonable, and with $100M+ in funding, they’ve invested a lot in keeping your coins safe and secure.
Favorite feature: Alerts. You don’t want to go crazy monitoring the price of Bitcoin every 10 minutes, and you don’t have to! Set up alerts and the app will let you know when a currency has hit, gone above or below a certain price.
4. Mint (Free – iOS & Android)
Ever wonder how much you’re spending on Starbucks every month? Too busy to do all that math? Well, Mint is quickly becoming the most popular mobile app in the market for tracking your finances. You can track your expenditures by categories such as food, coffee, bills and student loans. Mint also helps you budget and keep on track with those spending goals to make sure you’re not going over your budgeted amount in any category. After downloading, you’ll have no questions about why we included Mint as one of the best mobile apps of 2018.
Favorite feature: The pie chart. As seen in the middle image below, the pie chart of your spending really helps you visualize where your money is going rather than reading a long list.
5. Mobile Passport (Free – iOS & Android)
This app allows you to hack the customs line. On your way back to the US from an international trip, open up the app and answer the questions you’d be asked by the customs officer and go through the “Mobile Passport” express lane. Yes, this is legit. This app is officially authorized by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and is in partnership with Airports Council International. So far, 23 airports are accepting this service.
Favorite feature: Passport scan. Never mind having to input all your passport information, you can scan your passport! And yes, the results are pretty reliable, easily making this one of the best mobile apps of 2018.
6. Runtasty (Free – iOS & Android)
This was originally launched in April 2017 as a recipe and nutrition app and did enormously well with people interested in apps for health and fitness. The app provides you with access to over 40 healthy recipes and some great filtering options like types of food, types of diet, etc. This is especially useful to those with specific needs in mind when preparing their meal, whether it be dietary restrictions or just trying to get in the right macros.
Favorite feature: The “How To” section. For those of us who feel completely lost in the kitchen, there are some simple “How to” recipes such as how to cut a mango or poach an egg. No judgment, just answers.
7. Calm (Free – iOS & Android)
Ah, yes, wouldn’t we all love a bit of calm in our lives? Well, meditation is back with a vengeance and has never been easier than with Calm. This is one of the best mobile apps available now for meditation. The app also features sleep stories to help those who are struggling with restless nights, your personal relaxing assistant with soothing nature sounds, and even music that helps with a specific goal: focus, relax, unwind, etc.
Favorite feature: Story time. For the child in us, the sleep stories are read to you in calm and comforting voices. Stephen Fry’s readings alone get the job done.
8. Google Assistant (Free – iOS & Android)
Siri is great and all, but the extensive work put in behind the smarts of Google Search put the Google Assistant 50 steps ahead of Siri. This one’s pretty straight forward, imagine being able to talk to Google as if they were at your service in your phone all day. Pretty sick, right?
Favorite feature: Search results. Sounds pretty simple but unlike Siri, Google Assistant actually gets you specific search answers and reads them to you. You don’t have to settle for “Here’s what I found…” That’s reason enough to consider this as one of the best mobile apps to have this year.
9. Inkl (Free – iOS & Android)
Inkl is on a mission, and a pretty important one: to help you filter through all of those annoying, misguiding, and downright useless click bait articles. This app curates a feed of news that is trustworthy, useful, and actually expands your understanding of a topic. You’re able to use their filtering tools to select articles about topics you’re specifically interested in.
Favorite feature: Sources. If you decided that there’s one news source that you prefer, you can filter so that you only get stories from that one place. Sorry, The Onion isn’t an option!
10. Reddit (Free – iOS & Android)
I’m sure we all have those friends or coworkers who talk to us about a really cool conversation they had or something new they learned, only to find out they did all this on Reddit. Reddit is a social news aggregation site with discussion forums built into it. However, with it’s ugly and messy desktop display, Reddit is too intimidating for a first time user to want to dive into. Rest assured, the Reddit mobile app is a huge improvement. The layout, the display, all helps make Reddit app much easier to navigate and enjoy. This is certainly one of the best mobile apps to have on your phone.
Favorite feature: Upvote. Sometimes one can feel intimidated asking a question to a forum of thousands, but with upvote, you can just vote up someone else’s question that’s similar to yours. Ideally it will move up to a place in the thread where more people can see it and answer it.
There you have it! 10 mobile apps to help you navigate through the new year and conquer life as we know it. While this isn’t an exhaustive list, these apps made some serious waves leading up to the new year. They definitely got our mobile strategist’s attention. If there is an app that you think is super helpful but you don’t see it on this list, comment below and let other students get in on it!
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