Happy New Year, fam! With the new year, we’re thinking critically about the apps that we let have our attention. This year we’re manifesting only the best apps for 2023 on our phones. Before the new semester gets going, take some time and download these apps to make your days go smoother.

Logo for the app Notion, one of the best apps for 2023 for students to download.

Notion

Whether you want to organize your notes or work in a real-time collaborative manner with your mates, Notion is here for you to make your work, FUN! It has everything you need to organize and track your work quickly and efficiently. Plan your travel, make a to-do list, create your dashboard, and even organize your class schedule and sync your account on multiple devices (phones or tables)! Apart from this, it even has templates in the following categories for you:

  • Student (duh!)
  • Marketing
  • Product Management
  • Design
  • Engineering
  • HR
  • Sales
  • Support
  • Life
App logo for Evernote, one of the best apps for students for 2023

Evernote

If you are looking for something specific to note-taking, Evernote is for you. If you’ve just stepped into the notetaking field and don’t want any unnecessary complexity in features, Evernote can be a good starting point. Create separate notebooks for not just each subject, but also invoices, bills and receipts. Everything in your notebook is searchable (even the digital-age-mandatory ‘text in a photo’ feature) and shareable with your team. Connect to Google Calendar and set due dates with reminders to never miss on your deadline. Furthermore, the homepage shows you the most relevant information. If you want to know more about the differences between Notion and Evernote, read Notion vs. Evernote: Which app should you use?

StudentUniverse logo showing blue background with white crossed marker pointers.

StudentUniverse

I mean, come on. We weren’t going to not put us on this list. Our whole goal is making your life better by getting you amazing travel deals! While we’ll always be here for you on the web, we’ve got a great app too. Some of the best features to our app?

  • Save more with real-time price drop (and app-only sale) alerts for the deals you’ve been eyeing
  • Our flexible search tool lets you compare travel dates and deals from 220+ airlines and thousands of hotels.
  • Access your trip details anytime and anywhere
App logo for Productive: Habit tracker

Productive: Habit Tracker

Looking for changing or building new habits? Productive: Habit Tracker can help you. Set personal goals, track your progress and add notes to your habits to highlight major improvements. Begin by choosing your goal and receive daily tips and daily notifications to help you achieve your habit goals. You can also improve your daily routine by guided tasks and competing with users worldwide.

Uber or Lyft

Uber and Lyft don’t need introductions and we all already know and have them on our phones. That said, it is important to have both of these apps on your phone as you can see price differences on various occasions, especially during peak times and late night rides. The reason, according to Gigworker, is the supply and demand, and number of drivers on the road. So, having two competitor apps on the phone is always useful. You can say the same goes to Doordash and Uber Eats.

App logo for UniDAYS, one of the best apps for 2023 that students should be downloading.

UNiDAYS

If you haven’t heard about UNiDAYS, you need to go to the Play Store or App Store on your phone right now and download it. Trust me, you’ll get exclusive student discounts and deals on your favorite brands, including (but not limited to) – 

Fashion: Ray-Ban, American Eagle, Forever 21, Calvin Klein, Levi’s 

Technology: Apple, Samsung, Verizon, B&H Photo

Beauty and skincare: Charlotte Tilbury, MAC, GHD, Tarte, ColourPop

Just verify your student status by uploading your college ID and that’s it! You’re ready to shop. Free shipping, promo codes, coupons, freebies, giveaways and much more to save you money so you can live your college life to the fullest. Some limited time discounts go up to 50% off! Don’t forget to turn on your notifications to stay aware of their latest promotions. I used it to buy a MacBook a few years ago on my student ID during my time in India and I saved around $350!

App logo for Adobe scan

Adobe Scan: PDF Scanner, OCR

Turn your phone camera into a professional-like scanner! Adobe Scanner can be a good digital files organizer for all your paper documents. You can scan literally anything, from recipes to whiteboards and convert them to PDFs or JPEGs instantly. It’s pretty handy to scan, edit to remove any imperfections or stains and even fill out forms and sign documents! The Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature, again a digital-age-mandatory feature, can turn your documents into PDFs that unlock the text for reusability. These PDFs can also be converted to Microsoft Word, Excel or Powerpoint to reformat your documents.

App logo for Grammarly

Grammarly

Whether you’re writing a quick email or a long report or an assignment on your phone, Grammarly provides real-time writing feedback which can help you correct your tone, spellings and …. grammar (duh)! It will be available literally every time you are typing something on your phone to assist you so you don’t have to copy-paste it into some external website to check your grammar, spelling, and tone. Here’s a tip: wanna use a synonym? Just select the word and you’ll get the suggestions of other words above the keyboard. How awesome is that!? Additionally, you have a cloud-based document management which you can use to access all your documents with just a sign-in. All you need to do is install it and allow full access to your keyboard and you are a pro in minutes. 😉

App logo for Canva, one of the best apps for 2023 that students need.

Canva: Design, Photo & Video

Canva will never fail you. It’s an all arounder for all your creative needs! Use it to edit your photos and videos, create stellar social media posts and videos, flyers, photo collages and more. No need for any expertise for design as Canva provides a bunch of free templates for you to get started quickly. Here is the best part:

  • More than 2 million royalty-free images
  • Thousands of watermark-free stock videos
  • More than 25,000 pre-licensed audio & music tracks

Not just that, collaborate with your bestie on that dream project or class presentation anytime, anywhere.


Looking for more ideas on the best apps for 2023? Check out this blog too!

Want to get booking your 2023 travel plans? See the year’s top destinations now!