College students prefer Macbooks, according to research by the Apple device management company Jamf. The reasons for this preference include better style and design, ease of use, more reliability, more durability, easy syncing, and other factors that have made many of us lifelong Mac users.
For those students using Macs, here is our selection of the best Mac apps for students to help get you through your studies. This list is in no particular order.
iStudiez Pro
iStudiez Pro is the ultimate organizer for your student life. It helps you remember your schedule and reminds you of any tests that are coming up.
After you input your data, the app also calculates your GPA and tells you which subjects are dragging it down so that you can start putting more effort in on them.
You can input a ton of different data to keep you on top of things, such as your instructor name, class times, and the name of the class. The app also offers color-coding options.
You can type in your assignment names and their due dates so that you can be reminded of these, too.
Ulysses
Few things are worse than typing in a mad rush for an hour only to have your MacBook freeze, and then remembering that you forgot to save your for. Ulysses takes care of this by enabling a simple auto-save in the background so you can just keep working on your thesis without worrying about losing your work.
The app also syncs seamlessly with multiple cloud providers—iCloud, Dropbox, and Google Drive.
But Ulysses is more than just an auto-save cloud-syncing wonder, it’s also designed to facilitate writing, and only writing. When you’re head-deep into a serious research project, distractions will nuke your focus, and Ulysses takes these away so that it’s just you and the paper before you.
The app is also very keyboard-focused meaning that you can do anything you want in Ulysses without taking your hands off the keyboard.
myHomework Student Planner
MyHomework Student Planner is one of the best Mac apps for students who need to keep track of their daily schedules. The app notifies you about deadlines for assignments and lets you see quickly what your daily schedule is.
It also works completely offline so there is no need to worry about staying productive if you’re somewhere with no WiFi. The information syncs across multiple devices and parents can access the data to ensure their kids are keeping up with their tasks.
The app also integrates with Teachers.io so that students can access the syllabus, assignments, announcements, and other information provided by educators.
Todoist
To-do lists break down large tasks into smaller ones, helping you finish the large task more easily. The free todoist app is one of the best Mac apps around for students who want to break through the clutter and get themselves organized for all their tasks.
But it is far more than a simple to-do app. You can add tasks and to-do’s in natural language and the internal AI will translate those tasks into actionable items. For example, if you write, “Study algebra every Wednesday afternoon,” the app will set a reminder for every Wednesday. You can add priority levels (simply type in two exclamation marks, or click the priority button) and organize tasks into projects by using hashtags. Built-in visualization features let you see at a glance if you’re actually getting somewhere on your to-do list!
The app is available for Mac, Android, iOS, and Windows.
MindNode
MindNode is an app that lets you mind-map anything from projects to book content so you can keep the ideas straight in your head.
MindNode also integrates with the stock Tasks app from Apple and can convert nodes into tasks seamlessly.
Focus Mode lets you blot out any distractions so that you can focus solely on that important Mind Map in front of you! The app is also incredibly aesthetic and the Mind Nodes are a pleasure to look at. This aesthetic quality is augmented through cool stickers in the app that can make your nodes clearer and easier to understand.
When working on a project or a thesis, Mind Nodes are an indispensable tool, making this one of the best Mac apps for both students and general users.
CleanShot X
We have spoken about CleanShot X in another article so we won’t go much into it here. The app is an awesome productivity tool that lets you do more—way more—with screenshots, including editing them quickly, blurring sections, adding annotations, and sending them easily to other devices via AirDrop.
For students who need to screen-cap regularly for assignments, CleanShot X is a must.
Manuscripts
Manuscripts is the writing companion that every academic writer needs. It provides over 1,000 journal article templates and has simple tools built into it that make academic writing a breeze.
For example, you can import a bibliography, drag sections around (instead of laboriously copy-and-pasting), insert citations through a simple search tool, caption images professionally, and do a bunch of other awesome things with it.
The app is 100% free and is available only for the Mac. (Sorry-not-sorry, Windows users.)
Path Finder—a Finder replacement
Path Finder from Cocoatech is an all-around productivity booster that makes using the Mac so much easier for students. The app has dozens of features and one of the most useful ones for students is the ability to save favorite folders so that you can return to them easily while working on assignments.
Path Finder is fully customizable according to your needs because of its modular system of features—you can add or remove features as needed. One of those modules lets you assign tags to files which helps you identify related project files more easily.
Although there are certainly many more apps available that can help students, the above are our top picks of the best Mac apps for students to be more efficient.
Click here to download a free 30-day trial copy of Path Finder!