Hey everyone! By popular demand, I’ve made a list of the apps I use as a “paperless” student in graduate school. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but these are some of the options available to those who are interested in going paperless in the new year! ☺️ Disclaimer: I am a student in the US using Apple products. I apologize in advance if any of these apps are unavailable in your country or for your device!
🌿 Scheduling / Time Management / Focus
Google Calendar - Super easy to use and customize to look exactly how you want it. Free and available across all your devices! This app is great if you’re looking for a no-nonsense way to schedule all of your classes and events.
iStudiez (Pro) - This app is great for students with a lot of classes, tests, and assignments. It’s helped me keep track of what assignments I have coming due and what tests are around the corner. This is the app I currently use for the majority of my scheduling and it’s been a life-saver!
BeFocused - an alternative to the popular Forest app. I really like all the data I can pull up about which tasks I took a long time on, how long I studied over x number of days, etc. The Pro version allows me to sync my data between all of my devices. It uses the Pomodoro method to keep me studying for longer without getting burnt out.
Noisli - I’m the kind of person who can’t study while listening to music, so I use this app to create some white noise when I study outside my house. It’s really nice and has a variety of sounds— I currently prefer brown noise + fireplace. ♥︎
🌿 Scanning / Document Management
ScannerPro - I have this app on my phone so I can quickly and easily scan in any textbook pages, handouts, etc that I would like to have for my notes. I like this app (and have actually used it to scan in a 1000+ page textbook lol) because it offers OCR, which means I can search for the text within the documents if I need to. There are other apps out there that perform similarly, this is just the one I use!
Files - I like the native Apple app to keep the semester’s documents available across all my devices. At the end of the semester I move them to my Google Drive.
Google Drive - I’m lucky that my school gives their students unlimited storage space on Google Drive. I store all my old semester’s work on Google Drive. Google docs / sheets / etc are also a great way to do group projects!
Notability - Great for taking notes on PPT lectures or for taking notes by hand. Vertical scrolling, split-screening two notes, and the ability to search through all the notes in the app at once (including handwriting!) set this app apart.
GoodNotes - this is the app of choice if you want maximum flexibility with the type of paper you take your notes on. It’s also my app of choice for keeping all of my textbooks at my fingertips.
OneNote - If you’ve seen my post on how I take notes, you know I use OneNote to type up all of my review outlines after each lecture. If you’re using a PC as a part of your paperless system, this app is a great alternative to the above two apps!
Neko Atsume - A cute game where all you have to do is fill up some food bowls, set out some toys, and wait for the cutest little cats to drop by to play. 🥰
Stardew Valley - If you’ve ever played Harvest Moon or another similar farming-style game, you’ll love Stardew. It’s a laid-back open-world style game where you can spend your time doing anything from farming to fishing to foraging to building a relationship with the townfolk. I like this game for my study breaks because each “day” in the game is ~10-15min long, so it’s perfect for a quick distraction before getting back to work!
I hope this helps! Happy studying!
