×
Download our guides Your Next Career Accommodation Money and banking Cost of living Visas Employment Health and safety Language Life in Australia Studying Getting around Travel Advertise

8 Awesome (and Free!) Student Apps To Make Your Life Easier

When it comes to balancing your studies, social life, health, work and home, it’s worth looking into ways to remove some of the pressure and make your life a little less stressful.

Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store are known for featuring millions of games, books, movies and music. But they also host some of the best study apps available to students. Be it exam study tips or tools to help you stay organised, here are eight apps that will make student life easier. 

1. Google Calendar

A feature-rich app, Google Calendar is perfect for scheduling classes, assignment due dates, exams, meetups with friends and everything in between. Set recurring events or reminders and customise your events to set up email and push notifications. 

Cost: Free

Available on iOS, Android and web

2. Microsoft Lens

Ever been in a class where your tutor has covered every inch of the board in formulae, diagrams and explanations? While it’s easy to take a photo of the board with your phone, putting it in your notes is a little trickier. Usually, you need to painstakingly copy everything down. 

Introducing, Microsoft Lens! This app makes your pictures much more readable, and any text in the image becomes searchable, thereby saving you time. You can also use the app to convert images to PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel files.

Cost: Free

Available on iOS and Android

Notion

Move over OneNote and Evernote! Notion is here to steal the limelight. Whether it’s to-do lists, reminders, recipes or notes, Notion makes it extremely easy to keep track of everything. 

Notion’s powerful but easy-to-use tools help you manage even the most complex of team projects so you never drop the ball. Although free for personal use, you can also sign up with your university email address to unlock extra features. Here is a video on how to set up and navigate Notion.

Cost: Free

Available on iOS, Android and desktop

Lost On Campus

Google Maps can help you find even the trickiest of addresses anywhere in the world. But one thing it cannot do is accurately find buildings on campus. Touted as Australia’s biggest campus mapping tool, you can use Lost On Campus to find lecture theatres, tutorial rooms and even toilets!

Cost: Free

Available on iOS and Android

Google Drive

Compared to Dropbox and iCloud, Google Drive is easily the most feature-rich app. Use it to store photos with your friends, notes, lecture recordings and so much more.

With its easy-to-use interface and powerful search function, finding something takes only a few seconds. Google Drive also offers 15GB of free storage plus the option to upload unlimited photos.

Cost: Free

Available on iOS, Android and web 

Forest

Whether you’re working at the office, studying in a library, listening to a lecture or just hanging out with friends, smartphones are usually the biggest distraction. Hundreds of apps mean hundreds of notifications fighting for your attention. 

Thankfully, Forest can help you stay focused by blocking certain apps on your phone. Want to use Gmail but not any of your social media platforms? Easy! Or maybe you want to block everything? That’s possible too! 

Forest also has a Chrome extension so you can block distracting websites. 

Cost: Free with in-app purchases for extra features

Available on iOS, Android and Chrome extension

Anki

Out of all the study apps for Android and study apps for iOS, Anki is one of the most highly ranked by students. And for good reason, too. 

Using flashcards might just be one of our best university study tips. They’re great for learning a new language or memorising complex terms. Luckily, Anki lets you make flashcards for free. The best part? Anki syncs across devices and allows you to add images, audio and even video.

Cost: Free

Available on iOS, Android, Windows and macOS

Mendeley

Referencing is often the most difficult part of any assignment. There are hundreds of different citation styles, and each has its own rules. 

Thankfully, Mendeley is here to solve your referencing woes. Add websites directly from your browser with a few clicks or import papers from your computer, and Mendeley will capture the necessary information for your citations. The best part is that it has a plug-in for Word, which means you can cite seamlessly while you write. 

Cost: Free for 2GB of storage. Premium plans start at $5

Available on Windows, macOS and Linux

Here are some more study apps that will make your life easier.