Todoist for task setting and reminders. It seems that people have different systems that work best for them, but I'm personally very happy with this one. The UI is very clean, and I really like how the task information automatically populates from your input. For example, typing Homework 1 @ COGS122 !1d next monday creates a task named "Homework 1" that's tagged as my COGS122 class with a reminder in 1 day and a due date of next Monday. I pay for the Pro plan which is about $50 a year

If you're doing any reading or writing, I highly recommend Zotero. It's a free citation manager that helps you organize your notes and creates citations for you in any style. It has integration with Word and Google Docs and can be easily modded to do a lot more. I started using it for my senior thesis, and now that I'm a grad student everything goes in there now.

Pornhub

Grammerly is great for autocorrecting, especially text canvas submissions

Some kind of calendar app. Google calendar or apple calendar. Those have probably made the biggest difference to me. Other than that, I’ve quit social media and all gaming, so to me it’s the lack of apps that make school/my life better

Edit: I still use discord for friends and class servers, but social media like instagram I decided to quit. I guess Reddit kinda counts too but I’m still on here so not entirely quit social media haha

11 apps that macbook users commonly have or suggest:

1. [Raycast](https://www.raycast.com/) \- It is a spotlight alternative on steroids. You can perform a number of tasks with this one app. Highly recommend.
2. [Blip](https://blip.net/) \- Easy, fast and light weight file transfer app if you have non Apple devices. Localsend is another which people use but I like Blip more.
3. [OnlyOffice](https://www.onlyoffice.com/desktop.aspx) \- Alternative to mac apps Pages (word), Numbers (excel) and Keynote (powerpoint). Works great with MS formats and file extensions. Has a PDF viewer too. You can also try [Libre Office](https://www.libreoffice.org/). Both of them are free to use.
4. [PdfGear](https://www.pdfgear.com/) \- Free PDF editor app.
5. [Encrypto](https://macpaw.com/encrypto) \- For encrypting files and folders with a password. Cross platform, so can be decrypted anywhere, provided the password is known.
6. [Iina](https://iina.io/) \- Good lightweight media player, supports way more formats than quicktime player. You can also go for the classic [VLC](https://www.videolan.org/vlc/) or [Elmedia](https://www.elmedia-video-player.com/) player.
7. [Boring Notch](https://theboring.name/) \- Makes your notch useful. Provides info with now playing media, has a shelf to drop files for later use or airdrop directly.
8. [Linear Mouse](https://linearmouse.app/) \- Gives all customisation features to your external mice. MacOS, sadly doesn't like non Apple external devices. [Better display](https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay) for external monitors.
9. [Transmission](https://transmissionbt.com/) \- Torrent client. Use a VPN, I recommend [Proton VPN](https://protonvpn.com/).
10. [Pear Cleaner](https://itsalin.com/appInfo/?id=pearcleaner) \- For cleaning out leftovers and junk files when uninstalling an app.
11. [Touch-Tab](https://github.com/ris58h/Touch-Tab) \- A utility app which allows switching apps in the same space using trackpad gestures. (Same functionality as Cmd+Tab but using trackpad)

Here’s a little dock hack I use: I’m not a big fan of the dock, so I strip out all the apps and set it to auto-hide on the left side of my screen. The only thing that bugged me was the annoying delay when it pops back up. Luckily, there’s a quick terminal trick to fix that — here’s what I use.

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -int 0
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.4
killall Dock

I could never find the perfect app, most were either too basic, too complex, or honestly just kinda ugly 😂 So I ended up designing my own.

It’s got color-coded categories, tasks, and built-in timers (so I can track the time I spend on freelance clients). Plus, you can add notes and links to keep everything in one place.

I’m still building it out and would love for you guys to take a look and share some feedback! 🙌
https://apps.apple.com/app/trick/id6746532930

Since you’ll be juggling PDFs and lecture slides, I’ve found TextSniper super handy, it lets you copy text instantly from any part of the screen, even inside images or non-selectable PDFs, which saves a ton of time when taking notes.

Obsidian

Skybble for Mac sticky notes

Simplicity is my biggest requirement. I use Trello and GoodTask and OneNote. To me, it needs to be as simple as using paper to be valuable and not have me wasting time organizing, while still offering digital advantages.

It’s a good question, and basically could be even better by initially not focusing on the app at all. Workflow processes such as GTD and PARA are essentially app-agnostic. I’ve run GTD with several different apps since it first came out: currently on Things and have been for several years. https://medium.com/@paulhamptonsmith/omnifocus-and-things-are-perfect-for-different-types-of-people-ive-been-both-a9e22a39615e

I am using Tabsence: Inactive Tab Manager.

Its a free Chrome extension and it helps me to keep my browser clean. If you are like me you start the day with a fresh browser and in the evening you have 200 opened tabs, most of them irrelevant by now...

Tabsence closes those tabs if they have been not used for a amount of time you specify. So while im working on my stuff my browser stays clean automatically without me even realizing. Saves me a lot of time and resources.

I'm using my own AI inbox summarai.co keep up with newsletters and educational blogs that I would otherwise never open.

Brisqi - It's a personal task management app with a Kanban setup. It focuses on privacy and comes with a lot of useful features. Give it a go, it may fit your needs.

Such an amazing app, I must say for an 11th grade student you've got great potential

OP fails to mention - app has intrusive pop-up ads, just thought I'd let y'all know

Such a clean app... I'll tell you this... You've got strong potential✨

Works, feels and looks great! I would like to be able to sort/tag things by class and by semester, but other than that keep it up! Will be using this as an agenda for the rest of this semester

edit: very minor bug - when I signed up and was prompted to verify my email the app welcomed me as Dan

Every time I see someone your age do something similar I get a boost of confidence in humanity.

• Canvas
• ChatGPT
• Academia
• OneNote
• Word

good notes! it’s not free, but it’s work every penny. it connects with Canvas, so u can submit through there as well. downloaded the app my sophomore year and got straight As the rest of my time in college!

ChatGPT and Remnote. Life savers

chatgpt and notion.

Zotero. Free app and super helpful for organizing articles, notes etc. It can connect with Word and automatically insert references.

Noteful is great for hand written notes.

The included Notes app is awesome for typed notes and instant syncing across devices.

A good PDF reader if the included one in Zotero isn’t enough for your needs; something like PDF Expert or Highlights.

Also play around with FreeForm (included with the iPad and Apple computers). Great for mind mapping, making connections, organizing your thoughts visually

Todoist & Obsidian

By using a productivity app you're gladly confirming your mind isn't enough.

I use notion and KopyPaste

i am writing notes in Notability but mostly on my IPad

rescue time
google calendar +tasks
microsoft sticky notes &notepad
and a lot of chrome extenisions :
UnDistracted
Eightify
webtime tracker
blockerx

Hi, that is indeed a really well designed and helpful survey. With respect to the academic life of freshmen, I can surely say this that a major issue they face is writing good essays with efficiency and perfection. It is usually considered a very tedious and time consuming task. However, what if I tell you I have a product-Weava-which is just what you need!

Using Weava, you can efficiently organise your research as it lets users highlight parts from any digital source, make annotations and organise it into folders that you make based on your outline. The tool is free to use, and currently has over 150,000 users though we have a premium subscription alternative. It's just so easy to use because all your research is organised based on your outline- all in one place- instead of having to waste time copying and pasting into one long unorganised word document or using other similar tedious approaches. Link to our chrome extension: https://www.weavatools.com/

Just my thoughts, but when in tech I think telling at how young age you achieved something should not be the norm.

It is a cool thing to make at a young age and any age but where people look for discussion of technical subjects, source code, knowing you are this many years old, your country, your gender is of no value.

I'm so impressed on what you achieved, there is obviously a lot to improve but that's something that will always happen. I gave i quick look to the code, while it tries to be well organized and have a good architechture it's noticable that you hurry up things a little bit, i would recommend the following:

• Try to order your files in a way that makes sense to you, there is always a lot of discusion about how to do it but at the end what matters the most is that there is an established organization, maybe try grouping everything based on the screen or functionalities.
• I saw that you were folliwing a healthy way to have dependencies inside each class, so i encurage you to give a look at dependency injection and the framework hilt.
• And the last thing is like someone else said, if you are looking for people to contribute try to add as much documentation as possible, not only on the read me but also in functions that you feel that have a very hard bussines logic inside them.

Really cool! Keep it up.

Looks awesome. Keep pressing on, your future will be bright.

Agree with the other comment about age but also think this should go in the app feedback thread.

That being said I do have the following feedback.

From a user's point-of-view

• The design is pretty clean and I generally like it
• Ad frequency seems to be a bit much
• Not a student but if I were, I likely wouldn't use this unless there was a way to schedule recurring events (i.e. college users might want to put their agenda here as well). In that same vein it would be nice to be able to order things and ideally give them durations and time

From a developer:

• Didn't look much into the code itself but you should delete the sample unit and instrumented tests. I would also recommend adding testing as it would be very good to have if you are ever trying to use this app to get an internship or android developer role. If I see an open source project on a resume, I'll definitely look for tests if I look at the project
• The apk on your site is debuggable which probably is not intended
• You should look into obfuscation and minification since 16 mb for an app like this is way too much. Also it sort of defeats the purpose of hiding the keys for the release variant since someone can just go decompile the release apk and take a look real quick
• If you are looking to get others to contribute (it's fine if you aren't), you may want to update your README and also add a section about contribution guidelines etc

Sorry if it seems like a lot! I think this project is pretty good but you'll have to keep working at it to give it that little extra that makes it better than competitors in the same space