5 Best iPhone Apps for Students
Apps to improve your workflow and productivity as a student
Only use these apps when allowed. Never use any of these during exams or tests, unless you’ve been given permission to do so.
WolframAlpha
$2.99
If you’ve ever come across a challenging math problem, you know how frustrating it can be trying to understand the process of solving it without a teacher, tutor, or video to explain how it’s done. Wolfram Alpha has become my number one tool for understanding difficult math problems quickly, without having to experience the hair-pulling frustration of being stuck.
Wolfram Alpha lets you input math equations and expressions in plain text format, and it’ll give you solutions, visualizations, and even a step-by-step solution — a Pro feature that costs $5.49/month through the WolframAlpha desktop service but is included in the $2.99 app (one-time-purchase).
If you’re a math, physics, or engineering student, you’ll want WolframAlpha on your iPhone to make understanding difficult concepts and problems much easier.
GeoGebra Graphing Calculator
Free
Graphs become increasingly more important to understand the more advanced your education gets. Being able to fully understand graph shapes, positions, and interactions is a crucial skill to succeed in most areas, which is why GeoGebra Graphing Calculator is a must-have for any student.
The app has some advanced features, such as finding roots, turning points, and intersections. But it really shines in how simple and user-friendly it is. Many of my maths professors have recommended GeoGebra for understanding and quickly visualizing graphs, and while it has a great desktop version, the iOS version is a must-have for quickly pulling up graphs when confronted with a difficult problem on the fly.
QuickScan
Free
It’s very hard to find an affordable scanner app nowadays. Most of the popular ones have started to place crucial and important features behind expensive pay-walls. QuickScan is an app created by an incredibly talented developer who decided that students should be able to afford the tools they depend on. For that purpose alone, the app is a much-needed addition to the plethora of scanner apps that already exist.
The app itself is absolutely fantastic. There are no ads, no subscription service, and still boasts some impressive features. The most impressive ones are OCR scanning and the ability to export the scanned text as a PDF. If you need to quote large blocks of text or review text on your computer, using OCR scanning is the most efficient way. QuickScan makes using OCR scanning easy and cheap. If you find this app useful, you should definitely consider tipping the developer to show that users appreciate the effort of creating important tools for free.
QuickScan takes privacy seriously too, with zero data collection, and storing everything locally. You can therefore feel safe that whatever it is you scan, it stays on your phone until you decide to export it.
Citationsy
20 free references, unlimited references from $4.99/month
Being able to properly cite sources is something schools, universities, and academic journals take very seriously. Plagiarism is never allowed. If you need to write long papers that require multiple sources, writing references can quickly become very tedious.
Citationsy is an easy-to-use app that instantly creates references based on a URL, book, podcast or other types of media. The app supports scanning the barcode of a book to instantly create a reference, which is very handy. It supports all the most popular referencing styles, plus many, many more. While initially free, getting through 20 references can be done pretty quickly. The price of $4.99 is however very cheap to always have access to a service that automatically creates perfect references.
If you’re looking to speed your workflow up, and have some spare money lying around each month, you should definitely consider using Citationsy for handling and creating references.
Anki
$24.99
There’s no debating that active recall and spaced repetition is the most efficient way to learn new information and memorize facts. Anki is probably the most well-known flashcard-service out there and has become a must-have for many students over the years. If you study within a field that requires a heavy intake of new information and facts that you need to memorize, doing it with Anki will definitely yield the best results.
$24.99 seems like a steep price considering that the macOS app is free, but the power of Anki really shows when you can review your cards anywhere, at any time. You may not be able to sit down to review your cards every day, but with the iOS Anki app, you can. Instead of spending 20 minutes browsing Reddit, you can review your deck and make some progress towards that exam you’re studying for.
If you enjoyed this article, please give it a few 👏’s and comment if you, as a student, have any favorite apps of your own!
