Best Apps, Tips, and Tricks for Students
For the last decade and a half, the Mac has been hugely popular with students. Walk into any student library or coffee shop, and you’ll see lots of MacBooks and MacBook Airs perched on tables with students typing away on them.
One of the reasons Macs are so popular is the sheer number of apps available that cater to the needs of the academically minded. Some of these are indeed cross-platform tools, but others are unique to macOS.
So here, we’ve compiled a guide to the best Mac apps for students. And we’ll throw in a few tips at the end too.
Write papers with Manuscripts
There are a ton of excellent writing tools available for the Mac, but few of them are designed specifically to cater to the needs of academic writing. That’s exactly what Manuscripts is for. It takes the daunting task of compiling complex academic documents and makes it a breeze thanks to its templates and structuring tools.
Within templates, Manuscripts alerts you to missing sections and displays the word count. It retains older versions of you work, so if you need to go back to a previous version, you can. The citation tools make formatting citations simple and you can export them via AppleScript to external citations software.
When you’re ready to show your work, Manuscripts got you covered there too, with support for Markdown, HTML, LaTeX, PDF, and Microsoft Word, among other formats.
Store research notes with Findings
Keeping lab notes neat and organized can be a real pain. Diligently noting down the details of every experiment is no good if you can’t find it or read it again later. Findings makes sure that won’t happen by allowing you to keep all your notes on your Mac in a format that makes sense to you.
You can organize notes by collections and current workflow status, and attach files such as images, spreadsheets, or anything else you need to your lab notes. Got a PDF of reference notes you use regularly? Just drag it into Findings and keep it handy.
Findings automatically creates a PDF of your notebook so you can print the whole thing out, or just the pages you need.
Make drafts with Scrivener
Scrivener is one of the best all-round writing tools on the Mac. It’s not specifically designed for academic writing, but many of its tools are perfect for compiling a thesis or research project. And it has several templates for academic papers in common formats used in both US and UK colleges and universities
You can structure your documents in a way that suits you, use the corkboard to take an overview of your document, and add notes and tags to the index cards. Scrivener has support for citations, bibliography, and footnotes, and when you need to get down to the actual business of writing, it’s Composition mode eliminates all possible distractions, leaving just the document on screen with the focus on the line you’re currently writing.
Pass your calculus course with PCalc
Your Mac has a built-in calculator, so why would you need to pay for one?
Because your Mac’s calculator doesn’t have anything like the feature set of PCalc. With support for Reverse Polish Notation (RPN), multiline display, multiple themes, and different button layouts, PCalc is the perfect calculator for students.
PCalc also has a huge set of unit conversions, a paper type that shows previous calculations, engineering and scientific functions, and support for binary and hexadecimal calculations.
Create best flashcards with Studies
Studies is designed to help you learn by allowing you to create your own notes in the form of digital flashcards, schedule learning sessions, set goals, and track progress. Each flashcard can contain an unlimited number of slides, and each slide can have text, images, and video on it. You can also download slides other users have shared.
Flashcards are organized by recently learned, scheduled to learn, or recently incorrect. And you can synchronize notes via iCloud to allow you to view them on your iPhone or iPad.
Know your elements with Periodic Table Chemistry
Who needs a periodic table as a wall poster when you could get one on your Mac. Periodic Table Chemistry not only looks beautiful, it’s full of useful information. You can filter elements by group so that you see, for example, only the noble gases or only base metals. But that’s not all, if you want to go beyond the familiar groupings, you can view elements based on properties, such as radioactivity.
Click on an element and you can view its detailed information. You can also see a diagram of an element’s electron shell and a complete table of their named molecular isotopes.
Write distraction-free with Ulysses
If Scrivener or Manuscripts aren’t quite right for you, Ulysses is a great choice for keeping all your writing work together and organizing it in projects. Whether its an essay, term assignment, or a full-blown thesis, Ulysses has the tools to get the job done.
If you’re writing for online publication, the Markdown editor makes formatting very easy indeed. And if you publish on Medium or Wordpress, you can do it directly from Ulysses. Alternatively, export to PDF or eBook formats. A separate iOS app allows you to synchronize with your iPhone and iPad using iCloud. Finally, if you use Aeon Timeline to plan your project, you can sync it with Ulysses as well.
Manage your studies with Aeon Timeline
Working on a large project or dissertation can be very daunting, especially if, as a student, it’s the first time you’ve attempted such a large chunk of work. The key is to plan it before you start and break it down into manageable sections.
Aeon Timeline helps you do just that and allows to visualize a project using a timeline as a metaphor to help you see which tasks are dependent on others and when each needs to be completed.
Better still, if your writing project involves making an argument to support a case, you can attach notes and evidence to sections of the project and map them in chronological order. Best of all, there are lots of ready-made templates to help you get started.
Collaborate with Google Docs
Not only does Google Docs provides a free environment for writing and editing essays and papers, and lets you to access them from anywhere, it’s a brilliant tool for collaborating with peers. By setting up a document and choosing how you want to share it, you can allow colleagues and teachers to read your work, add comments, or have full editing powers. One of our favorite features is hyperlink suggestions. If you need to add a link, select the text, press the link button and Google will attempt to work out the URL you need to link to.
Google Docs is available via a web browser on the Mac and via an iOS app.
Take best notes with Evernote
Evernote is a brilliant note-taking tool. Whether you want to scribble down text notes in a lecture, import images, or even record audio directly, Evernote can handle it. It has built-in optical character recognition, so you can scan notes with your iPhone, import them to Evernote and make them searchable.
In addition, Evernote allows you to share notes with colleagues — either in the app or via the web and you can use its in-built messaging tool to keep in touch and share ideas on notes.
Read on the go with iBooks
Textbooks are a necessary part of student life. And, while paper-based textbooks will never go away completely, there’s a definite advantage to using electronic versions — you don’t have to carry them around in a bag, for a start. Apple’s iBooks, installed with macOS, allows you to read and make notes on books you download from the iBooks store, but also any PDF or ebook that supports the epub format.
For books you buy from Amazon’s Kindle store, download the free Kindle app instead.
Shoo away distractions with Focus
Student life is littered with distractions both online and off. And while we can’t help with noisy dorms or the lure of the student union, we can help turn off those online interruptions to your work.
Focus allows you to block access to specific apps and websites — like Twitter and Facebook — for a set period of time to allow you to get on with your work. You can start it manually, or schedule Focus sessions for specific times.
More tips to excel at student life
Pick the apps you’re going to use and decide how you’re going to use them before the semester starts. That will allow you to keep your work organized and build a workflow that’s right for you early on.
Plan big projects, break them down into smaller tasks, and set deadlines for each. That will make the project much less daunting.
Schedule set times to work and try to stick to them. While you’re working, do everything you can to block out distractions and allow yourself to focus on the work.
There are dozens of apps that will make life as a student easier and more productive. Those described above are among the best, and will help put you on the road to successful studying. Best of all, lots of them are available with Setapp, a platform of 130+ best macOS app and tools. You can download Setapp for free and try. Good luck!
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