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Luckily, you don’t need those apps to organize your life or what you need for class. Here are the apps you should start using, and why they will work better than you might have thought.
Apple Notes Is More Than a Note-Taker
For many people, the Notes app is just a place to jot down a quick note or make a list, but it ismuch more than just a typing playground. Over the years, Apple has made it amuch stronger note-taking appby adding features that you’d normally need to pay for.
While you may still write and jot down notes within the app, you can also add checklists, different formatting options, and weblinks. These can help youformat your notesinto various categories and lead to further webpages explaining the content you’re learning about.
Some studentsprefer to handwrite their notes, which has been proven to help them remember the content longer than typing it.With the Apple Penciland on-device learning, there are various reasons why those students should use the Notes app.
Apple Pencil
The Apple Pencil (2nd Gen) is the best stylus available for your iPad. This latest iteration features wireless charging, palm rejection, and an intuitive touch interface.
Features like Smart Scribble andShape Recognitionhelp make your notes cleaner and more legible, which can be hard to achieve when your professor speaks as fast as a bullet train. These features use on-device intelligence to recognize the shape you’re trying to draw or the word you are writing, then clean them up for you.
For example, you might write your notes quickly before your teacher moves on to the next slide, making your handwriting somewhat illegible. Smart Scribble learns your handwriting when you write casually and will alter your rushed handwriting into it, so your notes don’t look like chicken scratch when you review them.
TheMath Notes featurealso comes in handy if you’re in a class that requires you to do many equations. When one is written out with an equal sign at the end, your device intelligently solves a math problem. This is great when trying to figure out an equation, and you don’t have a calculator next to you, though nearly every Apple device now has one.
On the other hand, some people may not want to write out their notes entirely andwant to add visuals instead. The Notes app lets them add photos, videos, and hand-drawn images to their notes.
You can add a photo or video from your library or take one in the moment, like if you want to take a picture of the board before you leave, because it has a lot of important information you didn’t have time to jot down.
However, if you’d rather draw a picture, like a diagram for biology class, you can insert a sketch, too. But if you’re not an artist, you can use Apple Intelligence on a supported device to turn your sketch into a more appealing visual.
You may think that’s all Notes can do, but the app goes beyond typing and drawing and can alsoserve as a portable scanner. With its built-in scanner, you can scan worksheets from your teacher and fill them out electronically.
This works better than taking a photo because it saves as a PDF and lets you align the image neatly in all four corners of the screen, so you don’t have improper scans.
If you like recording lecturesin the Voice Memos app, Notes has you covered, too. You can record audio directly within a note and view a transcript once done. Best of all, you don’t have to pause the recording to take notes—it will keep recording in the background.
The Notes app hasmorphed into more than a note-taking app. It is now your notepad, voice recorder, doodle board, and portable scanner. Unlike third-party apps that tend to serve one group of note-takers, the Notes app offers options for a wide range of them, whether you write your notes, draw them, or record them.
Do More Than Keeping a Schedule in Apple Calendar
The Calendar app is about more than justinputting events and important dates; it can be customized to center around your school schedule and individual courses. This can make your academic life less chaotic and more organized when you have a lot going on.
First, add your courses to your calendar with their start and end times and locations, and enable them to recur so they show up each week. This will allow you to access all the essential information in one spot without switching to different apps to get the whole picture.
However, some institutions allow you to import your class calendar directly from your student portal, and if this is the case, then all the essential information should already be included.
you’re able to store your class schedule, events, and clubs within the app, but they don’t all have to live on one calendar and become a jumbled mess. You can easily create individual calendars for each subject or category—such as a school club—and color-code them to know which category they belong to with just a glance.
Furthermore, suppose there are other classmates or group members you want to collaborate with on a calendar to share important dates with, like when a project is due, what time the exam is, or what the location of the class trip is. In that case, you canshare a single calendar with multiple people, and they can modify it freely. You’ll also be notified when an event is added, changed,or deleted—and who modified it.
you may also import different calendars into the Calendar app. So, if you have a class where the professor shares important dates via Outlook, you can sync your Outlook account to the calendar so that the dates also appear within the app.
The Calendar app is more than just a way to see appointment times and locations. It lets you collaborate with others, add important dates and attachments—such as a study guide for an exam—and customize each calendar to tell which events belong where easily. It can act as a central hub that works well with other applications and third-party services and keeps you aligned daily with your school and extracurricular schedules.
Reminders Is More Than a Task Reminder
While the Calendar app helps you manage your schedule, the Reminders app can help you manage your assignments. Yet, the Reminders app ismore than just an app to manage tasks; it is a great companion to other apps and allows you to easily organize your tasks based on class, due date, and assignment type.
The Reminders app is easy to use to input all your assignments due. You can make each class a separate list so you don’t have a bunch of tasks in one list spanning various courses.
Additionally, you canadd different sections within each listto further organize each class’s tasks. For example, you could have one section for homework, another for the group project due soon, and another for the upcoming final exam.
With the connection between the Reminders app and the Calendar app, any reminder you set with a date will automatically appear in the Calendar app. This is great for students who assign due dates to homework and projects, then check their school calendar to see what their week looks like. They can view important exam dates alongside assignments for other classes, helping them plan accordingly and avoid becoming overwhelmed with schoolwork.
Furthermore, when creating a task, you can add tags to categorize it, such as for a specific class, midterms, or finals. Then, you can make a Smart List that groups all the corresponding tags from multiple lists into one.
Utilizing tags and smart listsis excellent for managing homework, studying, or completing a project for midterms or finals. Combining the two features can make organizing your assignments and study schedule smoother and less complex.
For example, you may have homework from different classes that you need to do tonight. If you add the due date to tomorrow and create a Smart List compiling all tasks due tomorrow, you will see all the homework assignments you need to do tonight in one place.
Like with the Calendar app, you cancollaborate on lists in Reminders. If you have a project due, you can create a shared reminders list with each group member, and they can add, complete, and organize different tasks as the project progresses.
Furthermore, if you want to be reminded of something when texting a specific person, Reminders can also help with that. This is useful for a student taking notes for a sick classmate who doesn’t want to forget to tell them something important—like the date of a quiz—later when texting them the notes from class.
The Reminders app isgreat for students to stay on top of tasksand assignments. With its collaboration features, integration with other apps, customization options,and ease of use; it is an ideal solution for keeping everything organized without paying for a third-party app that may not offer the same capabilities.
Forget Pricey Textbooks, Just Use Apple Books
As an avid reader, I know there is nothing more relaxing than holding a physical book and reading, but I would not say the same about textbooks in college, especially given their prices. Sometimes the cost is so high that students feel they need a second student loan to cover them.
While this does not involve pricey third-party apps,Apple Books can be a better choicethan an expensive physical textbook. Digital books are significantly cheaper and can offer features that are impossible with a physical book alone.
Using a digital book with the Books app has multiple advantages over a physical book. One being that it’s always with you when connected to iCloud. One of the worst things is attending class and forgetting your book at home. This may cause you to struggle or not participate in class discussions, or—if you had a teacher like mine—you would get detention.
Your book is in your digital library, which means it goes wherever you go. You can access it from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac; if you have one of these devices, your book is with you. This is especially useful when you have downtime and want to get ahead on class reading.
This also frees up space in a student’s backpack. You no longer have to carry a heavy textbook to and from class; it lives digitally with you and doesn’t hurt your shoulder or back from the weight.
Furthermore, students no longer need to clutter the pages of a book with sticky notes to annotate specific sections or remember quotes for an essay. You can easily bookmark multiple pages or highlight text and quickly refer back to them in the Bookmarks or Highlights section of the app.
Physical books are nice to have, but textbooks can be expensive. Using the Books app for your textbooks and reading materials can save money, avoid cramped books, and help you find highlighted quotes and books more efficiently.
You don’t need to shell out money for the fancy-looking apps you see others using. The ones Apple supplies offer the same functionality, work better with your devices, and provide features that third-party apps may not.
Before spending money on an app you may only use for school, try Apple’s version first—you may find it accommodates all your needs and more.
