Tap into a world of study help at your fingertips with these apps
Get your smartphone working for you with these apps recommended by members of The Student Room to help maximise your studying – whether you need to stay on top of your notes, stay focused or just stay calm.
And don't forget to visit our study help forums to get even more advice from other students.
More like this: ace your exams with our guide to free revision resources
1. Exam Countdown Lite
Rather than focusing on what you need to do, this app lets you know how long you have left to do it – crucial for getting the balance of your revision across subjects right.
You can set countdowns for all your exams down to the last minute and see it all in one place, so you know exactly how much time you have left.
“Get the Exam Countdown app and plug in all the dates of your exams/deadlines so that you can prioritise different subjects over others,” advises Tombre.
“For me, having tangible proof that my exams were getting nearer and nearer really helped motivate me,” says Troubletracking about their experience of using the app.
Free
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2. Forest
Forest is designed to stop you being distracted by your phone and keep you focused on your work.
“I recommend trying this app called Forest. It's essentially a custom timer that knows whenever you exit the app during the timer. While the timer is going, a virtual tree is planted, and at the end of the timer the tree is fully grown and added to your virtual forest (hence the name),” says Lucy, a student at Sheffield Hallam University.
“If you exit the app during the timer then the virtual tree dies. I personally found this helped me become way more productive, kept me off my phone when I was meant to be working and was a pleasant visual representation of it too,” says Lucy.
The app costs £3.49 to download, but there are also similar free apps out there, such as Flora.
£3.49
3. Quizlet
Flashcards can be a really effective way to revise – but if you don’t fancy lugging them around with you for on-the-go study, you could download Quizlet to create online flashcards on your phone instead.
As well as letting you create your own, Quizlet has a library of millions of ready-made sets across a huge range of subjects and tons of games to help you improve.
“Quizlet is really useful for helping to memorise the content,” comments SB1234567890.
Free
4. Evernote
No more fishing scrunched-up pieces of paper out from the bottom of your bag – keep your revision notes organised and synced across all your devices with this app.
The app lets you organise your notes into virtual notebooks and format them however you like, whether as chunks of texts, bullet lists or charts. You can also add in images and voice notes.
“For notes that enable web-clipping, emailing them and generally organising them with multimedia, then you can't go much wrong with Evernote,” says Reality Check.
Free
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5. Calm
If revision and exam stress are starting to get to you, the Calm app can help with breathing exercises, tips on relaxation and sleep and gentle music to aid focus, sleep or rest.
Even just a few minutes of slow breathing can help ease feelings of tension, and don't underestimate how important sleep is to revision.
"I use the Calm and Headspace apps for meditation and relaxing music. If I feel anxious or that my mind is busy, I'll take even just five minutes to meditate and relax," comments Nerol.
Free
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6. Todoist
You can manage dates, tasks and events using Todoist, an app that allows you to schedule and organise reminders and notes.
You can place your tasks into ‘projects’ in the app – so you could, for example, break up parts of an essay into sections and give yourself chunks of time to complete each part.
You can also organise your weeks into tasks, to help you keep track of what you need to do next.
"I tend to make a revision timetable [and then] use the app Todoist to write up any tasks I need to do (school related or not) and it helps me prioritise them. It also motivates me as it gives you points for adding and completing tasks," says bunnisuh.
Free
