40 Best time management apps in 2023
Last updated on: December 14, 2022
We all know the importance of proper time management — if you manage your time flawlessly, you’ll be able to perform high-quality work, but in less time. For that purpose, time management tools represent the technology that can help you achieve this, and they include:
- Work hours trackers,
- Communication platforms,
- Project and task organizers,
- Scheduling software,
- Team management systems,
- Calendar apps, and
- Mind mapping tools, among other essentials.
So, here are the best 40 time management apps in 2023, in no particular order, meant to help you make the most of your time, at any time.
But, before exploring the apps in more depth, let’s see what a time management tool really is.
Table of Contents
What is a time management tool?
Great time management is crucial to the success of any business (and individual), because it helps you:
- Set realistic goals,
- Maximize productivity, and
- Improve personal organization.
To be able to do all that, time management tools can come to your aid.
Time management tools help you organize and schedule your work activities, thus helping you reach deadlines and pre-determined goals.
If you or your team are constantly missing deadlines and deliverables, then it’s a good idea to consider a time management tool to keep you on track.
Time management tools are often misunderstood — they not only include time trackers, but also other software solutions such as:
- Calendars,
- Note-taking apps,
- To-do list apps,
- Task or project managers, and
- Habit trackers.
With effective time management tools, you’ll be able to keep track of time, and use it effectively while avoiding time wastage and beating distractions. In addition, they also help you have full control over your schedule.
40 Best time management tools you need to check out
By using a variety of apps, you will be able to achieve maximum productivity and keep your team on track with goals and deliverables. If you’re still not taking advantage of a time management tool, let’s take a closer look at our list of the best 40 time management tools.
Clockify – work hours tracker
Clockify is the ultimate tool meant to improve your time management — this time tracker and time management app enables you to track the time you spend on various activities, providing you with data meant to improve your work routine.
What’s Clockify about?
The Clockify time management software helps you track work hours, before calculating your billable hours and calculating payroll. You’ll also be able to assess whether you always spend your time at work on productive activities, or not.
Once you create an account, you can choose how you want to track time on the Time Tracker page:
- Timer mode — just start the timer once you start working on an activity, and stop it as soon as you’re done.
- Manual mode — enter the time you’ve spent working on an activity manually. Alternatively, you can enter time manually in the Timesheet view.
After you’ve logged all your time, you can generate Reports — Summary, Detailed or Weekly — indicating how productive you are with your work within a specific time period (week, month or year), and how much you need to invoice your clients.
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
Take advantage of real-time productivity insights by automatically tracking your time on desktop with:
Clockify’s key features
Let’s take a look at some of the most prominent features:
- Billing reports,
- Calculating billable hours,
- Kiosk mode,
- Scheduling,
- 80+ integrations (QuickBooks, Trello, Asana, Jira, and many others), and
- Reminders for due timesheets.
Type of plan and availability | Clockify pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $3.99 per user/month billed annually |
Availability | – macOS – Windows – Linux – Android – iOS – Firefox – Chrome – Safari – Edge |
Habitica – RPG game-style task manager
Habitica is an app that gamifies productivity and habit-forming in the best way possible. It’s a good investment if you want to get yourself on top of tasks, do chores, and complete to-do lists — and most importantly, develop healthy habits.
What’s Habitica about?
For people who find it difficult to stay consistent in forming new habits, Habitica offers a reward system that makes the progress more visible and tangible. It approaches the process as if it was an RPG game, and the user is the main character.
You enter your to-do lists, daily new rituals or habits, and then get experience points for every task finished. With the experience points, you level up your character and are able to customize everything about them.
Habitica also offers:
- Forming a “party” with friends and family to tackle tasks easier,
- Joining community “quests” to find support and earn points (for example, ‘no sugar for a month’ group),
- Creating custom rewards,
- Task reminders, and
- Socials for meeting like-minded individuals.
Habitica’s key features
Now let’s look at the most prominent features:
- Create customizable tasks,
- A color-coding system for tasks that need the most attention, and
- Dailies (tasks that you schedule repeatedly).
Type of plan and availability | Habitica pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | No |
Cheapest paid plan | $4.99 per user/month billed annually |
Availability | – Android – iOS |
Plaky — project and task management software
Plaky is one of the simplest time management tools for planning, tracking, and managing your tasks and projects. This project management software helps you get status reports and collaborate with your teammates with just one click.
What’s Plaky about?
Plaky allows you to organize everything in one place:
- Access your team’s tasks,
- Assign team members to tasks,
- Discuss the activity in a Plaky card,
- Share files,
- Get notifications about updates and
- Analyze data with Kanban view.
Plaky’s key features
Let’s dive straight into Plaky’s features:
- Progress tracking,
- Integration with Clockify for time tracking, and
- Three different types of boards based on access level: private, public, and shareable.
Type of plan and availability | Plaky pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | Free |
Availability | – macOS – Windows – iOS – Android |
ProofHub – Work management & team collaboration platform
ProofHub is an all-in-one work management and team collaboration solution for teams of all sizes. This easy-to-use and intuitive SaaS-based software solution offers an inbuilt, accurate time tracking application as one of its powerful features.
What’s ProofHub about?
This time tracking feature enables users to improve their time management skills as they have complete time data at their fingertips. They can find out how much time they spent on what tasks, what are the billable hours of projects, and if other users of the team are tracking their time or not.
ProofHub’s key features
The efficient time tracker allows you to:
- Add multiple timesheets to record your time data and use them for payroll, client billing, estimation, tracking, and even time management,
- Set time estimates for tasks to define how much time it should take to complete a particular task,
- Figure out if a particular task took longer than expected to be completed,
- Track time spent on tasks either manually or using timers, and
- Create custom time reports of people and projects.
Type of plan and availability | ProofHub pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | No |
Cheapest paid plan | $45 per month billed monthly |
Availability | – Web – Android – iOS – Chrome – Safari – Firefox – Chromium |
Pumble — communication platform
Launched in 2020, Pumble is a free team communication and collaboration tool that makes it perfect for businesses who want to interact with teammates across multiple departments. Pumble has a simple user interface, making it easy to instantly message your team members or make audio and video calls.
What’s Pumble about?
Even with its free version, Pumble already offers a wide range of features that can compete with some of the most established apps out there.
With Pumble, you’ll be able to:
- Message your coworkers,
- Conduct free video and voice calls,
- Take part in conversations with an entire group, and
- Use dedicated rooms for collaboration and grouping up.
In addition, you’ll be able to share images, videos, maps, and many other formats meant to clarify your thoughts in a conversation. Pumble is a great alternative for Slack because it is much more cost efficient for business teams.
Pumble’s key features
Some of the key features this tool offers are:
- Searching through past conversations,
- Creating customizable sidebar, and
- Unlimited users.
Type of plan and availability | Pumble pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $1.99 per user/month |
Availability | – Web – Android – iOS – Windows – macOS – Linux |
Asana – team organizer
Asana is meant to improve your team time management by streamlining team collaboration — your team can easily manage tasks and projects, and not waste a minute wondering about who needs to do what, and when.
What’s Asana about?
With Asana, you’ll be able to:
- Prioritize tasks and projects,
- Define deadlines,
- Specify project details, and
- Assign tasks to the most appropriate team members.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to follow the tasks’ progress on a straightforward visual project plan, one which allows you to notice and prevent potential problems, gaps, and overlaps.
Asana’s key features
Asana’s core features include the following:
- Receiving notifications about project updates,
- Breaking work down into tasks and assigning them to team members,
- Reviewing milestones and monitoring team’s progress, and
- Focus Mode that allows you to see and tackle one task at a time, without feeling tempted to succumb to the dangers of multitasking.
Type of plan and availability | Asana pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $10.99 per user/month billed annually |
Availability | – Web – Android – iOS – Chrome |
Flow – project and team manager
Flow is a straightforward management software meant to help you manage projects and teams, as well as track the tasks you’re working on with your team. You’ll be able to plan and manage projects, keep track of everything through progress timelines, and visually organize your workflow through a drag & drop system.
What’s Flow about?
Flow also allows you to:
- Track your task’s progress,
- Associate tasks with notes, comments, and subtasks, and
- Link tasks with specific start times and deadlines.
When it comes to team management, you’ll be able to manage multiple teams separately, as well as define user permissions, by distinguishing between private and public projects.
Flow’s key features
This is a list of Flow’s features to help you understand what it can do:
- 100+ integrations with your favorite tools,
- Creating public and private projects, and
- Real-time notifications.
Type of plan and availability | Flow pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | No |
Cheapest paid plan | $6 per user/month billed annually |
Availability | – Android – iOS – Windows – macOS – Web |
Taskade – task manager and collaboration tool
Taskade is a comprehensive task management tool with rich collaboration features. With Taskade, you’ll be able to work on both short-term and long-term projects from a virtual workspace where all users can add tasks and create to-do lists.
What’s Taskade about?
The core of this task manager is its project progress system — all users will be able to view their tasks, and then mark them as complete. The more tasks you mark, the more the progress bar fills up, indicating how much more you need to do to finish the project.
You’ll also be able to enjoy effective collaboration features, such as:
- Team and direct chat,
- Video conferencing,
- Deadlines and reminders, and
- Recurring tasks and team permissions.
Taskade’s key features
Taskade offers the following set of features:
- Ability to plan future milestones,
- Ability to create unlimited nested outlines, and
- Real-time syncing across your phone, tablet or computer.
Type of plan and availability | Taskade pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $5 per person/month |
Availability | – Web – Windows – macOS – iOS – Android – Chrome – Linux – Firefox – Edge |
Google Tasks — a simple task organizer
Google Tasks, as its name suggests, is an app meant to help you capture, edit, and manage all your tasks, no matter their type. With Google Tasks, each task you create and manage will automatically sync across all your devices.
What’s Google Tasks about?
With Google Tasks, you’ll be able to:
- Create specialized task lists that show only your most important to-dos,
- Break down your tasks into subtasks, for easier management,
- Set and track due dates for tasks, and
- Organize your tasks by priority, based on their due dates.
Your time management efficiency will also benefit a lot from the tool’s integration with Gmail and Google Calendar.
For example, your Google Tasks integration with Gmail will enable you to create tasks directly from emails, view all tasks in the sidebar of the Gmail panel while managing your inbox, as well as directly track all tasks back to their source emails.
Google Tasks’ key features
Here’s what you can expect from Google Tasks:
- G-suite integration,
- Ability to track your tasks from a computer or mobile device, and
- Ability to change the order of the tasks.
Type of plan and availability | Google Tasks pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | Free |
Availability | – iOS – Android – Windows – macOS – Linux – Firefox – Chrome |
MyLifeOrganized – GTD task organizer and manager
MyLifeOrganized is a robust task organizer and manager that works on the principles of the Getting Things Done system, while also syncing all your to-do items across devices.
What’s MyLifeOrganized about?
You’ll be able to:
- Create tasks and group them into subtasks,
- Compile checklists in the drag & drop interface,
- Keep your work in order by creating hierarchical lists, and
- Define dependencies between tasks.
Apart from that, the software also allows you to set up location-based reminders that recognize where you are (e.g. at a shopping mall) and notify you with a corresponding to-do list (e.g. a shopping list).
MyLifeOrganized’s key features
MyLifeOrganized offers a rich set of options, but we highlighted its most invaluable ones:
- Percent-complete tracking for projects,
- Syncing with Cloud across all devices, and
- Mobile access, and
- Time tracking.
Type of plan and availability | MyLifeOrganized pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes, for iOS and Android only |
Cheapest paid plan | $14.95 per year (Cloud Sync Service) |
Availability | – Web – Windows – iOS – Android |
My Daily Planner — a daily planner app
My Daily Planner, as its name suggests, is a daily planner app that focuses on the simple basics meant to help you organize and plan your day.
What’s My Daily Planner about?
By using My Daily Planner, you’ll be able to:
- Define your priority tasks, and cross them out when completed,
- Plan and organize work on the said priority tasks,
- Define and keep track of task deadlines in a calendar view, and
- Stay on track with your work through timely reminder alerts.
Each section offers several additional perks to help you streamline and speed up your workflows, so you’ll be able to:
- Group to-do lists in separate folders, to give your work context,
- Handle your assignments in two calendar modes: the Week Mode and the Month Mode, and
- Keep an archive of your completed tasks.
Unlike most similar apps, My Daily Planner doesn’t delete the to-dos you mark as completed, but lets you check back with them even after you’ve accomplished them.
My Daily Planner’s key features
Here’s a quick look into some useful My Daily Planner features:
- Ability to split tasks into subtasks,
- Option to define recurring tasks, and
- Ability to add tasks by issuing voice commands.
Type of plan and availability | My Daily Planner pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | Free |
Availability | – Android – Windows |
Nimbus Note – note manager
Nimbus Note is a simple note manager — you’ll be able to create and edit notes, sort them in folders and subfolders, and then share them with coworkers.
What’s Nimbus Note about?
The tool lets you sort and organize your notes, as well as add context to them, by labeling them with tags. Nimbus Note also lets you add supporting material to your notes, in the form of audio, video and image files.
You can then turn your notes into comprehensive to-do lists, meant to help you keep track of your assignments.
Nimbus Note’s key features
Here are the main features of Nimbus Note:
- Digitization of paper documents (business cards and pictures),
- Text recognition for digitized documents, and
- 2-step verification for data security.
Type of plan and availability | NimbusNote pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $6 per user/month billed annually |
Availability | – Windows – Chrome – Opera – Android – iOS – Chrome |
Evernote — notes organizer
Evernote is a famous note-taking app that offers an extensive list of features.
With an easy to use interface, you will be able to capture, organize, access and search all notes. Evernote works across all devices, so you can quickly switch between devices whenever you want.
What’s Evernote about?
Evernote is a place to record and organize your thoughts and ideas, images and files, voice memos and handwritten notes — all in one cloud — allowing you to access everything from your computer, smartphone or tablet.
Evernote’s key features
What features are included in Evernote’s plans? Some of them are:
- Document scanning,
- Character recognition, and
- Personal planner and calendar.
Type of plan and availability | Evernote pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $5.83 per user/month billed annually |
Availability | – OS X – iOS – Chrome OS – Android – Windows – Windows Phone – BlackBerry – webOS |
Bear – a note-taking app
Bear is a cloud-based note-taking app meant to help you capture your thoughts and ideas, by turning them into to-do lists you can later tackle and manage.
What’s Bear about?
With Bear, you’ll be able to add notes, tags, and attachments, but also create links between notes, in order to weave your thoughts into a bigger picture, such as an in-depth essay, story, or blog post. To make sure your notes always stay in order, you can associate them with the right hashtags.
The app also offers a focus mode you can use when you really want to concentrate on your writing — by using this mode, you’ll hide the Notes List and Sidebar, which will bring your selected note to the forefront.
Bear’s key features
Here are some essential features that Bear offers:
- Beautiful selection of themes and typography,
- Unique notes encryption with Face/Touch ID, and
- Multiple export options (HTML, PDF, DOCX, MD, JPG).
Type of plan and availability | Bear pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $14.99 annually |
Availability | – macOS – iOS – Chrome – Safari – Firefox – Opera |
GoTo Meeting – online meetings scheduler
Join.me is now part of GoTo Meeting, a web conferencing and online meeting software designed to help you set up online meetings and web conferences, as well as share your screen with collaborators. You’ll save a lot of time you’d otherwise spend getting everyone from your team together in front of the same screen.
What’s GoTo Meeting about?
With this scheduling app, you’ll be able to set up or join conference calls, participate in live text chats, and enjoy a number of sharing options:
- Sharing a screen,
- Sharing screen control, and
- Multiple screen sharing.
You’ll also be able to manipulate meetings, by scheduling, annotating, recording, locking or exiting them when you see fit.
GoTo Meeting’s key features
What’s included in GoTo Meeting plans? Here are some useful features:
- Ability to include 250 participants from over 40 countries,
- Audio and video encryption, and
- Integration with popular apps (Slack, Outlook, Chrome, or Salesforce).
Type of plan and availability | GoTo meeting pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | No |
Cheapest paid plan | $14 per organizer/month billed annually |
Availability | – Android – iOS – Windows – Chrome |
Clara – meeting scheduler
Clara is an AI email time management software meant to streamline your meetings, by helping you schedule and coordinate them. You’ll be able to set up meetings easily by automating the process of arranging a meeting through email.
What’s Clara about?
Once you install Clara, each time you need to finalize agreements for a meeting, it will find a solution that fits well with everyone’s schedule. It will also send out follow-ups and invites to attendees, before noting everything in your calendar.
Considering that this time management software tackles all your meeting-related email correspondence automatically, you’ll be able to:
- Enjoy a decluttered inbox, and
- Focus on daily activities that really matter, instead of wasting a lot of your day on scheduling.
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
Want to find out how to create a productive workspace? Everything you need to know about digital decluttering is here:
Clara’s key features
Are you ready to find out Clara’s main features yet?
- Automatic follow-ups,
- Speech recognition and use of natural language processing to sound human, and
- Integration with Zoom, Google Meets, Greenhouse, and Lever.
Type of plan and availability | Clara pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | No |
Cheapest paid plan | $99 per user/month |
Availability | – Web |
TimeTree – shared calendar app
TimeTree is a shared calendar app meant to help you coordinate events in your calendar together with friends, colleagues, family, or whoever you need.
What’s TimeTree about?
With TimeTree, you’ll be able to:
- Plan family-oriented events,
- Schedule your academic life,
- Organize your work, and
- Delegate tasks.
The TimeTree app lets you:
- Create calendars for each group of people,
- Add and chat with members,
- Share files and notes,
- Set reminders, and
- Synchronize all calendars together to make sure nothing ever overlaps.
In essence, you’ll be able to manage:
- Shopping lists,
- Anniversaries,
- School schedules,
- Daily meetings,
- Inventory schedules,
- And much more, in 14 languages.
TimeTree’s key features
TimeTree amplifies your productivity with the following features:
- All-in-one calendar (living room, social, and work),
- Smart calendar sharing, and
- News and updates on your own timeline.
Type of plan and availability | TimeTree pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $44.99 /year |
Availability | – Web – Android – iOS |
LastPass — password manager
LastPass is the leading password manager for keeping your passwords and login credentials safe.
Beyond password storage, LastPass paid plans also offer:
- Shared folders,
- Security audit, and
- Encrypted file storage.
What’s LastPass about?
LastPass is an easy-to-use password management tool that provides unlimited password storage and synchronization between multiple devices. With multiple layers of security and many account recovery options, this tool is a very secure option for banks and militaries. Aside from institutions, individuals and teams can greatly benefit from using LastPass as well.
LastPass’ key features
Is LastPass worth it? Let’s explore its powerful set of features:
- Password generator,
- Dark Web monitoring, and
- Security dashboard
Type of plan and availability | LastPass pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $2.90 per month billed annually |
Availability | – Windows – Chrome – Firefox – Safari – Opera – Edge – iOS – Android |
1Password — password organizer
With a very secure data system, 1Password is an excellent organization manager for password storage. It uses AES 256-bit encryption, making it a great choice for banks and governments, as well as any teams looking for a secure way to manage their passwords.
What’s 1Password about?
1Password is a high-quality password keeper that works on all platforms and devices. In addition to password storage, you will be able to store documents and security notes.
1Password’s key features
What features does 1Password have? Here’s how it can keep your data safe:
- Multiple password vaults,
- Secret automation,
- Travel mode, which keeps your vaults safe when traveling, and
- Watchtower security, which checks for password strength and data breaches.
Type of plan and availability | 1Password pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | No |
Cheapest paid plan | $2.99 per month billed annually |
Availability | – Windows – macOS – Linux – Android – iOS – Chrome – Safari – Edge – Firefox – Brave |
Forest – focus app
Forest is the ultimate focus app that helps you save time by encouraging you to pursue your tasks and avoid procrastinating on your phone.
What’s Forest about?
The gist is simple:
- First, you blacklist websites you want to avoid.
- Then, when you want to focus on a task, you plant a virtual seed. Within the next 30 minutes, the seed grows into a virtual tree, but only if you stay focused on the task.
- In case you falter on your task and check a website you’ve previously blacklisted, your tree withers and dies instantly.
- But, if you manage to stay focused on all your tasks within their 30-minute time-frames, you cultivate an entire forest.
As an added bonus, if you spend the virtual coins you earn in the tool, the Forest team contacts their partners — Trees for The Future, and arranges for a real tree to be planted somewhere.
Forest’ key features
Forest includes many elaborate features, but we’ve set aside the following:
- Planting solo or planting with friends or family,
- Option to tag your plants (work, study, social, rest, etc.), and
- Performance awards.
Type of plan and availability | Forest pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes, Android and Chrome only |
Cheapest paid plan | $1.99 for iOS and free on Android |
Availability | – Android – iOS – Chrome – Firefox |
Freedom — app and website blocker
Freedom is a time management tool that helps you:
- Track time,
- Block websites, and
- Schedule sessions.
Freedom is simple and easy to use because everything can be accessed through its dashboard in just a few seconds.
What’s Freedom about?
Freedom will block your access to websites that you want to visit while working.
For example, if social media makes it challenging for you to focus on work, Freedom will prevent you from logging in.
Freedom also allows you to create work sessions that serve as a ‘blocker’ and determine when you should be working and when to block distracting websites, browsers, and apps.
Freedom’s key features
Freedom is full of exclusive features, here are some that will help you do what you love:
- Advanced scheduling,
- Focus music and ambient sounds, and
- Syncing across devices.
Type of plan and availability | Freedom pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | No |
Cheapest paid plan | $3.33 per month billed annually (unlimited access for one year) |
Availability | – Windows – macOS – Android – iOS |
Noisli — background noise and color generator
Noisli is the perfect time management tool if you’re quite sensitive to noise. Using Noisli can help you stay more productive because the tool drowns out other noises regardless of whether you’re in a coffee shop, a library, or at home.
What’s Noisli about?
Noisli is an interesting tool that encourages focus time and is perfect for those who need constant stimulation.
The basic plan offers sixteen sounds, including volume control and a customizable timer, allowing you to adjust the time you want the sounds to play as well as your preferred volume level.
Noisli also has a simple text editor, which is great for taking notes and sharing ideas. If you are a note-taker, Noisli can help you stay more productive.
Noisli’s key features
Here’s how Noisli can help you work and relax better:
- High quality background sounds,
- Oscillation option that can change the volume of single sounds within a Combo, and
- Sleep timer option.
Type of plan and availability | Noisli pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $10 per month billed annually |
Availability | – macOS – Windows – Google Chrome – Mozilla Firefox – Safari – Edge |
myNoise – noise generator
MyNoise is an effective noise generator that offers a large number of sounds meant to help you stay focused on your work.
What’s MyNoise about?
With myNoise, you can choose your preferred group of sounds, and then adjust the volume for the individual sounds within that group.
The selection of sounds ranges from the usual to the unexpected:
- Rain on a tent offers the soothing sounds of rain falling above your tent. You’re also prompted to combine this group of sounds with the “Jungle” selection for a maximum immersive effect.
- Examination hall offers you the unexpectedly relaxing sounds of a University hall during an exam: you can listen to distant coughing, pen clicking, writing, and faint footsteps of your supervisor. What better way to make you concentrate on a task at hand than to look back to the days when you had no choice but to finish your paper before the time was up?
However, these are just two of the many options you can choose from — the tool also offers regular interesting updates.
My Noise’s key features
My Noise comes with the following notable features:
- Over 200 customizable sound generators,
- Integration with Spotify, and
- Customization of the intensity of various frequencies.
Type of plan and availability | My Noise pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | Download for $10 on iOS or Android |
Availability | – Web – iOS – Android |
Kiwake – unconventional alarm clock
Kiwake is an interesting twist to the old alarm clock formula — you have to prove you’ve left your bed, and there is no snoozing option at all.
What’s Kiwake about?
Once the first alarm goes off, you’re prompted to get up and take a picture of a specific object located far from your bed. Then, you have to complete a quick mini-game, in order to wake up your mind.
In the end, you’re prompted to go over your schedule for the day and review your main goals. Once you’ve completed all these steps, the alarm shuts down.
Luckily, Kiwake doesn’t require you to jump upright straight away — if you set up a cooldown timer, you’ll be allowed to stretch first. But, for no longer than 3 minutes.
Kiwake’s key features
Kiwake might be a great smart alarm solution for you, because it offers:
- Fully-customizable wake-up process,
- Multiple alarms for different days of the week, and
- Optional soothing sounds.
Type of plan and availability | Kiwake pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $13.99 per year |
Availability | – iOS – Android |
Focus@Will – collection of neuroscience-based music
Focus@Will provides you with instrumental music meant to help you finish work faster and procrastinate less by increasing your productivity and focus levels.
What’s Focus@Will about?
The app combines neuroscience and music — you get tens of thousands of hours of instrumental music in 50 channels that are updated with new tracks every month.
The bonus channel of this time management software is the one specifically designed for people with ADD and ADHD. It can help you improve the intensity and duration of focus and attention because it uses characteristics of sounds created by neuroscientists.
Once you’ve grown accustomed to the music, it will keep you in a focused state for a 200-minute session.
Focus@Will’s key features
So what are the main characteristics of this neuroscience based focus app?
- Music specifically written for users,
- Option to monitor your effectiveness, and
- Seven music styles available.
Type of plan and availability | Focus@Will pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | No |
Cheapest paid plan | $69.99 per year |
Availability | – Web – Android – iOS |
Pocket – bookmarking service
Pocket is a bookmarking service that is perfect for those moments when you want to save something you’ve found on the Internet for later — news articles, quotes, videos, or anything you may encounter but have no time to tackle right now.
What’s Pocket about?
Apart from letting you save content you’ve found online, Pocket also allows you to read and manage the saved content, and even include highlights and comments to the text. Included are also text-to-speech and offline mode.
Even when you’re waiting at the dentist’s or going through a tedious work commute, this time management app allows you to enjoy interesting content and not waste a minute of your time.
Pocket’s key features
Pocket offers an array of powerful features that can help you organize better, including:
- Syncing across a variety of devices,
- Discover feature, and
- Audio playback option.
Type of plan and availability | Pocket pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $44.99 per year |
Availability | – Web – Android – iOS – Kobo eReader |
Scribe – knowledge sharing tool
Scribe is a free Chrome extension that lets you transform content into step-by-step guides. It captures a workflow you complete on the computer, turning clicks and keystrokes into written instructions and highlighted screenshots.
What’s Scribe about?
Scribe can save you from attending a meeting just to share a process, and its guides can help quickly build out a knowledge base. This tool is great to use with Loom for quicker process guides.
With Scribe, you’ll be able to:
- Instantly create step-by-step instructions,
- Share guides with a link or embed in other platforms,
- Edit any guide quickly when the process changes,
- Track Scribe views, and
- Save time creating work instructions and SOPs.
Scribe’s key features
Scribe is well-known for its most essential features, such as:
- Business process automation,
- Workflow configuration, and
- Training modules.
Type of plan and availability | Scribe pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $23 per user/month |
Availability | – Chrome – Windows – macOS |
Loop Habit Tracker – a mobile habit tracker
Loop Habit Tracker is a straightforward, open-source habit tracker meant to help you sustain good habits and reach your goals — complete with graphs and charts showing your progress over time.
What’s Loop Habit Tracker about?
Once you decide to cultivate a habit, select an hour when you want to tackle it each day and then set a reminder within the app. You’ll then be able to check, dismiss, or snooze the habit directly from the received notification.
This tool also allows you to track your habit score within graphs, charts, and statistics, and then it calculates the progress you’ve achieved with the said habit, through a specialized formula:
- If you follow your schedule, the habit becomes stronger.
- But, if you skip a few days, the habit becomes weaker. However, the app doesn’t annul the progress you’ve made so far.
For extra functionality, you can even install Loop Habit Tracker on your Android Watch and manage habits and its reminders as easily as ever.
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
If you want to learn more about how people actually track time, check out our Clockify blog below:
Loop Habit Tracker’s key features
Loop Habit Tracker helps you create and practice good habits by providing:
- Simple and modern UI,
- Detailed graphs and statistics, and
- Privacy security.
Type of plan and availability | Loop Habit Tracker pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $23 per user/month |
Availability | – Android |
SyncBack – backup software
SyncBack is an online backup software for your data. The app lets you back up, sync, and restore your files automatically and in regular intervals.
What’s SyncBack about?
With SyncBack, you’ll be able to back up your important data to popular cloud services such as Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive. This backup software also gives you the option to back up your data on multiple operating systems.
SyncBack’s key features
SyncBack includes a number of features, but its most prominent are:
- Schedule backup,
- File versioning, and
- AES-256 encryption.
Type of plan and availability | SyncBack pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $39.95 (one-time purchase) |
Availability | – Windows – macOS – Linux – Android |
Mind42 – online mind mapping software
Mind42 is a free, browser-based mind mapping tool with collaboration features that allows you to make sense of and organize your thoughts, as well as visualize your work.
What’s Mind42 about?
With this time management app, you’ll be able to:
- Create structured diagrams to serve as your to-do lists,
- Brainstorm ideas,
- Organize events, and
- Add an accompanying image to each branch (you can then keep these lists private or share them with others.)
The thoughts and actions you can capture and link with Mind42 are numerous, so you can use this time management app for business and private plans — from brainstorming ideas for your newest project to compiling a list for your next movie marathon.
Mind42’s key features
Mind42 offers a software that allows you to manage your ideas with:
- Hierarchical structure (lets you organize your documents hierarchically) ,
- Flowchart, and
- Mind Maps.
Type of plan and availability | Mind42 pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | Free |
Availability | – Web |
Sanebox – an email manager
In gist, Sanebox is an email manager meant to help you keep your inbox clean of unwanted clutter and highlight your priority conversations.
What’s Sanebox about?
This tool is able to:
- Notify you of your most important messages once they arrive,
- Hide your inbox when needed, to help you avoid constant interruptions (through the “Do Not Disturb” features),
- Remove annoying, unwanted senders,
- Point out if someone hasn’t replied to you, and
- Remind you to send follow-ups.
As a highlight, Sanebox also helps with minimizing the space in your inbox usually taken up by attachments. The SaneAttachments feature lets you store attachments in Dropbox, Google Drive, or Evernote, for safekeeping.
Sanebox’s key features
As a tool that helps you control and manage your emails, Sanebox features:
- Third party integrations,
- Alerts/notifications, and
- Activity dashboard.
Type of plan and availability | Sanebox pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | No |
Cheapest paid plan | $7 per month |
Availability | – Web |
IFTTT – a conditional statements creator
IFTTT is a conditional statements creator based on the famous “If this, then that” condition. With this tool, you’ll be able to connect devices, apps, and services and then define automations that trigger linked actions within these devices, apps, and services.
What’s IFTTT about?
IFTTT isn’t just a time management app, it’s a popular productivity tool. With IFTTT, you can improve your productivity by streamlining notifications in order to receive the most important information and reminders, or automating repetitive tasks and messages that you regularly send.
For example, you can set to have IFTTT:
- Log all phone calls you make on your Android and add them to your Google Spreadsheet,
- Turn off the lights in your house when you set your Nest Thermostat to away,
- Mute your phone when Google Calendar recognizes you have a meeting scheduled,
- Create tasks in Todoist when you put a star next to an email in your Gmail inbox, and
- Send missed Android phone call notifications to your team chat app.
These automated “recipes” are called “applets.” There are over 30 groups of applets, from those for travelers to those for educators, and each group offers an array of software combinations and commands.
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
There are also other great universal tools meant to help you boost productivity, and you can check them out in this blog post:
IFTTT key features
IFTTT offers hundreds of extra features, including:
- Integration with 700 + apps and services,
- Free mobile app access, and
- Simple no-code integrations.
Type of plan and availability | IFTTT pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $2.5 per month |
Availability | – Web – Android – iOS |
SendinBlue — an email marketing service
SendinBlue is an automated marketing platform meant to help speed up and improve your communication with clients, customers, and other relevant people, by helping you personalize your email marketing strategy through audience insights.
What’s SendINBlue about?
SendinBlue is a tool that offers unlimited contact storage and numerous email templates. This software is a well-priced solution for businesses and individuals who send a large volume of emails daily. SendinBlue also comes with a CRM tool that helps you work on your customer relations. The app gives you the option to generate and analyze reports on email performance too.
On top of that, with SendinBlue, you’ll also be able to:
- Send a total of 300 emails per day to 2,000 contacts on the free plan,
- Use an integrated CRM tool for building relationships with customers,
- Construct campaigns, emails, and newsletters in a drag-n-drop section,
- Easily create landing pages and then carry out A/B tests to figure out what solutions bring you the most conversions,
- Use SMS marketing for limited time and time-sensitive offers, and live chat, and
- Choose from 60+ email templates and an HTML editor for custom emails.
SendinBlue’s key features
Let’s take a look at the features that can help you grow your business:
- Integrations with WordPress, Shopify, PayPal, Gmail,
- CAN spam compliance, and
- AB testing.
Type of plan and availability | SendinBlue pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $25 per month |
Availability | – Web – macOS – Windows – Android – iOS |
Otter — an app for digitizing your handwritten notes
Otter is an app aimed at helping you spend less time scribbling down meeting notes by transcribing any audio log. This tool is a great solution for individuals and businesses who spend quite some time in meetings, negotiating with clients, or doing interviews.
What’s Otter about?
The app records audio, after which the AI transcribes the content, being mindful of different speakers. The whole process can last around 30-40 minutes, letting you get on with other important work.
Alongside transcription, the app offers the following:
- Zoom integration (to record and transcribe meetings),
- 10 hours of audio transcribed per month available in the free version,
- Transcriptions search and exporting options, and
- The option to leave annotations, highlights and comments.
Otter makes meetings less stressful by transferring the weight of documentation onto the software itself, so users can fully participate in their meetings.
Otter’s key features
What makes Otter unique? Otter provides you with the following feature set:
- Real-time transcription,
- Otter assistant, and
- Two-factor authentication.
Type of plan and availability | Otter pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $8.33 per month billed annually |
Availability | – iOS – Android – Web – Zoom – Windows – macOS |
Shift — an app manager
Shift is an app meant to help you streamline your conversations and workflows across various apps, without having to log in and out all the time.
What’s Shift about?
With Shift, you can simply choose your favorite communication, management, social, storage, and other types of apps (including Messenger, Google Drive, Trello, Asana, Facebook, WhatsApp, Gmail, and 500+ other fan favorites) and connect them to Shift. Then, track, manage, and streamline your workflows across all your apps in a couple of clicks.
By using Shift, you’ll be able to:
- Find what you’re looking for through a unified search system that searches across your Mail, Calendar, and Drive accounts,
- Manage all your Google accounts, including multiple Gmail accounts, Calendar, Drive, and Adwords, from one place, and
- Switch from one app to the next across browser-like tabs.
In addition to all that, you’ll also be able to use Shift to browse the web directly from the app.
Shift’s key features
Here’s how Shift can help you manage everything better:
- Custom notifications,
- Business process automation, and
- Calendar management.
Type of plan and availability | Shift pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | $99.9 per user/year |
Availability | – Web – macOS – Windows |
Clear — a touch-based to-do list app
Clear is a simple, button-free approach to to-do lists that allows you to add, organize, track, and manage your tasks through swipes, pulls, and pinches in a completely touch-based, all-gesture interface.
What’s Clear about?
To use the app, all you need to do is:
- Pull down on the list to add an item to it,
- Swipe to the right to complete an item,
- Swipe to the left to delete an item,
- Pinch apart two items in order to add a new item between them, and
- Pinch vertically to close your current list, and see all your lists in one view.
The lists are color-coded for your convenience, and the app nudges you into being precise with your wording, as each to-do item can only be a maximum of 30 characters in length.
Clear’s key features
With Clear, you can take advantage of the following features:
- iCloud sync built-in,
- Clear list personalization, and
- Reminders for important tasks.
Type of plan and availability | Clear pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | No |
Cheapest paid plan | Download app for $9.99 |
Availability | – iOS – macOS |
SignNow — an app for signing e-documents
SignNow is a simple app meant to help you gather electronic signatures from clients, customers, and employees.
What’s SignNow about?
With SignNow, you’ll be able to:
- Generate documents,
- Generate custom signing invitations and send them in bulks,
- Track the status of a document by setting notifications to inform you when a document is signed,
- Give permissions to recipients to forward your documents to other people to sign,
- Request payments through optional payment sections within editable forms, and
- Set automatic expiration dates for documents awaiting to be signed.
With SignNow, you can also require the recipients to sign your e-documents with hand-drawn initials and signatures instead of typing them. And, your recipients will have the option to decline to sign, in which case you will also be notified immediately to get a chance to act accordingly.
SignNow’s key features
SignNow supports the most important electronic signature features, like:
- Signature on Mobile,
- Multiple signers, and
- Kiosk mode on iPad.
Type of plan and availability | SignNow pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | Yes |
Free plan | No |
Cheapest paid plan | $8 per user/month billed annually |
Availability | – Web – iOS – Android |
SwiftKey — an AI swipe keyboard
SwiftKey is a swipe keyboard meant to help you type faster by learning your writing style, predicting what your next word will be, and then replicating it as you type.
What’s SwiftKey about?
The more you use the app, the more it learns about your writing style. As a result, the predictions become more accurate, and you write faster.
The elements the app picks up on and memorizes are the emojis, GIFs, slang terms, and nicknames you use in texts.
SwiftKey also lets you:
- Decide whether you want to tap or swipe to type,
- Spell check and grammar check your texts with increased accuracy, and
- Make use of a keyboard toolbar with shortcuts, to help you write even faster.
And, you’ll be able to perform all that on a custom keyboard that supports 100+ keyboard themes (including your personal photos as background) and 700+ languages (5 of which you can even use simultaneously).
SwiftKey’s key features
SwiftKey gives you an opportunity to make typing faster and easier with the following features:
- Personalized typing,
- Cloud Clipboard, and
- 700+ supported languages.
Type of plan and availability | SwiftKey pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | Free |
Availability | – iOS – Android |
Waze — a navigation & live traffic app for faster commutes
Waze is an all-inclusive community-based commute app that gives you driving directions, road alerts, and a live traffic map to help you get to place A to place B as best and fast as you can.
What’s Waze about?
With Waze, you’ll be able to:
- Obtain and drive by real-time traffic information in your local community,
- Get step-by-step driving navigation to your destination,
- Receive alerts of road accidents, dangers, and police patrols so that you can avoid them and take other safer and quicker routes,
- Find the lowest gas prices in your local community,
- Keep other people up-to-date about your expected arrival time, and
- Look up the estimated arrival time of the friends and colleagues who are driving to the same destination as you.
On top of all that, the app memorizes your most frequent routes and destinations, as well as your working hours, so that it can automatically redirect you when the road conditions change and help you always arrive on time.
Waze’s key features
Waze is equipped with the following features:
- Real-time traffic information,
- Voice commands, and
- Game mechanics.
Type of plan and availability | Waze pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | Free |
Availability | – Web – iOS – Android – Windows |
Microsoft Lens — a simple PDF scanner
Microsoft Lens is a simple PDF scanner meant to help you scan, review, cut, improve, and enhance photos of your documents and whiteboards.
What’s Microsoft Lens about?
With Microsoft Lens, you can:
- Take pictures of your documents and whiteboards and then convert them to PDFs, Word documents, or PowerPoint presentations,
- Save pictures of your documents and whiteboards and store them in OneNote or OneDrive,
- Sketch your ideas, and attach these images to save them for later, and
- Search for phrases and words in images, once they have been digitized by the app.
On top of that, Microsoft Lens also lets you use the “Business Card” mode to group information about your contacts and then save them in an address book in OneNote. The app also supports multiple languages.
Microsoft Lens’ key features
Microsoft Lens is an excellent software that displays the following features:
- Digitization of printed and handwritten text,
- Data extraction, and
- Document conversion.
Type of plan and availability | Microsoft Lens pricing and platforms |
---|---|
Free trial | No |
Free plan | Yes |
Cheapest paid plan | Free |
Availability | – iOS – Android |
Are time management apps useful?
By investing in time management tools you can improve your productivity, become more motivated, and master your work performance.
In other words, good time management tools allow you to:
- Manage your workload effectively. Setting a deadline for tasks and projects allows you to deliver work on time because you follow a schedule and strive to complete the tasks within the set time limit.
- Improve productivity. Team time management tools and techniques let you set clear goals and prioritize tasks based on importance and urgency. This, in turn, allows you to finish important tasks quickly and efficiently, thus improving your productivity levels.
- Reduce stress. When you have a lot on your plate, you might find yourself not able to think clearly and end up rushing through tasks. However, with the right time management tool, you can plan your tasks ahead of time and finish everything.
- Achieve work-life balance. Trying to find the perfect work-life balance can be a real challenge, especially for remote workers. But when you use time management apps to schedule your time efficiently, you become more self-disciplined and more focused on finishing your workday as planned.
- Enjoy more leisure time. With today’s busy work schedule, you may find it challenging to take some time off and enjoy the things that make you happy. But effective time management tools allow you to set boundaries between personal and professional life.
These are just some of the attractive benefits of time management tools that are worth considering, regardless of whether you’re an employee or business owner.
Time management FAQs
Choosing a time management app is an important decision — you want to pick an app that has a decent price and valuable feature set. That’s why we want to make sure we answer all of your questions.
Here are a few common questions about time management apps:
What is the best app to schedule your day?
After carefully reading about the advantages and disadvantages of each time management app listed above, you may find it challenging to decide which software suits your needs the most.
However, if you want to get the most out of your day, it is important to choose the right time management tool designed to help you schedule your day, and thus establish work-life balance.
For example, Clockify provides an array of valuable features that can help you track how much time you spend on certain activities and what projects or tasks you’ve been working on during certain days. The Calendar View can give you insights into what your daily or weekly schedule looks like. This feature is uncommon for other time tracking software.
How to find the best time management software for your needs?
To find the best time management software for your needs, you will have to evaluate a few things first:
- User interface. A great time management tool is simple and easy to use, with little to no learning curve.
- Usability. The software you choose should be easy to learn and require minimal training.
- Integrations. The software should have expanded functionality, with multiple integrations that can be embedded into your existing tools.
- Pricing. Your software should be affordable, but most of all of high quality. Therefore, you should set a clear budget, but first check if there are any available free trials.
What are the best time management apps for Android?
Time management tools that can help you boost your productivity and organization, which you can use on Android, include task and project management tools such as Plaky and Flow or team collaboration tools such as Pumble and Taskade.
Evernote is a great tool for note taking and keeping track of everything you need to remember, while TimeTree is a shared calendar that makes it easy to coordinate and organize your events.
These tools can help you complete projects efficiently by organizing and prioritizing tasks as well as communicate effectively regardless of your location. But even when you’re not working in different locations, these tools minimize the chances of missing out on important tasks and updates.
What are the best time management apps for iPhone?
There are plenty of time management apps for iPhone that could help you manage your time to maximize productivity.
Focus@Will and Freedom can help you stay on track with ongoing tasks at all times by eliminating all distractions and improving your focus substantially.
LastPass is another great tool that allows you to store your login credentials, generate strong passwords, and safely track personal information.
Final words: The best time management tool is the one that has a decent price and full suite of features
Now that you have become familiar with the best 40 time management tools for 2023, you might still be wondering what the best software for time management is.
It can be very challenging to pick just one that is right for every individual or business, which is why we decided to carefully pick out the best five apps.
- Clockify — a time tracker and timesheet app that lets you keep track of both your time and expenses.
- Asana — a collaboration tool that helps you manage all types of tasks and projects in one single dashboard.
- Habitica — a task management tool for people who enjoy games that allows you to manage and complete your tasks in a fun and rewarding way.
- Google Tasks — a simple and free task management tool for creating to-do lists and managing tasks created in Gmail and Calendar.
- Noisli — a great tool for people who get easily distracted as it drowns out annoying noises in order to help you focus and boost your productivity.
But which one will provide you with the most benefits? All the tools listed in our guide can help you with effective time management, however, the best tool will depend on your unique needs and goals.
✉️ What do you think of these time management tools? Can you suggest other effective tools that have helped you maximize productivity? If you’re willing to share your experience, don’t forget to let us know at blogfeedback@clockify.me for a chance to be featured in one of our upcoming articles. Also, if you liked this article, share it with someone who might find it useful.