My Must Have Apps for Students in 2023

I’ve recently been setting up my new Mac Mini, and I of course needed to download the apps I need to study. Here are the apps I use to make my life easier as a part time masters student, and ones I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone.

1. Arc browser

A beautiful browser that lets me separate masters work from other work with its spaces, allowing me to focus on my studying in one space when needed, and on the rest of life in another space. This is useful when you have lots of things to juggle, which I do working full time, studying and having a tiny side hustle.

It has loads of keyboard shortcuts to save time, an amazing split view and a new peek view which is great when you just want to quickly check something out before it becomes a proper tab. Great for the “open in new tab” fans, which I definitely am. I use this the most when deciding what reading to pursue and save to Zotero.

2. Raindrop

I save all links in here to process later- things to buy, interesting tweets to return to later, a recipe I want to explore later. I used to just screenshot everything I wanted to come back to and that was a terrible system. This is much better and the free version works perfectly well. I use this daily and it just lets me save something for me to come back to when I’m ready.

3. Apple notes

I use this for quick notes. It’s great because it’s on my phone, iPad, and computers, so they’re always accessible and easy to create and delete when the time is right.

4. Logseq

You could easily meet all your note-taking and task management needs with Logseq. If you take notes with bullet points, you should check it out!

My use case has evolved over time to mean I do my PDF reading, literature notes and daily notes in here. This saves time, effort and printing as it’s all one in place on your computer.

5. Zotero

Zotero saves references and PDFs with the click of a button through the Zotero browser extension. You can add tags to your articles and store them in there too. You can also create bibliographies with just a few clicks. Best of all though, it has a Logseq integration which is amazing and a cornerstone of my reading workflow.

Even if you don’t use Logseq, I 100% recommend a reference manager like Zotero.

6. Capacities

This is the most beautiful and exciting note-taking app on the market for me. I use it to synthesise all the information I’ve read in different sources. It works similarly to Notion but is much better for knowledge work.

It also has the thing that first hooked me on note-taking apps: a beautiful graph, but one that is so much better than others, as it labels the links with what the connection is.

7. Spark

Spark is a free, easy to set up and simple to use email app which is the only app I’ve been able to keep inbox zero with. I can choose to see all mailboxes in one view or just go into specific ones, such as my uni email account, so great for keeping on top of everything.

8. Notion

Notion can pretty much be whatever you want it to be, which is evident from its enormous number of users. I don’t think it’s the best app for note-taking as a student so I recommend Capacities for that forever, but Notion is how I organise my life, track what I do, how I feel, what I want to buy, what bills I have etc. My LifeOS, or as I call it, BethOS.

I think it’s really important to have an organised system in place to support your studies. This system has supported me through 8 weeks of study alongside full time work so I recommend developing one for you that works for your brain.

Do you use any of these apps? Which is your favourite? Would you like to know more about any of these apps? Leave a comment and let me know!