The Best Productivity Apps for 2023

If you’ve had to sign anything in the last decade, chances are you’ve run into DocuSign. It’s a online system for managing contracts and other documents that require electronic signatures. DocuSign’s mobile apps make it easy to review a file and sign it using your phone’s touchscreen and your finger. Even if you don’t need DocuSign in your work life, the app may very well come in handy at home the next time you need to drop a signature on anything from a permission slip to a lease agreement. If you only need to sign forms, this app is free. For sending documents and collecting signatures, you need a paid subscription plan.

Rev is our top-rated transcription service for several reasons. It works almost flawlessly, has intuitive software, and offers a variety of options to meet every need. Rev lets you choose whether you want an AI- or human-generated transcription, and the turnaround time from when you submit an audio recording and get back a typed transcript is fast. It also has a great collaborative web space for teams to work together on projects. Between its à la carte services, subscription plan, choice of mobile apps, and unlimited Zoom meeting transcriptions, Rev meets a variety of professional needs. 

Your iPhone or iPad becomes a productivity helper with Apple’s Shortcuts (free on Apple mobile devices). This app lets you create automations, in other words, a series of events that happen automatically when triggered. For example, you can make one that says, “When I stop my phone’s Wake-Up alarm [that’s the trigger], automatically play a morning news podcast.” Another example is “When I arrive at such-and-such a location based on GPS, automatically silence notifications.” Even if you know nothing about programming, you can create some time-saving shortcuts with this app.

Apps for collaboration and communication are transforming how teams get work done. Asana was among the first to make a real splash. It’s essentially a pumped-up, collaborative list app for tracking tasks, ideas, or anything else. You can use it as your to-do list, as your family’s to-do list, and as a tool for managing projects. Asana has multiple ways of showing you your tasks or ideas: in a list, on a kanban board, or on a timeline. You can use it solo or share the lists you create with other people to assign them tasks, have them add new tasks, and ask for their comments.

Basecamp was an early player among cloud-based collaborative software. It’s an online app…or really more like a virtual hub where you and your colleagues huddle around work. Upload files and discuss changes that need to be made. Jot down tasks that must get done and assign them to the right people. Collect notes from meetings that everyone can review in one location.

Miro is an online and collaborative whiteboard, though it’s also a diagramming app and part presentation app—you could throw mind mapping and video conferencing in there, too. Everything about it is collaborative. You can use it to draw an idea or create a slideshow, either by yourself or with others editing simultaneously. Miro has built-in video and audio calling, plus screen sharing, so you can actually discuss how you’re working while you’re working, or you can give a talk showing your creations. You can pull in media from other apps to display, whether it’s Vimeo videos or Asana cards. What makes Miro extraordinary is how easy it is to pick up and use, even though it sounds like a hodgepodge of ideas. It’s tremendously useful.

Teamwork is a top-scoring productivity app for small to medium-sized organizations that need to get up and running with project management fast. It’s easy to use and takes minutes to create an account. Not all project management services are either of those things, much less both. Everyone who’s working on the project gets a login. The project manager or team leads organize high-level aspects of the project, such as defining the start date, end date, and milestones. Team members then use the app to see what tasks are assigned to them, give updates on the progress of their tasks, and otherwise make the process of collaborating on a large project more transparent.

If you’ve never used Trello or any other kanban app, picture a board divided into columns. You name the columns To-Do, Doing, and Done. (In practice, you can name them whatever you like, but these names help illustrate the concept.) Now, you get a stack of sticky notes, and you write a to-do on each note. You can also add a description of that task, an assignee, and a due date. You place the sticky notes onto the board in the To-Do column. As you and your teammates decide which tasks to work on, you move their sticky notes to appropriate columns. It’s a simple system that opens itself up to ad-hoc uses and inventive interpretations. Trello’s charm comes from its simple interface and fun stickers, all of which add a touch of lightness to even the heaviest work.

When you need a system for managing projects and other kinds of work yesterday, turn to Wrike. This online collaboration app helps organizations and all the people in them keep track of work: who’s doing what, when, and what kind of progress they’re making. At an even higher level, team leaders and managers can see how all those tasks are contributing to the bottom line. Wrike also has special account types for helping certain kinds of teams deal with work that’s specific to their industries, including marketing and business services teams. You can integrate Wrike with many other apps and services.

“When are you free to meet? And what about you? And them?” Finding a time and date to meet with multiple people is Doodle’s expertise. You use this app to make a poll suggesting times and dates for a group of people to get together and then ask everyone to fill it out. Doodle automatically finds the best option. The polling feature in Doodle is free. If you pay for a Doodle account, you get other scheduling tools, too, like a URL with a public calendar where people can request a meeting with you based on time slots you specify.

Every few years, someone tries to reinvent email, or at least make it dramatically better. In 2020, a product called Hey launched in hopes of revolutionizing the inbox. Hey is a full-fledged email service, meaning when you sign up, you get a brand-new email address. You also get an “Imbox” rather than an inbox, the “im” standing for important and immediate, and you get to decide who belongs there and who doesn’t. You can rename subject lines, merge messages, add labels to organize your emails, and more. If you’re in the market for a more productive email account, Hey is worth exploring.

Slack is one of the best-known group messaging apps for organizations. You can make a Slack account for free, but paid accounts come with more features and support. Slack is where group conversations happen. You can message individuals, private groups, or channels where people have opted in to follow a conversation. You can also have audio and video calls on Slack. In the workplace, this app has earned a reputation for fostering community, too. The reason we see Slack as a productivity app is that it lets you connect with colleagues in whatever way works best for both of you—in real time, asynchronously, in public where other people can chime in—which is something email could never do.

Spark from Readdle is one of our favorite email client apps. Unlike many competitors, Spark offers a refreshing experience because it’s built entirely around email—not notes or to-do lists. Spark gives you great keyboard shortcuts, excellent features for organizing messages, and a lovely interface. This email app is easy to recommend to anyone looking for a more focused email client.

InMoat blocks all messages from reaching your inbox and lets you decide what should get through. The name is a portmanteau of “inbox” and “moat,” the idea being that your inbox needs protection. It’s not dissimilar from Hey, the email account from Basecamp, or OnMail, except with InMoat you don’t have to sign up for a new email address. You use it with your existing email accounts. It’s a powerful tool that makes your email experience much more focused.

It’s easy to get distracted when you work online and see articles you want to read. Pocket solves this problem. It’s a bookmarking app that saves copies of articles and other online content to an account where you can read them later. Some ereaders let you connect to your Pocket account and will load the material for you to read on them.

RescueTime does for your productivity what calorie-counting does for weight loss. It brings attention and insight to your actual habits because you can’t change your habits unless you know what they are. This app runs quietly on your computer, recording how much time you spend on different websites and apps. It then generates reports to show when you’ve been productive versus when you’ve been distracted. You can customize the settings to make sure what it understands what counts as productive to you.

Here’s a lifesaver for people who struggle with email. It’s called SaneBox, and it’s the best service you’ll find for radically improving your existing email. For a couple bucks per month, SaneBox goes into your email on the backend and starts sorting messages for you. Anything that’s probably not important, based on your email history and other factors, goes into a folder that isn’t your inbox. SaneBox won’t throw away any emails without your permission, but it will sweep aside anything that would normally bog you down. Over time, you also teach this app by giving it feedback, and it gets better at its job. There are other features, too, but it’s SaneBox’s core functionality that will make your email life better and more productive.

Stayfocusd (free) is a browser extension that keeps you productive by blocking distracting websites while you’re trying to work. You can block sites for either set times and dates (like 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday) or after you’ve reached a limit (for example, no more than 30 minutes of your favorite news website per day). It’s simple, free, and can help keep your productivity up. Sure, you could get around it by simply using a different browser, but the point is not to defeat your worst impulses. It’s to give you a tool that helps you manage your own self-discipline.

If you run a company and you have client-driven work, you need time-tracking software. Harvest is one of the best you’ll find, whether you work solo or with others. You use it for tracking billable hours, and when you record time while you’re working, you catalog it to the right project or client. Harvest is easy to use and not too expensive. Another top pick for this same use case is Toggl Track, listed below.

If you like the idea of Evernote but are looking for a simple and free alternative, Joplin is it. This open-source note-taking app is cross-platform and gives you the core tools you need for capturing, organizing, saving, and finding notes. It doesn’t have every feature under the sun, however. What’s missing are collaboration options, OCR on images and PDFs, sketching and handwriting, email forwarding, mobile scanning, among other features. With Joplin, you can either bring your own storage or pay for Joplin to manage it with Joplin Cloud.

Do you need to make diagrams that don’t look like a fourth grader designed them? Hands down, one of the best tools to use is Lucidchart. With this moderately priced app, you create diagrams for business, educational use, or even personal use. One of its main strengths is in letting multiple people edit a diagram at the same time. Lucidchart has an impressive template gallery full of ideas for charts and diagrams you didn’t even know you needed. How about an emergency exit plan, for example, or an org chart? Anyone can make professional-looking diagrams with Lucidchart. 

Whether you pay for a Microsoft 365 account or use the free web apps, this office suite has two noteworthy apps and features that can make your life easier. For starters is Microsoft OneNote, the only note-taking app that rivals Evernote in features. Like any other note-taking app, you use it to capture ideas, notes, and information of all kinds. Part of what sets it apart is that OneNote is completely free. Second is Microsoft Word, which in late 2020 got one stunning and unique feature: Transcribe. This feature lets you record an audio conversation while it’s happening or upload a recording of people talking and have the voices transcribed automatically. You need a paid account to get this feature, and it’s only in the web app at this time. More recently, Microsoft has announced some forthcoming features that will allow users to produce AI-generated content in these office apps, too.

Obsidian is a note-taking app best suited for power users, and it’s the most flexible note-taking app out there. In software, flexibility usually means a tool can bend to your desires, but it also means you might have to spend significant time customizing it. If you need a note-taking system to work exactly the way you want and don’t mind taking the time to get it there, Obsidian is the application you should check out first. It’s free for personal use.

Not everyone takes to slide decks like a duck to water. If your ideas never seem to come across in a standard slideshow, stop shoehorning yourself into the wrong format and try Prezi instead. Prezi is a presentation app that gives you a huge digital whiteboard to lay out your ideas. Once you have your thoughts down, you move a virtual camera around the board to show different parts in the order you want, recording it as you go. And voilà, you have a presentation. Prezi works for both in-person and virtual presentations. The app also comes with plenty of templates as well as the ability to collaborate with others. You can try a limited version of Prezi for free.

Can a superbly designed interface for task management make up for a lack of key features? With to-do list app Things, it’s a legit possibility. Things, which is in version 3, is a gorgeous app for writing down and tracking your to-do list. It’s really only useful, however, if you work solo and use Apple devices, as it doesn’t have collaboration features and it’s only available for macOS ($49.99), iPad ($19.99), and iPhone ($9.99). On the upside, there are no subscription fees to pay for this lovely productivity app.

Of all the to-do list apps on the market, Todoist is consistently rated at the top. It’s one of the most advanced to-do apps you’ll find. You can use it solo or with others. You can keep your lists simple or add copious amounts of detail, like subtasks, priority ratings, tags, comments, and more. Productivity features such as natural language support—meaning you can type “tod” and the app understands you mean “today” is the due date for this task—make it so you can jump into the app quickly, do what you need, and get back to business.