Best Apps for College Students
By: Talia Walters ‘20
I spend a lot of time on my phone. Like, probably an unhealthy amount of time on my phone. And while I’m not proud of that fact, in all honesty, my phone has probably been a surprising asset throughout my time in college. Not just with social media, like Snapchat and Spotify, but with other, lesser-known apps that I appreciate having and using in my everyday life. So, to justify the sheer amount of time I spend on my phone, here’s a list of the apps I’ve found most useful during my life in college.
1 Second Everyday
My current roommate and I were studying abroad at different times last year – he went in the fall and I went in the spring – which meant that we weren’t going to see each other for an entire year. In order to keep each other posted, we agreed to take a one-second video of our days so that when we came back together, we’d have a little video to show each other to summarize our year away. He gave up almost immediately. I, on the other hand, was a good friend and kept my one second a day for the entirety of the year, and I loved it so much that I kept going. I am now a year and a half in, and I love seeing all of my memories and friends smushed together in one video. It’s a nice way to relive days, even the boring ones, and it reminds you of times that you were happy, having a good day, or events that were super exciting at the time but sometimes fall to the wayside since they weren’t major life moments. The 1 Second Everyday app makes it easy to cut videos from your day into just 1 second, smush together all of your moments to make one video, and retroactively add video if you forget to at the end of the day. Honestly, I love this app, and I think it’s so neat to be able to reflect on my life this way. I would highly recommend!
Achievement/Sweatcoin
Achievement and Sweatcoin are apps that pay you to move, be healthy, and work out. I know it sounds crazy, but I promise it works. Achievement works by connecting to other apps on your phone, like your Fitbit, MyFitnessPal, or something like Google Fit in order to track your healthy choices, and then it gives you points depending on your actions. For me, the easiest was when I had it connected to my Google Fit because it would auto-track my steps for the day. Achievement would then count that as tracking healthy activity which would give me 6 points. You can also get points by reading articles on health from Achievement’s website or taking surveys through the app. Then, you can redeem those points for money!
Sweatcoin works similarly, except it only tracks the steps you take a day. They limit the number of points you can get in any given day, so it’s a little slow, but it’s constantly counting, so if you just let it go, it’s surprising how many points you can end up with in a month. They have more than just monetary prizes too. You can redeem your points for prizes, special offers on memberships, or charitable donations if you want to put your activity to good use! You’re not going to make a ton of money on the apps — it’s similar to those survey websites you get paid for — but it doesn’t hurt to have them on your phone for a little extra money every now and then.
Alarmy/Sleep Cycle
Waking up has always been a problem for me. I would sleep through classes, meetings, work, the whole shebang because I have a really hard time hearing my alarms or turning them alarms off in my sleep. This was becoming such a problem that I needed to do something about it before my grades and work performance paid for it. So, with some research, I happened upon Alarmy, and it’s been a lifesaver. Alarmy is a specialty alarm that literally blares every morning if you need it to, and they have special ring tones that are especially loud so that I never miss a class accidentally again. If you too shut your alarms off in your sleep, then this is also a great app for you! They have a setting where you can make yourself solve math problems, take pictures, or shake your phone rapidly in order to turn off your alarm. I don’t use those anymore since it’s loud enough to wake me for good and I’m horrible at math problems early in the morning, but they work wonders if you just can’t get yourself up in the mornings.
Sleep Cycle is a little different: instead of waking you up, it tracks your sleep. I, like most college students, don’t get a ton of sleep, so I thought it might be helpful to see just how well I sleep or how long. Sleep Cycle runs the whole time you’re asleep to determine how well your sleeping, and it will give you a quality rating in the morning. It will also record any noises it detects, so you might just find out you snore a lot! It’s a really great way to help your sleep habits, especially since college students tend to let their sleep health fall apart first when the going gets tough.
Citymapper
I didn’t get Citymapper until I was living in Paris, and I can’t believe I existed before it. Citymapper is like Google Maps but without the major, glaring problems that I hate dealing with on Google Maps. Citymapper feels significantly more efficient and precise than Google Maps can ever hope to be; in particular, I love metros and I’m terrible at navigating bus routes (like unbelievably bad at navigating bus routes), and Citymapper gives you options to prefer buses over metros or metros over buses so you’re always happy with your route. It gives you all of the times of every possible way to get to your destination (walking, driving, lime scootering, etc.) all on the same page, so you’re not flipping back and forth through different pages to try and compare information. Most importantly to me, though, is that Citymapper can give you directions without that terrible, loud, interrupting voice that Google Maps demand you use. I’m sure you can turn it off on Google Maps, but I cannot figure out how to do it. When I’m walking somewhere, I don’t want my pocket yelling at me to take the next left turn. Regardless, all I know is that I’ve gotten lost with Google Maps so many times because their directions are incredibly unclear or poorly set up. Citymapper has never done me dirty. It’s not rolled out in every city, but they have maps of most major world cities including LA, so if you have the opportunity to use it over other navigation systems, I absolutely recommend it.
Grabbd
LA is a huge, expansive city with tons of things to do, so I hate it when I find myself sitting in my bed on a Friday night wondering why I’m not going out and doing exciting things. I feel like I squander so much time when I’m not exploring the city to the best of my ability, but it’s so hard to find things to do. This is where Grabbd comes in. It’s an app that catalogs all the super fun things to do in your city, and it makes it easy to find activities, festivals, or experiences you would’ve never found on your own. You can search by type of activity, things closest to you, or hidden treasures if you want to find the more unique hot spots of your city. They have a lot of the normal things, like LACMA and Little Damage downtown, but also things I’ve never heard of like the Museum of Dream Space in Beverly Hills or Game Over Pizza. You can make your own lists so that you never lose an idea for when you’re really bored, and you can connect with your friends to see who wants to go to the same places and make groups based on that! Similar to Citymapper, they have different setups for different cities, so if you’re ever traveling (say, for Spring Break maybe?) then this is a great way to find things to do in a new city. It’s full of new and different experiences for anyone looking for anything!
Lightroom
Lightroom is not the biggest secret in the world, but I was amazed when I discovered it, so I decided I needed to share it with everyone else in the world. Have you ever wondered how your friend is getting the perfect Instagram picture with nothing more than their phone? It’s probably Lightroom. Lightroom is an app that allows you to edit your photos with as close to Photoshop precision as your phone can get; in fact, it’s made by Adobe, so it’s essentially the same program, just shrunk down to make it functional on your phone. I personally love the ability to modify the color palette of pictures — I find pale and washed out pictures aesthetically pleasing — but you’re able to do so much more with this app. You can sharpen photos, edit out blemishes, and erase entire structures you don’t like in your photo. It’s a great way to get that perfect picture that you’ve been looking for, and most of these features are free! I don’t use the paid version, but I know that they have presets and more advanced tools to edit your photos, so if you really like doing phone photography then it might be worth buying the advanced version. Either way, it’s a great app for anyone looking to up their photo game but not wanting to spend hours with new camera equipment or on their computers trying to edit photos.
Slack
Another app that most people already probably use, but if you don’t, then you’re missing out. It’s a workspace app that allows you to connect to coworkers or team members with ease to plan out work, meetings, or just to chat. My debate team has tried every possible format for communication, but nothing worked as well as Slack, so we’ve stuck with it for a few years now, and it’s a great system. You’re able to create different “channels” for different purposes within your workspace; for example, the debate workspace has a general announcements tab, an assignments tab, a practice debate tab, and a random tab for anything that doesn’t fit into other tabs. You’re able to post for the entire group if you need everyone to see it, or they have a direct messaging feature if you don’t want to bother everyone else. If you really need someone to see a post, then you can tag them, and they’ll get a notification straight to their phone or laptop so that they know to check it as soon as possible. You can choose how and when to get notifications, you can send pictures and files on the platform, and you can access information almost anywhere. It’s perfect for getting work done whether that’s at your job or at school, and if you haven’t moved over to Slack, then I don’t know what you’re doing because I don’t know another workspace app that works as well.
TuneIn Radio
This one is a little surprising for me, as it’s the newest download on my phone, but I love the app for a lot of reasons. On a smaller scale, I don’t listen to a lot of radio anymore just because I’m not in the car a lot here, and I love the playlists I have on Spotify. Sometimes it’s nice to just sit and listen to new music on a plethora of different radio stations that you can access on this free app, and I appreciate not listening to the same twelve songs on repeat for once. However, more importantly for me, you can listen to USC’s radio shows on this app! In all honesty, I didn’t know USC had a radio station until a friend of mine got a show, but now having seen it, it’s a bunch of really cool people talking about things they’re passionate about. It’s called KXSC radio, and it’s an independent student-run radio that’s been around since 1975, which is a solid track record. You can technically listen online at kxsc.org, but that’s hard to carry around with you at all time, and you can also technically listen on any device that has radio streaming at 1560AM, but that also seems really hard since, like I said, I don’t have a radio on me at all times, so I prefer the app. They have shows playing almost all the time, so if you’re interested in finding a show for you, check out the list here. I personally recommend Who Is The World, which is a deep dive into each of the solo artists on the 1985 charity benefit song We Are the World at 6pm every Wednesday. Although I may be biased since that is my friend’s show! Either way, I would recommend checking out any of the shows that they offer since they’re all USC students doing their own thing!
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