The road to productivity is paved with good intentions—and half-used daily planner apps take up space on smartphones and desktops. The digital daily planner app aims to cut through the noise of other productivity apps by finding its foundation in a long-standing tool to help you stay on top of your schedule: the analog daily planner. Before there was a daily planner app or even a Palm Pilot, there was a day planner. A cross between a calendar, to-do list, and project organizer, daily planners have kept everyone from college students to top executives organized. In this article, you’ll find a breakdown of the best modern schedulers—applications that work best for you and your operating system. If you finally say “Yes!” If you want to get your work out of Notes and into your daily planner app, or if you want to find a new app that will take your planning to the next level, you can find established apps with new features or replacements for apps that no longer work for you—or anyone else.
You may not think of yourself as a planning expert, but in a small study of 88 college students, one of the biggest findings was that poor or good planners alone showed no difference in the proportion of goals they achieved. Bottom Line? You are already better than you think.
What does it mean to plan in work and in life? To paraphrase the definition given in the study, planning involves recognizing a goal, brainstorming ways to achieve it, identifying potential obstacles, revising your achievement plan based on those obstacles, and executing to achieve your goal. Getting the most out of your digital planner means finding a planner with features to help you achieve your goals.
Choosing a daily planner
To help you choose the best planner for you and your daily routine, keep three essential elements in mind.
Ease of use: Building a habit of putting every task in a daily planner app depends entirely on you using the app. Take a look at the features and design of the app and judge how easy it might be for you to hit the ground running. If you’re a seasoned pro, you might not be intimidated by a dozen different views on your projects. If you’re new to application planning—or transitioning from an analog scheduler—an interface with a simple menu and only a few views can be motivating.
Costs: There are upfront costs and then future costs. The app may cost $4.99 a month, but that’s $4.99 if you use the app. Others may be free, but limited by storage space and how long you can use it for that price. Before you dive into creating a calendar in the app, decide how you want to budget for this productivity tool. Free trials are incredibly useful to see how a daily planner app fits, but make sure you’re thinking long-term and how you want to set up your cost structure – as a one-time fee or as a subscription model.
Compatibility with other tools: Chances are this isn’t your first rodeo with a productivity app, which means the new app needs to integrate with the old ones. Before choosing the scheduler that works best for you, evaluate what you’re currently using and even take the time to eliminate the daily planner apps that isn’t as useful or can be replaced with a scheduler app.
The best daily planner apps for Android
Our top 10 list was created with these elements in mind. All app descriptions include information on pricing (free, tiered, paid), available integrations, and usability features.
1. Journy
Journy is similar to a game where you fight yourself. The commitment is to acquire a long line of habits that you struggle with by covering your goals. The longer the better. It takes two or three months to fully establish another daily practice, so don’t give up – it takes investment and if you’re consistent it will work; regardless of whether it takes some effort.
There are many things that you may need to move. Journals can be used as an organizer when building habits, such as taking pills regularly, exercising or following a diet. It can also be used as a partner for individuals who have memory problems. When it comes to your vices, Journy can be a valuable goal-tracking tool or a smart notebook to help you break bad habits like nail-biting, drinking alcohol, and surprisingly further your dating skills.
2. My Daily Planner
My Daily Planner offers a standard set of features presented in a simple, no-nonsense interface that works both online and offline. The daily planner app uses folders to help you organize projects with tasks and subtasks. You can set recurring charges and create new ones with no deadlines while you’re still creating the project.
We like that zooming out on the calendar view and selecting a specific day shows a summary of tasks related to the selected day. It makes it easy for you to look at a week or even a month to see how the work is broken down. There is a dark mode feature and the ability to change the colors of the interface. Google Calendar or Microsoft Calendar users won’t find integration or sync options, but if you’re looking for an app that lets you start planning your trip, this simple planner offers a lot for its free price.
3. Evernote
Evernote combines note-taking with organizing project tasks in a way that’s clear and concise. The home screen puts everything important front and center before you select a job—with its own subtasks and notes attached—to dive into.
A project like “order laptops for the team” can start as just an idea before turning it into an organized memo with tasks for research, pricing information, and team members’ hardware needs. If you’re experienced in getting the most out of your current daily planner app and want to explore the possibility of extending the tool across your team, Evernote is for you. The free version lets you sync up to two devices and limits storage space. The next two tiers – Personal and Professional – extend storage access and allow you to connect to your Google Calendar account. The Professional level (billed at $9.99 per month) also allows integration with other tools such as Slack, Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams. There is also a team tier with subscriptions for individual members.
4. nTask
nTask combines your daily planner with project management to provide an all-in-one collaboration space with your team. Before you invite team members to collaborate on specific projects and tasks, plan out the various projects—and note their obstacles or roadblocks. To motivate you, even more, the progress bar gets a little closer to full after each subtask you complete. nTask can be used on multiple devices, so you can mark tasks as complete or start new workspaces from anywhere.
Teams new to project management are billed annually for the lowest-level plan ($36), while more established teams may want the business tier ($96), which comes with more features such as enhanced views (such as Kanban), dependencies, and features partial tasks. , and more.
5. Memorigi
Memorigi has a larger feature set than you might expect in its free version, giving you the option to upgrade ($50, billed annually) to a tier with even more options, such as better productivity stats to track progress, Memorigi cloud access, and the “Nag Me Feature ”, which gently nudges you to be on the right track.
In the free version, you can see tasks at a glance using the calendar view, and you can choose how to organize them using tools such as groups, projects, and lists. Groups are useful for separating your personal tasks from your work tasks. Within groups, you can track projects and organize each project using headings to keep tasks organized. We’d like to see Google Calendar integration available in the free plan since the daily planner app is only available for Android, but we’re willing to look past that for Memorigi’s ease of use and solid design.
Moving forward
There’s a planning app for everyone, whether you feel like a black-diamond-Mount-Everest novice or an expert. While it takes willpower to coax out your inner planner, this list of apps offers a wide variety of features that suit your preferred work style, fit your budget, and work with the operating system of your choice. Your new daily planner app or to request feedback on a new feature in your current app—is just a click away.
