5 Useful Apps for Boosting Your Productivity in 2022

[MacRumors]

January is when many of us make New Year's resolutions for improvements that we want to enact in the new year, and if you're looking to bolster your productivity and adopt new habits, we have a great list of iOS and Mac apps that you might want to check out.

Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.​

We've outlined the apps, provided links, and listed app pricing below, but make sure to check out our YouTube video to see them in action.

1. Spike (Free) - Spike is an email app that turns emails into chat conversations, making it easier to carry on a conversation and collaborate on projects. There are tools for taking notes, creating task lists, scheduling meetings, and launching audio/video calls. Spike is free for personal email addresses, though some features are limited.
2. Calendly (Free) - Calendly is a service that's designed to make it easy to schedule meetings with others. You can enter your availability and preferences and then send along a link to the person you want to meet with to get something scheduled. Calendly has an iOS app and Chrome and Firefox extensions and it's simple to use. Calendly is free, but additional features can be unlocked with a monthly subscription.
3. Noteplan 3 ($6.99/month) - Noteplan 3 is a to-do list, planner, and organizer that helps you manage notes, tasks, and your calendar. It provides all of the notes and tasks that you need each day in a singular view, it integrates with your calendar, and it supports Markdown. Noteplan 3 is $6.99 per month or $59.99 per year, and there is a free trial so you can test it out before subscribing.
4. Superhuman ($30/month) - Superhuman bills itself as the "fastest email experience ever made," with an intuitive interface and features like social insights, reminders, send later, snooze, and undo send. It has a split inbox design so you can manage your most important emails, and it promises to help you get through your emails twice as fast. Superhuman is priced at $30 per month.
5. Maccy (Free) - Maccy is a clipboard manager designed for the Mac, which is lightweight, simple, and entirely free to use. It keeps a history of everything that's copied, letting you search through and use your previous clipboard contents. It's available through Github.

Have a favorite productivity app that we haven't listed here? Let us know in the comments.

Article Link: 5 Useful Apps for Boosting Your Productivity in 2022

 

[gknewell]

I hate this time of year.

 

[fwmireault]

I am not someone particularly hostile to subscriptions, but the superhuman pricing is ridiculous. I get that it is oriented towards business, but 30$ per month per user for email is insane

 

[4jasontv]

I am not someone particularly hostile to subscriptions, but the superhuman pricing is ridiculous. I get that it is oriented towards business, but 30$ per month per user for email is insane

Also many of the claims are dubious. I just don’t believe every task is done in under 100 ms. And other email clients including Apple Mail intentionally messes with read receipts to break them or make them unreliable.

As for spike, I feel like its core feature breaks what makes e-mail valuable. Email is not a chat.

 

[icanhazmac]

Just for lulz I checked out the Superhuman site to see what could possibly make someone pay $30/mo for an email client and found exactly what I thought I would.... nothing of interest, very few actual references to the interface and a whole lot of mystic claims about how they figured out the experience . Also, with all the social integration I assume you are paying $30/mo to have them scrape not only your email info but all the info possible from your contacts. Hard pass.

Say no to anything free or anything via subscription. Just give me the features I want at a fair price and I will buy it, when you offer new and innovative updates I will buy them too.

 

[magicschoolbus]

It also can cook frozen pizzas and function as an air fryer.

 

[AppliedMicro]

Superhuman not only doesn‘t support Exchange. It‘s not even an Email client (yet).

„Currently only supports Google accounts“, says the fine print in the App Store.

Just give me the features I want at a fair price and I will buy it, when you offer new and innovative updates I will buy them too.

I‘d even pay for compatibility upgrades (within reason), if Apple‘s new OS or an external API breaks things.

But apps that stop working without me forking out dollars every month? No thanks.

 

[thefourthpope]

A hearty +1 for NotePlan. It’s less about productivity and more about planning and organization. The developer is active and responsive on Reddit, Twitter, and email, and there have been some excellent updates with more goodness to come.

 

[SaltireDJ]

Hmm. Am I doing something wrong? When I click on the link for Maccy, I end up at GitHub but then I get taken to the Apple Store and it's going to cost me $13.99 (CDN).

 

[jclo]

Hmm. Am I doing something wrong? When I click on the link for Maccy, I end up at GitHub but then I get taken to the Apple Store and it's going to cost me $13.99 (CDN).

I just added a better link that's less confusing. You can download it right from here: https://github.com/p0deje/Maccy/releases/tag/0.22.0

 

[SaltireDJ]

I just added a better link that's less confusing. You can download it right from here: https://github.com/p0deje/Maccy/releases/tag/0.22.0

Thank you. Much appreciated. :•)

 

[makr]

I use Todoist for to-do list. It's been 3 years and I'm happy so far.

 

[Spacetime Anomaly]

I get a productivity boost every time I disregard a subscription based app.

 

[Danfango]

Am I the only person on the planet who finds the default apple apps perfectly adequate for the torrent of carnage piled on us by modern society?

I spent about 5 years buying all sorts of productivity enhancing apps and found that they universally just made things more complicated and cost me money for the privilege.

Oh apart from GoodNotes. That was a keeper.

 

[cupcakes2000]

Drafts 5 should be on this list. It’s just the best app I have ever used for productivity.

 

[jsamuelson]

Trying Maccy thanks for the heads-up. Was just thinking about finding a new clipboard app for terminal commands this morning.

 

[svish]

Will try out Maccy.

 

[BeefCake 15]

Miss me with that $30/month....Any free open source alternatives I can use and donate to instead?

@jclo can you guys do one for open source software people can use and support also?

 

[Mac_MD-PhD]

Subscription model for apps is an automatic no for me, sorry.

 

[Lioness~]

I stay with Paste for a very low subscription fee. Works flawless on all devices.
-Otherwise, I am just saying Things. Use it to everything. No subscriptions.
I love that app and use it to god knows what, all the time. One of my most used apps on all devices.

That and Apple's apps works for me comparing to the other apps offered for productivity here now.

 

[The_Martini_Cat]

Yeah I would definitely get a clipboard app from GitHub. No possibility of security holes that way! ??

 

[ackmondual]

I am not someone particularly hostile to subscriptions, but the superhuman pricing is ridiculous. I get that it is oriented towards business, but 30$ per month per user for email is insane

Seems to be spot on then, no? If it's for businesses, they're definitely willing to pay a higher premium vs. individual consumers, so while $30/mo is pricy for us, it may be a drop in the bucket for them. Whether or not the app is actually suitable for them is another thing entirely.

 

[paulgpetty]

Superhuman ... so I also think $30/mo is a lot of money. Could they get 10x the number of subscribers for $3/mo probably not. They stand out at that price & make some interesting claims. I'm incredibly unlikely to pay that amount but mostly because it's a Gmail / Gsuite only client. I went to Fastmail to gain privacy & ended up with a very clean, fast & reliable email solution that has a lot of additional productivity tools bundled in to a relatively low cost. And at $3 - $9/mo depending on needs (like custom domain) it's incredibly inexpensive. Their iOS & web app is great, or you can use many other clients. But Superhuman is super narrowly focused, maybe because $0/mo for Gmail + $30/mo for Superhuman is still just $30/mo. I don't know what the value add could be that would send my monthly email cost to 10x what I pay today. I'd really like to know, but I'm also willing to never find out.

 

[AppliedMicro]

If it's for businesses, they're definitely willing to pay a higher premium vs. individual consumers, so while $30/mo is pricy for us, it may be a drop in the bucket for them. Whether or not the app is actually suitable for them is another thing entirely.

But that's the thing. If they were going for business users, I don't understand why they aren't starting with Exchange integration (well... I kind of do. Google/Gmail is probably much easier to develop for). Without that, they are excluding many businesses, and without IMAP, they're excluding a lot.

Sure, their website doesn't look cheap but very colourful, they don't even proper easy find specs, support pages etc. It all screams "I'm for rich internet entrepreneurs and Instagram influencers (to endorse the product)" - but not enterprise or most businesses.

OK, Instagram influencers arguably have and are businesses, too.

 

[AZhappyjack]

Just what we need... a $30/month email app... only if it makes me breakfast and chauffeurs me to the office... in what world is a $30/month subscription email app anything but obscene?