Apps that every student needs

Your guide to the best student apps to make your life easier

As a student, balancing studies, managing time, staying organised and even figuring out how to manage your student loan can become overwhelming. Thankfully, there are many apps and tools to help make your life easier and more productive.

Whether you want to improve your fitness habits or save some money, we've got you covered!

Fitness & Wellbeing 🧘

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle at university, mentally and physically, is the best way to get through your studies and university life. You should always put your health first and look after yourself as well as looking after your friends/course mates. 

• Moves+ app: Turns your movement into a game to keep you motivated. Whether you're walking to lectures, cycling into town or hitting the gym, Moves+ turns your everyday activity into points. In simple terms, the more you move, the more points you collect. The points you earn can be exchanged for exciting rewards. Read more about Moves+ on our page.
• Calm: A mindfulness app that works to reduce stress, lower anxiety, and improve sleep. With its many sleep stories (for those who can't sleep), 60-second Breathe Bubbles, and guided meditations, the app is there to help calm your mind. It can be really useful fo when you feel overwhelmed or need to wind down after a big study session.
• Strava: A very popular app for runners. It helps you keep track of your runs and find new routes. You can even join local challenges, share your routes with friends, and it also has live beacon tracking for extra safety. This is a great app for exploring your city and university campus differently.

Student Discounts 💰

Managing money is one of the biggest challenges of student life. With the cost of tuition fees, rent, and daily expenses, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. Luckily, there are apps to help you save money and apps to help you budget.

• UNiDAYS: Gives you access to exclusive student discounts on everything from clothes and tech to food and gym memberships. It's free to sign up. (Just verify with your university email).
• Student Beans: Similar to UNiDAYS, Student Beans offers exclusive discounts and special promotions across many major retail, tech, fashion and food brands.

Studying 📖

Getting distracted by phones, general noise, or not understanding content can lead to a lot of students just "leaving it for tomorrow". But leaving it no more! We've got a couple of apps that may interest some people if you're a big procrastinator or just need an extra nudge to start studying.

• Forest: A popular app that helps students stop procrastinating by turning their study time into growing a virtual forest. You can set a timer up to 2 hours and plant a virtual seed, which enables your plant to grow while you stay off your phone. If you leave the app or open a different one, your virtual tree sadly withers and dies. However, successful sessions earn coins, and you can spend these on new plant species or fund the planting of real trees through the app's partner, Trees for the Future.
• Gizmo: a learning tool designed to help students turn study materials into interactive flashcards and quizzes. But it's not like the usual apps. If you copy and paste your study material into the app (to create flashcards), you can ask it to explain the content to you as if you were 5 years old. The app is brilliant if you struggle to retain or understand certain information, as it breaks it down completely!

Travel 🚌

Students living in Southampton University-managed halls will receive a Unilink bus app-based pass to use. Once you have registered for your bus pass, you're free to explore! 

The app can be used on any Unilink or Bluestar bus in the Southampton area - making it easy to navigate your new city.

University doesn't have to be stressful, so let these apps do the heavy lifting for you!