Best Apple Watch Apps to Boost Your Productivity | TechCrunch

The Apple Watch helps people track their health and fitness, but it can also be a great tool for helping people stay productive and get work done. This is especially true for people who are easily distracted by their phone.

While the Apple Watch comes with basic built-in productivity apps like Reminders and Calendar, it’s worth exploring some third-party apps designed to boost productivity by providing additional functionality.

Todoist

Todoist is a great app for managing tasks on your Apple Watch if you don’t want to take out your iPhone. The app allows you to create and manage tasks, organize these tasks into projects, mark them as completed and also set reminders. You can add tasks using voice commands or the keyboard.

The app is great for people who prefer to quickly glance at their wrist instead of pulling out their phone when doing things like checking a shopping list at the store or jotting down a quick note or reminder.

You can stay informed about the progress of your tasks for the day right from the face of your Apple Watch. For example, you can choose to display your next task or the percentage of tasks completed for the day.

Todoist is free and offers a $4 monthly subscription if you want additional features like custom task reminders, an AI assistant, a calendar layout, and more.

Concepts

Since the Apple Watch doesn’t have a Notes app, Concepts is a good app for those who want a digital notepad without a phone. You can capture notes via voice commands, the watchOS Scribble feature, or the keyboard.

Your drafts inbox syncs from your iPhone and displays the number of drafts you have, while also showing the number of drafts marked, so you can quickly access important drafts.

The app uses a blank note by default, so you can quickly enter an idea without interrupting your thought process. You can save notes in a folder to organize your thoughts or just have a free-flowing canvas.

The app is free and offers a $1.99 monthly subscription if you want access to additional functionality like themes and the ability to send your emails to the app.

Focus

Focus is a good app for people who want a productivity timer to get their work done and complete tasks one by one. The app is designed to divide your work time into smaller chunks called ‘Focus Sessions’. Working in sessions allows you to stay focused on the task at hand before moving on to the next task.

Using your Apple Watch instead of your phone to stay focused can help keep distractions to a minimum. You can quickly glance at your wrist to see how much time is left in your Focus session and then get right back to work. Focus also encourages you to take breaks between your sessions.

The app is available for $7.99 per month.

AutoSleep

AutoSleep is one of the most popular Apple Watch apps for tracking your sleep, and for good reason. The app gives you an informative insight into your sleep quality, heart rate, sleep consistency and more. It can help you track the time it takes to fall asleep and measure the efficiency of your sleep.

AutoSleep shows you all this data via a clock display with sleep rings, giving you a quick overview of your stats in a way similar to your watch’s activity rings. You can see if you are getting enough sleep or if you should try to sleep more.

The app also shows you a “readiness” score that estimates how mentally and physically ready you are for the day ahead based on how you slept, which is similar to how the Oura Ring app tackles the same metric. It can also indicate the best time for you to go to bed, so you can ensure you’ve caught up on enough sleep.

You can access the app for a one-time fee of $5.99.

Stripes

Stripes is a good app for people who want to develop good habits and track their progress. Each day you complete a task your streak will be extended. If you break the chain, your streak will be reset to zero. You can track up to 24 habits, such as flossing your teeth, practicing a new language, and eating healthy.

The app also lets you track tasks that don’t need to happen every day. For example, you might set the task of walking to work Monday through Friday, going to the gym three days a week, or avoiding junk food on the weekends.

With a quick glance at your Apple Watch, you can quickly see what tasks you still need to complete that day, see your progress, and mark tasks as complete.

The app is available for a one-time fee of $5.99.

Fantastic

Fantastic is a great calendar app that helps you stay organized right from your Apple Watch. You can use the app to create events and set reminders that you can view at a glance.

The Apple Watch app has three views to choose from. The “Up Next” view gives you a quick overview of your next appointment in addition to the current weather. In the ‘List’ view you can see all the events and tasks that await you in the coming days, in addition to the expected weather forecast. The “To Do” view collects all your tasks in one view and allows you to check them off with a quick tap.

The app also allows you to receive alerts for upcoming events and tasks. If you want this information on your watch face, Fantastical’s Smart Stack widget gives you a quick look at your calendar.

Fantastical costs $4.99 per month.

Things 3

Things 3 is a great productivity manager that can help you create to-do lists, manage projects, and track progress toward your goals. It can be used to organize your personal, business, financial and other aspects of your life into special ‘areas’.

The app offers reminders, a calendar integration, widgets, tags to categorize your to-do lists and more. Things 3 also lets you repeat tasks automatically on a schedule you set, and there’s a special place for evening plans under the ‘This Evening’ section.

As the day progresses, you can quickly check things off from your wrist and add new ones as you go.

You can get Things 3 for a one-time payment of $9.99.

Structured

Structured is a simple app that helps you plan your day by combining your calendar, to-do list, habit tracker, reminders and routines into one timeline.

You can navigate your structured timeline on your wrist to see your upcoming tasks and keep track of your routine without having to pick up your phone. The app lets you save thoughts and quickly create notes in your inbox so you can sort them later. You can also split larger projects into ‘subtasks’.

Structured also allows you to personalize your different tasks with different icons and colors, so you can visually organize your to-do list. Structured syncs with your Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Structured’s basic features are available for free, but you can pay a monthly fee of $6.49 to unlock additional features, such as the ability to use AI to set up and schedule tasks.