11 Best Time Management Apps in 2024

We are all aware of the importance of proper time management — if you manage your time wisely, you’ll be able to perform high-quality work in less time. 

This is where time management tools come in, as they are effectively designed to help you handle every little task that comes your way — both business and personal. 

To help you make your pick, I’ve tested dozens of apps, and 11 tools stood out as top-performing time management apps in 2024. They include: 

• Work hours trackers,
• Communication platforms,
• Project and task organizers,
• Email management software,
• Account managing apps,
• Team management systems, and
• Alarm tools, among other essentials.

Let’s go over each of them in more detail. 

#1 Clockify — work hours tracker

Clockify is the ultimate tool meant to, among other things, help you track time and develop effective time management habits. This time tracker and time management app enables you to track the time you spend on various activities, providing you with data meant to improve your work routine.

How Clockify works

Immediately after you create your account in Clockify, you can choose how you want to track time on the Time Tracker page:

• Timer mode — just start the timer once you start working on an activity, and stop it as soon as you’re done, or 
• Manual mode — enter the time you’ve spent working on an activity manually. Alternatively, you can enter time manually in the Timesheet view.

What I mostly appreciate about Clockify is the color-coded view of all my projects and activities in the Dashboard section. 

Once I go there, I get to see all my activities, including my top project and the total time I spent working over a week, month, or even a year. 

As you could have guessed, my work week mainly consists of writing, so there’s not much variety there. 

However, the breakdown of my most tracked activities helps me see where most of my time goes. I find this option quite useful since I’m trying to give more attention to the research part of my writing process, too.

For instance, based on my Dashboard, I only spent around 2 hours doing my research last week, compared to 7 hours of writing — which is a signal that I should introduce some changes to my writing routine ASAP. 

Also, the option to generate Reports based on my tracked time lets me keep a record of my productivity in many formats — PDF, CSV, and Excel. This way, I can store my productivity data and share it with whomever I want in a matter of seconds. 

Why use Clockify

If you’d like to power up your time management skills without having to put a lot of effort into devising a whole new system — Clockify is a great option. Probably the best thing about Clockify is that it offers a variety of time tracking and time managing features, from billable hours and scheduling, to invoicing and timesheets.

You can also pair Clockify up with the whole suite of productivity tools and simplify your work even further.

Clockify pro

Clockify’s free version comes with a generous number of features necessary to monitor your productivity levels — from unlimited time tracking to calendar view. 

Clockify con

If you’d like to lock your timesheets after a certain point in time to prevent subsequent editing, you’ll need to go for one of Clockify’s paid versions. 

What’s new in Clockify

In January 2024, Clockify improved account security — now every login requires email authentication.

#2 Habitica — game-style task manager

Habitica is a free task manager that promises to help its users accomplish their most important tasks, achieve goals, and manage their time — all while providing them with a gamified experience.

By awarding rewards for completed daily to-dos and letting your character advance as you carry through your tasks, Habitica helps you squeeze into your day every single to-do you’ve been postponing. 

How Habitica works

The gist behind Habitica is quite simple. You create an account, customize your avatar, and add your tasks.

In Habitica, you’ll see your tasks sorted into 3 different categories:

• Habits,
• Dailies, and
• To Do’s. 

As you check off completed tasks, your character’s Health and Experience bars go up, and you receive coins you can later spend on rewards. 

The coins can be in-game rewards, like character equipment or pets, or real-life rewards, such as watching your favorite TV show or buying a candle. After you finish watching one episode, you check off that reward and spend 10 coins, just like you would in real life when you treat yourself after receiving a well-deserved paycheck.  

What I found practical about Habitica is that you can select the areas of life that you want to work on right after you create your account. For this purpose, I choose Work and Chores. Immediately after, I added my own custom Dailies, Habits, and To Do’s — and it was game time. 

I tried sticking to completing my tasks because I knew — as soon as I ran out of steam, I’d see my character’s Health drop. In fact, if I failed to complete my daily tasks for a while, I risked my character dying and losing coins. 

For additional accountability, Habitica lets you start your own Parties and invite friends to complete challenges together. 

Also, you could get your household members involved in completing chores by purchasing a Group plan and assigning them tasks. 

Unfortunately, since I added a No Spend December to my Habits list, I didn’t dare risk failing to follow through and losing my character’s Health by spending money on anything — including a paid plan. 

Why use Habitica

If you’re searching for a tool to help you find a sweet spot between procrastination and working until you drop — then Habitica could be worth your time. 

By reminding you to take short breaks (and actually rewarding you for it), this tool helps you find motivation to engage in whatever needs to be done, take a breather, and still have fun. 

Habitica pro

The app offers a great deal of customization options for a personalized experience — from dressing up your character, to creating challenges for your friends and family. 

Habitica con

Getting used to a game style task management takes a while, especially if you’re used to simple to-do lists.

What’s new in Habitica

Habitica frequently adds new inventory items, special challenges, pets, etc. Their latest additions were new backgrounds for users’ avatars and Enchanted Armoire items in September 2023. 

#3 Plaky — project and task management software

Plaky is one of the simplest time management tools for planning, tracking, and managing your tasks and projects. This project management software helps you get status reports and collaborate with your teammates with just one click. 

How Plaky works

Once you create an account, Plaky lets you create your first board, which you can either craft entirely from scratch and customize to your liking or make use of 20+ ready-made templates. 

Since I’m all about improving my time management skills, I went for a ready-to-use Content calendar template. 

Even though I do have a personal preference when it comes to the labels I usually assign to the status of my tasks, I did find the premade ones detailed enough not to spend additional time editing the template. 

The point where I actually needed customization options is the board view, and the team behind Plaky did a great job in providing it. If you decide to change your board view to Kanban, for example, you can create a new private view, and this won’t affect how your team members see the board. 

This way, you are able to keep an eye on your progress while managing tasks without disrupting anyone from your team. 

For an extra pair of hands in monitoring your progress, you can add the Timeline field to your items that shows you exactly how far along you’ve come with each of your tasks and how far you are from hitting the deadline. 

Why use Plaky

Managing your time well mostly depends on keeping all your to-dos, deadlines, and projects within reach — and this is what Plaky does best. Also, if you appreciate being able to color-code everything you’re currently busy with, you’ll greatly benefit from Plaky’s design. 

Plaky pro

Despite a robust set of features it offers, Plaky is intuitive and easy to grasp.

Plaky con

Board view is still limited to Table and Kanban. 

What’s new in Plaky

As of January 2024, Plaky users are now able to export Activity log items to CSV files. 

#4 Pumble — communication platform

Pumble is a free team communication and collaboration tool that makes it perfect for businesses who want to interact with teammates across multiple departments. Pumble has a simple user interface, making it easy to instantly message your team members or make audio and video calls.

How Pumble works

Even with its free version, Pumble already offers a wide range of features that can compete with some of the most popular apps out there.

With Pumble, you get to:

• Message your coworkers,
• Conduct free video and voice calls,
• Take part in conversations with an entire group, 
• Group your conversations in threads, 
• Use dedicated channels for collaboration, and more.

Pumble also gives users the option to share files and store up to 10GB of data per workspace, which can be extra helpful if you don’t want to juggle between multiple tools whenever you need to access an important document. 

While working my way around Pumble, I thoroughly enjoyed the option to schedule my messages instead of sending them immediately as they came to my mind.

Since my flexible work hours allow me to start my day early in the morning, dispatching my messages at the crack of dawn is usually not an option. So, scheduling my messages to be sent around my coworkers’ clocking in time has worked wonders in this case. 

The same goes when I’m about to fully immerse myself in deep work and don’t want my notifications popping out left and right and breaking my focus. 

For that purpose, I set a status to let my teammates know what I’m currently busy with and pause notifications to minimize the chances of distractions. 

Yet, when I decide to share my thoughts with my team, I can do that in many different formats — from videos and sound recordings to images and maps. These are all the options that earned Pumble a well-deserved title — a great, yet affordable alternative to Slack. 

Why use Pumble

If you’re looking for a free all-in-one tool that comes with a variety of options to enhance company-wide collaboration and minimize the time spent rummaging through messages, then Pumble is a great choice. 

Pumble pro

The free plan lets you access the entire message history, which can be particularly useful if you frequently need to go over older conversations when searching for relevant information.  

Pumble con

The number of integrations could be increased. 

What’s new in Pumble

As of January 2024, Pumble users can now record their 1-on-1 meetings. 

#5 Todoist — to-do list manager

Todoist is a simple-to-use to-do list manager devised to help its users conquer their to-do lists and keep up with their tasks while wasting minimum time. 

How Todoist works

Todoist is pretty straightforward. After I created my account, I got the option to pick the area of life I intend to focus on when creating my to-do lists — Work, Personal, and Education.

Immediately after, I was introduced to the Inbox section where I noticed several default to-dos (such as Review my day and Do a weekly review of my tasks) already added to my list. Inbox usually consists of all your default tasks that haven’t been grouped under a project. 

Today and Upcoming views allow you to add tasks with a particular deadline and check them off when you’re done. 

The My Projects section consists of all the areas you’ve selected when you’ve created your account, and you can quickly access your to-dos for each area up from there. 

If you’re into a gamified experience, you can also turn on the Todoist Karma. This option helps you visualize your productivity by giving you points for each task you tick off, and lets you progressively move on to new levels as you reach a certain number of completed tasks. 

What I particularly found useful were the ready-made templates designed to help users get going with completing tasks as soon as possible. You can choose your preferred template from many different categories — from Creative and Design to Goals and Education.

Being a content writer, I naturally tested the Blog post template. I noticed the template was detailed enough that it required minimum tweaking and personalization on my end. 

Since writing is my non-negotiable recurring task, I found the option to add a due date using natural language handy. All I needed to do was add ‘every day’ as my deadline, and Writing would automatically be on my to-do list.

Why use Todoist 

Todoist is an intuitive and sleek tool with a generous number of free options, ideal for everyone looking to manage their time better without having to waste hours getting around the tool. 

Todoist pro

Todoist comes with a great deal of templates designed for different workflows, routines, and goals.

Todoist con

Task reminders only come with a paid plan, so if you go for a free version you’ll need to manually go over your to-dos so as not to forget about them. 

What’s new in Todoist

As of December 2023, Todoist Pro users are now able to change their Projects’ layout to Calendar view on top of already available List and Board views. 

#6 Evernote — notes organizer

Evernote is a nifty notes organizer and planner that helps you make the most of your time — even when it seems to slip by like sand. 

How Evernote works

As soon as you create an account in Evernote, you get to decide how you’ll use the app. You can select to use it for work, school, or personal tasks. 

Immediately after you decide how you’ll use the app, Evernote leads you to create your first Notebook — a collection of all your notes, to-dos, projects, and weekly plans. 

The first notebook I created was obviously the one consisting of all the things blog post-related. That’s where I inserted web clips with snippets from relevant sources and visuals necessary for my blog post. 

Evernote also lets you record audio and add it to your notebook, which can be a huge time-saver when an idea suddenly hits you while you’re in a rush. This way, you can leave an audio memo that you can get back to at your own pace. 

I also liked the option to create a to-do list right in my notebook since it spared me from having to juggle between multiple apps and adding to my digital clutter. 

Why use Evernote

If you’re used to making notes about anything and everything, yet you can’t seem to keep them all at one place, then Evernote is a handy solution for pulling out all the necessary information at warp speed.

Evernote pro

Evernote is quite easy to grasp, despite the variety of formats and templates you can attach to your notebooks. 

Evernote con

Setting deadlines, creating custom templates, and adding additional notebooks only comes with one of the paid plans. 

What’s new in Evernote

At the end of 2023, Evernote introduced a two-factor authentication process, as well as instant data sync across all devices.

#7 ProofHub — work management & team collaboration platform

ProofHub is an all-in-one work management and team collaboration solution for teams of all sizes. The tool promises to help its users excel at time management by providing them with a sharp way of organizing their projects, tracking their time, listing all their tasks, and more. 

How ProofHub works

Despite being an all-around tool that lets you see where your time goes, organize your to-dos and projects, ProofHub is quite easy to master. 

Since ProofHub is primarily geared towards teams, as soon as you create an account you’ll be offered to invite your team members to the workspace. 

However, although the tool can be put to its best use when used collectively, you can still manage your projects and tasks even if you’re the only one using ProofHub.

What’s more, ProofHub gives you the option to manage your activities, upcoming events, calendars, and projects directly from the Me page on the left sidebar — especially handy if you’re in a rush and you just want to mark your progress quickly. 

The entire Me dashboard is filled with widgets you can move around, edit, or delete altogether, depending on your priorities. 

What I found the most useful while going around my day using ProofHub was the option to add Stickies as little reminders to all my repetitive tasks that tend to slip away from my memory. 

Also, I really liked that I could sort my projects by: 

• Category, 
• The last updated date, 
• Name, or 
• Their status. 

Even though my day mostly revolves around one project — writing — having the option to customize the project view to my workflow saved me time when wondering which task I worked on the latest. 

This option is especially handy when you’ve just come back from a vacation, so you need quite some time to remember where you left off. 

Why use ProofHub

If you frequently run out of steam while trying to manage your time, then ProofHub might speak to your needs — it helps you jot down all your duties, prioritize them accordingly, and easily track your progress. 

ProofHub pro

The tool is quite simple to navigate despite the variety of options it offers. There are also pop-ups to help users navigate through the app once they create an account. 

ProofHub con

ProofHub could be on the pricier side, especially if you’re a solopreneur or work in a smaller team. 

What’s new in ProofHub

As of September 2023, users can now customize their dashboard layout even further by adjusting the size of the widgets to their liking. 

#8 Forest — focus app

Forest is the ultimate focus app that helps you save time by encouraging you to pursue your tasks and avoid procrastinating right from your smartphone.

On top of helping you ward off distractions that drive your focus off the course, Forest motivates you to keep moving through your tasks and produce your best work along the way.   

How Forest works

The idea behind Forest is simple — whenever you want to focus on a task, you set a timer and plant a virtual seed. Until the timer goes off, you’re not allowed to pick up your phone. If you close the app — you’ll see your plant wither and die. 

Since Forest is all about preventing you from doom-scrolling on your phone, getting started with the app doesn’t take more than a few minutes. 

After creating your account — it’s planting time. As soon as you complete one planting session (a.k.a your timer goes off), you receive 9 coins that you can use to purchase more plants later on. 

Having particularly weak willpower, I actually found the option of purchasing additional plants quite motivating to keep on going with my tasks. 

Also, the ability to add customized short messages I’ll see while my tree is growing (or in case I cause it to wither) was a nice touch I really appreciated as a writer. 

Since I mostly tried growing bamboo, I decided to go with a phrase that might potentially cause watery eyes in case I let my plant down. 

Although mostly used on mobile devices, Forest also comes with a Chrome extension that gives users the option to maximize their focus across devices.  

The extension works similarly to the mobile app, with one exception — you are allowed to use your computer as usual, except for the websites you put on the block list. 

Why use Forest

If you find it nearly impossible to eschew picking up your phone every couple of minutes while working, Forest may be the best remedy for this pesky little habit. 

Forest pro

Forest is simple to use and setting up your preferences takes up minimum time. 

Forest con

If your phone is on silent, you may not receive a sound notification when your plant is grown, which can be annoying if a fully-grown tree is your signal for a break. 

What’s new in Forest

Forest regularly adds new plant species and modify users’ themes according to seasons. Their latest 2024 addition is Geranium, which users can purchase after obtaining a certain number of coins. 

#9 SaneBox — email manager

SaneBox is an email manager meant to help you keep your inbox clean of unwanted clutter and highlight your priority conversations. One of its most prominent abilities is helping users reclaim their time from the grasp of a never-ending stream of emails. 

How SaneBox works

SaneBox is meant to assist you in keeping your inbox neatly organized so that you can defeat email overflow — and their clean interface testifies to this intention. Precisely because of this user-friendly interface, getting around Sanebox is pretty straightforward. 

Immediately after you connect your email to SaneBox, you’ll see the option to add several folders to your email inbox. 

SaneNoReplies, for example, automatically stores all the emails you didn’t receive a response to in one place. 

SaneBlackHole, on the other hand, works similarly to a spam folder. If you frequently receive emails you don’t want to read (and for some reason you can’t or don’t want to unsubscribe from), SaneBox automatically moves them to the BlackHole folder. 

Most of the folders work the same way — your actions train the algorithm, and your emails automatically get stored in appropriate folders.

I, personally, found the option to set my Don’t disturb hours particularly handy, thanks to which all my emails get moved to a DoNotDisturb folder instantly. 

The app also provides the option to set a custom Away message, so the people who try to get in touch with me while I’m away know exactly when they should expect a response from me. 

Also, the option to set reminders for to-dos by forwarding an email to a certain date saved me from a bunch of missed deadlines. Since I check my emails first thing in the morning, SaneBox allows me to compose an email consisting of all my tasks and forward it to 8am.tomorrow@sanebox.com to receive a list of my to-dos tomorrow morning. 

Why use SaneBox

If coping with your email inbox seems like a dead-end street that does nothing but eat away your time, SaneBox could bring back a breath of fresh air and help you conquer email clutter. 

SaneBox pro

Coming with a great deal of customization options, SaneBox perfectly blends into different workflows and daily routines and habits. 

SaneBox con

Even though SaneBox offers a significant number of features, to be able to use them after a free trial, users have to purchase the most expensive paid plan ($36/month). 

What’s new in SaneBox

The latest SaneBox update from April 2023 improved how the snooze option for Reminders works. With this update, users can choose whether they want to include controls in the header of the reminder email that let them snooze email reminders for a particular amount of time. 

#10 Shift — account and app manager

Shift is an app meant to help you streamline your conversations and workflows across various apps, without having to log in and out all the time.

How Shift works

Although it may seem as a web browser at a first glance, Shift actually does more than give users the option to browse the Internet. 

In Shift, you get to create a workspace under which you’ll keep all the tools, calendars, and emails relevant to your workflow under one roof. 

Then, whenever you’re about to get going for the day, you simply open the app and access all the tools necessary for completing your tasks from the left sidebar. 

What I found most useful is the option to keep my work and personal lives separate by storing the tools I use for each segment of my life in a different workspace. 

At work, for example, not a day goes by without me logging into our time management app, project management tool, and team chat app. Yet, since I tend to check them even in my after-hours, I found switching between the workspaces in Shift a perfect end-of-workday ritual. After I clock out and switch to my personal workspace, I don’t receive any notifications from my work apps, so there’s nothing to pull me into engaging in work in my free time. 

Also, the option to take a quick glance at a unified calendar (regardless of the number of workspaces I created) helps me keep track of everything I need to do throughout the day.

Why use Shift

Shift is a great option for everyone looking to save time otherwise wasted going back and forth between emails accounts, different apps, or dozens of tabs. 

Shift pro

Due to its sleek appearance and user-friendly interface, Shift makes toggling between workspaces a matter of seconds.

Shift con

Shift’s free plan is quite limited — you only get to keep one app on your sidebar, and paid plans are quite pricey, especially for larger teams. 

What’s new in Shift

As of December 2023, Shift changed its logo and color scheme to reflect its user-first approach. 

#11 Alarmy — an unconventional alarm clock

Alarmy is an interesting twist to the old alarm clock formula — you have to prove you’ve really woken up in order to turn off your alarm. 

How Alarmy works

Alarmy’s main goal is to get you out of bed at the exact time you set your alarm clock for. So, for that purpose, you’ll have to complete a mini-game called Mission to wake up your mind, body, or both. 

While setting up your alarm, you can choose one of the following Missions:

• Math,
• Memory, 
• Typing,
• Missing symbol,
• Step,
• QR/Barcode,
• Photo,
• Squat, and
• Shake.

Since I’m not exactly a math whizz in my wake hours, I didn’t dare hope I’d suddenly become one half-asleep, so I first went with a memory game while setting up my alarm.

Even though I usually don’t have trouble waking up, I found Alarmy’s missions quite refreshing — they actually helped me get both my mind and my body going much quicker than with my default alarm. 

The QR/Barcode mission and squats were my favorites since they required me to either get up from the bed to look for a package consisting of a barcode I could scan or do 30 squats to prove I really left the bed.

You also get to choose whether you want to be woken up gently with the alarm sound volume gradually increasing or to be startled immediately when the alarm goes off.

Alarmy comes with a sleep-tracking feature, too, which can be convenient if you wish to get a full-detail sleep report. Alarmy’s sleep reports may help you recognize patterns in your sleeping habits and see if there’s anything you can improve to get higher quality sleep. 

Why use Alarmy

If the root cause of all your time management issues lies in having trouble waking up — then Alarmy will surely help you nip this trouble in the bud. 

Alarmy pro

Alarmy brings forward a variety of settings and options to help even the heaviest sleepers step out of their beds.  

Alarmy con

Additional options, such as a higher volume alarm and multiple missions in a row, come only with a paid version of Alarmy. 

What’s new in Alarmy

Alarmy’s October 2023 update came with the option to set up multiple missions in one single alarm. 

Looking for an all-in-one time management app? Go with Clockify 

If, despite the variety of tools you introduced into your workflow, your attempts to master time management feel like a one-way street, it may be time to go back to the basics — keeping an eye on your time.

This is where Clockify comes in.

Designed exclusively to help you detect your weak points, Clockify lets you keep track of everything you do day in and day out — so you’ll know what changes to introduce to your schedule for perfect control of your day.