kAs technology gradually becomes more and more integrated into our daily lives, the amount of interaction that we have with computers and mobile devices is going up. A big part of the time you spend glued to your computer is transitions between actually doing work. Formatting documents, sending emails, calculating, etc. All the time you spend on small tasks like these can be reduced, and that’s where the Utilities and Productivity category comes in. These apps will make doing unimportant tasks easy and fast, making your life more streamlined, easier and altogether better.

Winner: Drafts

It may seem odd, but Drafts is actually one of my most used and helpful apps on my phone. Basically, the app is a note taking apps, with an added feature of exporting to pretty much everywhere. After you type your short note, writing draft, whatever, you can take that and immediately export it to many different places using the pop out sidebar. For example, you can text your writing, email it to a specific preset person, put it in Evernote, tweet it, post it to many different social media sites, set a reminder, save to Dropbox, add an event in Google Calendar, and more. I use the app mostly to email and text myself ideas and reminders, but Drafts has so much potential to be used for so much more. To me, if utilities and productivity apps needed to pick one app to represent the whole category, I would pick Drafts, as it does exactly what utility and productivity apps should: make what would otherwise take a short amount of time instantaneous and easy.

Runner Up: Phlo

There are pretty much two search engines that dominate the gigantic internet market: Google and Bing. But really, we all know that Google has the lion’s share of the market. But, when moving to mobile, there are more options to search from, as your objectives are different, most likely to find a specific piece of information, and fast. So, using only one search engine may not cut it maybe you want to search Wikipedia or Google Images or Youtube. That’s what Phlo does: make it easy, via one search, for you to browse all different sources. It’s like a regular search engine, except with a customizable bar on the side for switching to pretty much any site that might help you. It’s like Google, Bing, Wikipedia, Duck Duck Go, Amazon, Youtube, Google Images, and more all rolled into one. An Internet-wide search engine.

Other Best Utilities And Productivity Apps:

Workflow

Workflow has been in the news recently, and that’s probably because of it’s ingenious and new design. The app, which is meant to help you get stuff done, lets you take from a plethora of actions involving many of your phone’s features and some third party actions to create a custom workflow. A workflow is a set of these actions that completes a certain objective, like calculates a tip or makes a custom gif. There is an incredible amount of things you could do with the app, but to be honest, I really only used the tip calculator on a regular basis. You can certainly come up with other uses and workflows, but I didn’t find it necessary to use any of the workflows besides for the ones that come with the app. Still, I’m sure this app is incredibly useful to many people, and holds so much possibility for easy and quick usage of the Internet and everything it can do.

Slated

Slated is a great use of iOS 8’s new custom keyboard function, allowing you to seamlessly text and type in a completely different language. All you have to do it type out what you want, select the language, and then just tap the bar right above the keyboard. Your text will then change to the language of your choice, and you’re set! And for any of you out there who have to text in another language, I know this is a lifesaver for you, as I am one of those people. But if you aren’t one of those people, it’s still always handy to have all the languages under your tool belt, and as the world is constantly getting more connected over the internet, you may very well need it.