10 Best Apple Watch Productivity Apps

The Apple Watch offers much more than heart rate tracking and push notifications. Many apps for your iPhone offer connectivity with the Apple Watch, extending their functionality even further. The result? Checking apps, getting updates, or staying in touch got even easier -- as easy as a turn of your wrist and a tap on the screen. Whether it’s for work or simply getting your personal day organized, the Apple Watch can be a boon to productivity and efficiency.

At Monowear, we’re all about the look of the Apple Watch with our high-quality bands. However, we’ve always had a keen eye on all of the capabilities of the Apple Watch -- in fact, we use it to help our days out as we get the most out of Monowear design and production. So here are our top ten picks for productivity apps that connect your iPhone and your Apple Watch.

Newton by CloudMagic

It wasn’t that long ago that most people only had one email address, perhaps two if they included their work email. But these days, people often have multiple addresses, and that’s all in addition to getting push notifications from applications such as Google Apps and Office 365. CloudMagic provides a one-stop shop for notifications to create a streamlined, easy-to-use, and fast management and sync tool across devices and accounts. A single CloudMagic account means instant access to any IMAP account without any further configuration, and even with constant notifications, CloudMagic goes easy on your battery and data usage with emails pushed from the cloud. Other features include custom inbox swipes for programmable actions (delete, archive, etc.) and turn on/off conversations.

DO Button

What tasks do you do from your phone every day? Do you post to Twitter? Update Slack notes? Adjust your smart thermostat? Load up key documents on Google Drive? DO Button is a simple app that acts as a big shiny button to get your most common tasks done. The DO Button architecture connects to hundreds of apps and devices, putting them all at your reach with powerful integration. Actions can be customized with unique “recipes” as specific as asking colleagues on Slack if they want to get lunch or tracking daily data on a Google Drive spreadsheet. The DO Button is the ultimate shortcut catalog, all accessed on your Apple Watch.

Productive Habits and Goal Tracker

Modern studies tell us that it takes about sixty repetitions for an action to become an instinctive habit. If you’re trying to change your life with a new daily habit, that means about two months of doing the same thing for it to become natural. Productive Habits & Daily Goals is a tool to help you build a routine. By scheduling habit reminders for different times of the day (with repeatable options for daily, weekdays, monthly, days of the week, and others), you’ll begin building each new step towards a new you. The app displays only what’s due for the current time of day, eliminating additional pressure or stress while allowing you to focus on creating successful chains of good habits. The app also offers notifications of streaks, detailed stats, a notepad, and Boost Mode to really get you going.

1Password

Passwords upon passwords; how many passwords do we have these days? Email, banks, chat, social media, and much more -- any online account requires a password. The most dangerous thing to do is create a single universal password. Instead, every account should have its own unique and strong password, but how do you manage all that? 1Password remembers your passwords and sensitive information to secure your digital life. By logging into websites for you, you’ll never forget your password or have to worry about keystroke logging. Everything is secured by a single master password that locks automatically in case of lost or stolen device, as well as syncing across all devices with 256-bit encryption.

MeisterTask

Take the power of Kanban-style project management and optimization to your Apple Watch with MeisterTask. With MeisterTask, you can create visual management tools and invite collaborators to participate in real time. Each board is customizable based on your specific project’s needs, and unique section actions can help automate workflows. Comment, like, use checklists, even upload attachments directly from Dropbox or iCloud. All this and more is accessible with a free MeisterTask account registration, which syncs up your account across your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and web-based account for maximum access and flexibility.

Microsoft OneNote

How do you take notes? Typing, copying links to URLs, making quick sketches, taking photos, recording sound bites, and more? OneNote from Microsoft is your all-in-one note taker, giving you the power to write, collect, and capture notes and lists. Better yet, it makes them all searchable and enables your device’s camera to scan and digitize things on paper. Both a digital notepad and a simple word processor, OneNote also syncs up across all your devices to make sure that your notes follow you wherever you go. OneNote’s tools are also a powerful collaborative tool that enables sharing and discussion with multiple participants to expedite a project to completion.

Timepage

Calendar apps come in all shapes and sizes. Everything from Google and native Apple apps to premium services to calendars that sync with Microsoft Outlook are all available. But Timepage is recognized as the cream of the crop. Why? Intuitive, streamlined, and elegantly designed, Timepage is a smart calendar that optimizes productivityby combining events, maps, contacts, and weather into one simple and uncluttered display. Views are adjustable between five and ten days, backgrounds can be customized, and heat maps instantly show whether you are busy or free. The Apple Watch display in particular integrates weather, travel time info, and other data at a glance.

Just Press Record

For many people, they do their best thinking when they least expect it: in the shower, on a walk, in the elevator. Five minutes later, that brilliant idea may have vaporized. Just Press Record gives simple one-tap recording at a professional audio quality. Have a thought that can solve that stubborn problem? Now you can make a quick recording before all those details disappear into the ether. With speech-to-text transcription and instant iCloud syncing, Just Press Record is perfect for professionals, students, musicians, writers, and anyone else who might need to jot down notes on the fly -- and for journalists and podcasters, it’s powerful enough to record interviews and entire programs.

Trello

Visual management has grown in popularity for project management in businesses over recent years, and Trello gives you the power to manage this way across your Apple devices. Whether for business or personal projects, Trello creates boards for anything you want organized, all capable of being shared with coworkers, friends, and family. Each board adds digital cards with to-do lists and tasks, which can be assigned and commented on. Further collaboration takes place with discussion, photo uploads, checklists, and more, synced across all devices and users. Best of all, it’s free to use for basic management and collaboration, along with a premium Gold level that delivers additional functionality.

Fantastical 2

Fantastical has been a powerful and best-selling calendar app for years. Now Fantastical 2 delivers everything that was so popular, but much more. At its core, it’s a powerful and elegant replacement for the stock iPhone calendar. But beneath the surface comes many smart features, from converting simple notes into calendar events (“todo buy flowers at 4pm”) to translation dictation for an event. Key tasks and reminders are gathered in a primary list while customization is at your fingertips: reminder protocols with custom words, repeating events, alert phrases, and background app updating.

The Apple Watch is Not Only a Great Fitness Device

The above ten apps are extremely effective tools for scheduling, project management, communication, and just staying in touch. So while the Apple Watch -- particularly the newly announced Apple Watch 2 -- is great for fitness and health, it’s also ideal for making the most out of your day. Give these ten apps a try and you’ll see for yourself; with an iPhone, your Apple Watch, and these apps, your day’s about to get much easier.