Are you stuck at home in self-isolation due to the recent coronavirus outbreak? Restricted to only working from home as a precaution? Whatever your current situation is, we pulled together a collection of some of the best productivity apps you can use to stay productive and on top of things while in coronavirus lockdown.
In the last few days, coronavirus cases around the world have skyrocketed resulting in panic among people. Many companies started encouraging their employees to work from home in the ongoing efforts to stop the virus spread. It is believed that keeping people further apart from each other will reduce the possibility of the group spread and ultimately lower the number of new cases.
With plenty of distractions around the house, it can be tricky to stay focused and on top of things while working from home. Thankfully there are plenty of mobile apps that can help you stay organizes, fulfill your daily tasks on time, have a conference call and even manage your business documents. Here is a roundup of the best apps to download to ensure your productivity won’t suffer during the coronavirus outbreak.
Slack
Being in isolation means that communication with you and your team must be managed well. There is no better app then Slack to bring team communication and collaboration into one centralized place. You can organize communication by projects, topics or by anything else that comes to your mind. Images, as well as other files, can be shared and even documents can be edited.
App’s deep search feature allows you to find exactly what you need in a matter of seconds. Other tools and services like Google Drive, Asana, Salesforce and more can be easily integrated with Slack making your workflow even better. The app is available on any device whether you’re using a desktop computer or mobile phone.
Google Drive
Google Drive is for sure one of the most used productivity apps available on the internet. The app is accessible from all your devices (mobile and desktop) and it allows you to store up to 15GB of files for free on the cloud. The best thing is that by using other Google services like Google Sheets or Google Docs you can edit those files as well.
The app has a collaboration feature that will allow you and your colleagues to work on the same document from various locations. This can be especially useful when forced to work from home. You can check our blog for more tips and tricks on how to properly manage documents on Google Drive.
PDF to Word Converter
PDF files are one of the hardest files to edit and this app can come in handy in the situations when you have to work from home and have various PDFs that you want to reuse. There’s no need to manually retype the whole documents anymore, simply use the app and convert PDFs into editable MS Word files with ease.
Even documents that you have in paper form can be scanned (using a built-in document scanner) and then converted to editable MS Word files all within the app. The app is using top of the line OCR engine so the best conversion quality is guaranteed. Most popular cloud storage services like iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox and, more are supported so you can import files directly from them.
You can also check other document converter apps that can be useful or try out our free online desktop tool.
ZOOM
ZOOM Cloud Meetings is a perfect choice for people with jobs that require face-to-face communication. The video-conferencing app will allow you to join or start face-to-face meetings with up to 100 people having flawless video and crystal clear audio. Besides that, the app has a screen sharing feature that can be extremely useful in some cases.
On newer devices, you even have the ability to set up a virtual background if your home office is messy. Photos and files from the web, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box can be shared as well. iPad users have an option to collaborate on the virtual whiteboard in real-time.
Freedom
This app is somewhat different than the previous ones. It won’t directly affect your productivity but it will help you concentrate and shut down all distractions around you. As we said earlier with all the distractions, working from home can be difficult and taking your phone to check social media feed or visit news websites can be tempting.
That’s where this app comes in. By using it you will be able to, as the app developers say, “Take control of your screen time”. Simply select the websites and apps that you would like to block on your phone and start the Freedom session. During the session, you won’t be able to open blocked apps and websites. It’s that easy! It is said that the average user is gaining 2.5h of productive time each day by using the app.
We hope that these apps will help you work productively while in coronavirus lockdown. Please keep yourself and your families safe and follow all the safety instructions your government and WHO is giving you. In case we forgot to mention some fo your favorite productivity apps please let us know in the comments below.
