Best Work From Home Apps for Better Productivity

More and more of us are moving to work from home rather than being in an office environment, which is excellent until you realise you need a space for organising, focusing, emails, communication and more.

Best Work From Home Productivity Apps

Here's a quick summary of the apps we have chosen as the best WFH productivity apps.

• Twist - The best app for asynchronous communication when working from home.
• Reclaim - Uses smart AI to schedule and find the best times for meetings.
• Endel - Helps create better deep work states to get more done from home.
• Akiflow - Best for consolidating all productivity and task management tools.
• Loom - For sending informational video clips throughout the day as communication.
• Toggl - To better understand how you spend your time and improve time management.

These apps are in no particular order, however, let's just dive straight into learning more.

Best Work From Home App For Async Communication

Twist

Communicate with your team, a-sync with this new unique approach to team convos.

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Best For

A-Sync Communication

Availability

Mac

Windows

Web

iOS

Android

Pricing

$

$

Type of Tool

Team Communication Tools

The Basics of Twist

Twist is an asynchronous communication app for chatting with your team members, creating channels and sending information, kind of like email, but less intense.

You can create threads and channels, and assign specific members of your team to different chats to keep a conversation going that's only relevant to them.

This is helpful because you aren't disrupting the whole team, you aren't wasting time organising meetings, and information can be found by searching the app.

Overall, Twist is a perfect, easy-to-use communication app for sending and receiving messages within a team when the time works best. Allowing for focused work and a better work-life balance.

What Makes Twist Good For Working From Home?

Twist is a great app for working from home and boosting productivity.

• Gives you time and space to get on with your own work.
• Don't have to worry about instantly replying if you are too busy.
• Chat in channels and threads related to you.
• Removes the need for weekly meetings.
• Mutual understanding of response times to messages.
• Set out of office hours.
• Send attachments, images, links and more.
• Search for messages to retrieve information.

Twist is overall a great way for chatting with your team when working from home with less stress, and less responsibility to respond when you are too busy, or out of hours.

Best Work From Home App For Scheduling Meetings

Reclaim

Reclaim AI is perfect for smart calendar app for teams to optimise schedules.

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Best For

Team Calendars

Availability

Web

Pricing

$

$

Type of Tool

Calendar AppsFast-GrowingRemote Work Productivity Apps

The Basics of Reclaim

Reclaim uses AI to smart schedule your meetings for you. With Reclaim you can also integrate your calendar and project management app to manage tasks, focus time, breaks and calendar events all together in one place, making it easier to see available time.

Reclaim finds the best times for meetings, tasks, habits and breaks to help create a workflow schedule that doesn't lead to burnout or waste any time. You can even create no-meeting days and focus time to get on with your own work to create a better balance.

With Reclaim you can also manage your tasks, so you can easily assign tasks to others, track your productivity with analytics and prioritise work across the team.

Overall, by adding in your calendar and task lists you can create a space for everything you need alongside meetings by sending scheduling links and automating the process.

Why is Reclaim Good For WFH Productivity?

Reclaim is great for working from home because it automates the entire meeting process.

• Have your task lists and calendar integrated in one place.
• Automates the best time for tasks, habits, calendar and meetings.
• Assign and prioritise work across the team.
• Set no meeting days to focus on your own work without disturbance.
• Track your time spent on projects and overall analytics.
• Send scheduling links with priority and availability to avoid failed events.
• Book breaks for better work-life balance.
• Use time blocking to arrange your tasks, todos and meetings.

Overall, Reclaim helps with finding the best times to book meetings to avoid disturbing your work-from-home routine and flow of work.

Best Work From Home App For Deep Focus Work

Endel

Improve your focus, relaxation and sleep with advanced sound productivity tech.

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Best For

Focus and Sleep

Availability

Web

iOS

Android

Mac

Pricing

$

$

Type of Tool

Focus AppsMindful Productivity Apps

The Basics of Endel

Endel is a focus application that uses soundscapes backed by science to help improve your focus and productivity in one. It works along with you and your activity to change the sound, the speed and the type of music it plays depending on what you're doing.

You can also use Endel to help with sleep, but playing relaxing and wind-down sounds before you go to bed, is great for setting up a good deep sleep to allow better focus.

Endel essentially helps with deeper focus, great for working from home when you are surrounded by distractions most of the day, that being other devices, notifications, and other people in the house. Endel helps keep you zoned into the music and focused on work.

Why Do You Need A Focus App Like Endel For WFH?

Working from home can be distracting, especially if you have children, live in a busy noisy area, or are very easily distracted by whatever is around you.

• Use the soundscapes in Endel alongside your activity levels.
• Create a better, deeper flow of work whilst alone at home.
• Endel can help you relax if you are feeling overwhelmed or burnt out.
• Sleep better with soundscapes specifically made for winding down.
• Improves focus and removes distractions
• Lowers stress levels with science-backed sounds that match heart rate and activity.

Endel is essentially a great science-backed focus app to help with sleep and boost productivity throughout the day inside a sleek simple application.

Best Work From Home Task Consolidation App

Akiflow

A daily planner application combining tasks, calendar and tasks from other apps.

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Best For

Advanced Daily Planner

Availability

Web

iOS

Windows

Mac

Android

Pricing

$

$

$

Type of Tool

To-Do List AppsDaily Planning AppsFreelance Productivity Tools

The Basics of Akiflow

Akiflow is a task consolidation tool and project management workspace. You can integrate your other tools here to have everything in one manageable space for organising your tasks and events into a time-blocking calendar.

Use the universal inbox to arrange and manage all tasks that have come in from other apps, then time block them into your schedule to arrange everything in a way that works for you whilst working from home.

You can also organise meetings, quickly add tasks, set recurring tasks, smart labels for organising and the command bar for quickly navigating around Akiflow.

Akiflow is overall great if you are using lots of apps and tools and need a space to create a clear image of everything you need to do, and everything you need to get done.

Why You Need Task Consolidation For WFH

Task consolidation tools like Akiflow are great for having everything in one place.

• Have a clear overview of everything you need to get done in one place.
• Sync your calendar to better manage time and events in one place.
• Organise meetings and share availabilities with team members.
• Enter focus mode with Akiflow to get things done.
• Create Rituals for creating a better work-life balance and healthy habits.

Best Async Video Chat App For Working From Home

Loom

An async, remote method of communication with your team through video recordings.

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Best For

Reducing Meetings

Availability

Web

iOS

Android

Windows

Mac

Chrome Extension

Pricing

$

$

Type of Tool

Team Communication Tools

The Basics of Loom

Loom is an asynchronous communication app for creating video clips, or screen recordings to send to your team to avoid the need for long meetings and wasting time.

Simply record your video with Loom then send a link to your team or specific person. They can then click this link and watch your video, this video will also stay there so if they ever need to go back and watch it again, they always can, reducing the need for more questions or recapping in the future. Kind of like a knowledge base full of videos.

Overall, the idea of Loom is pretty simple. Instead of arranging meetings whilst working from home, you can create informative videos that can be watched again and again. You can also leave comments on videos to create a chat and answer questions.

Why An Async Video App Is Good For WFH

Asynchronous communication is great for working from home, using a video is even better for keeping a knowledge base of visual information.

• A quick way to record your screen and yourself to talk through an idea or explain how something works with your team.
• Send links in chat messages or emails to share the Loom video.
• Use reactions, and timestamped comments to talk about the video.
• Create a knowledge base by saving links or logging back into Loom.
• Reduce the need for long meetings to go over the same thing with new team members.

So, if you have to explain a lot of on-screen things with your team, Loom can allow you to create instructional videos one time to share with new team members when they come along.

Best Time Tracker App For Working From Home

Toggl Track

A time tracker app perfect for working from home and managing your time better.

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Best For

Time Tracking

Availability

Mac

Windows

Web

Pricing

$

$

Type of Tool

Time Tracking Apps

The Basics of Toggl

Toggl is a time-tracking application perfect for those working from home to stay on top of their tasks and enter a better focus period for getting things done. Tracking your time spent on tasks sort of motivates you to get things done, and avoid wasting time.

You simply have Toggl there on your desktop for you to click start when you begin a task. You can also add in all your tasks like a to-do list and set reminders for when you need to start a new task.

Toggl will also tell you how long you have been inactive, you can then deduct this from your work time or do what you please with it, maybe log it as a break period.

Here's some more advice to help you pick the best ones:

Optimising Work From Home Productivity

We have chosen to focus on selecting the best WFH productivity apps because there are tons of us now working from home, alone, with our own time to manage and our own tasks to complete.

Applications and tools can assist with managing time and to-dos and ensuring you get done what needs to get done. Work-from-home apps can also help with better communication, and entering a deeper state of focus.

The biggest hurdle working from home causes is communication. It's a lot easier to communicate when you're around people you work with, but when working from home you need a method of communication that works for everyone. This is where asynchronous communication comes in.

What is Asynchronous Communication?

Asynchronous communication is when those within a team do not need to participate in communication in real time, or immediately. This means messages can be sent and received at different times without the pressure of having to reply right away.

You might not want to reply when a message comes in if it's after work hours, you are too busy or you want some time to think of a better response.

You can read more about Asynchronous vs Synchronous communication here.

The benefits of async communication are;

• Allows for flexibility with communication, no pressure to respond.
• Creates a better work-life balance, with no after-hours communication.
• An overall understanding that responses are immediate.
• Can be used in many channels like text, email, apps, and social media.
• Gives you time to think of a better response or reflect on a message.
• Great for global communication and different time zones.

Overall, async communication within teams provides a more flexible, no-pressure way of communication. Allowing more time for getting on with work, rather than back-and-forth communication in real time.

Why You Need A Time Tracker When Working From Home

Time-tracking apps like Toggl has lots of benefits, here's why Toggl is a great WFH productivity app.

• Tracks the time you are inactive.
• Create a better work-life management system.
• Make sure you are working for the right amount of time.
• Make sure you aren't overworking yourself.
• See how long specific tasks take to complete to then better manage time in the future.

Overall, Toggl is great for tracking time spent on tasks to then better manage your time in the future.

To summarise, having a stack of useful productivity tools will make working from home a lot more seamless, and easier to manage and you'll hopefully enjoy working from home too rather than feeling stressed and confused with managing and organising your own time.