The best iPhone apps for studying, sorted by what they do

How did we choose these study apps?

By what the research says helps, not by how many features an app has. The large review by Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) rated two study techniques as high-utility: practice testing and spreading your practice out over time. Rereading and highlighting came out low. So the apps that earn space on your home screen are the ones that make you answer questions and bring material back at the right time. The rest are support: keeping you focused, organised and on schedule.

Full disclosure: Ace is our app, so it's first on the list, but only for the job it's built for. Every other pick is there because it does its own job well.

What's the best iPhone app for practice questions?

Ace turns material you already have, such as lecture slides, PDFs, Word documents, ePub books or YouTube lecture links, into practice questions: four-option multiple choice, put-the-steps-in-order, type-the-answer and label-the-diagram, depending on what your material contains. Every question is written only from your material, and under each answer Ace shows the sentence from your file that backs it, so you can trust what you're memorising. You choose the chapters, then play solo or duel a friend live on the same questions. There's also a streak and a study calendar.

Best for: students with lots of lecture material and not enough time to write questions themselves. Being tested beats rereading for long-term memory (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006), and Ace removes the step that stops most people doing it. More in how to turn lectures into quizzes you can trust.

What's the best flashcard app for iPhone?

AnkiMobile Flashcards is the iPhone version of Anki, the spaced-repetition app much loved by medical and language students. It uses the same scheduling as desktop Anki, including the FSRS algorithm, and syncs with it. It's at its best for huge decks that you review a little every day for months.

Quizlet is the easiest way to make and share flashcard sets, with study modes that turn a set into matching games and tests, and a large library of sets made by other students. It's great for vocabulary, definitions and quick revision with classmates.

Either way, the rule is the same: say the answer before you flip, and let the app bring cards back over days rather than in one long session. Spacing beats cramming across hundreds of experiments (Cepeda and colleagues, 2006). See our spaced repetition schedule.

What's the best iPhone app for staying focused?

Forest turns a focus session into a small game: you plant a virtual tree that grows while you study and withers if you leave the app. Coins you earn can go towards planting real trees through its partner charity, Trees for the Future.

Focus and Screen Time, already built into your iPhone, are the free option. A Focus mode silences notifications and can hide distracting home screen pages while you study; Screen Time sets daily limits on the apps that eat your evenings.

The strongest move is still physical distance. In one study, students with their phone in another room did better on memory and reasoning tasks than those with it face down on the desk (Ward and colleagues, 2017), though later attempts to repeat the result have been mixed. If you can, study with your phone out of the room and use a laptop or tablet for the apps above. See how to focus while studying.

Which apps are best for notes, planning and AI help?

• Apple Notes: fast, free, syncs across your Apple devices and can scan paper documents into a note. Good enough for most students.
• Notion: for students who like building their own system of pages, databases and to-do lists for each module.
• Your calendar: Apple Calendar or Google Calendar for a revision timetable. Block study sessions like appointments. See how to make a revision timetable.
• An AI assistant: the ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude apps can explain a confusing topic and quiz you, and all three now have a dedicated study or learning mode. Compare them in ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini study modes, and always check their answers against your notes.

What's a simple iPhone study setup?

1. After each lecture: add the slides to Ace and play a short set of questions while it's fresh.
2. Every day: ten to fifteen minutes of flashcard review in AnkiMobile or Quizlet for terms and definitions.
3. During study blocks: Forest or a Focus mode on, phone in another room if you can.
4. Every Sunday: plan the week's study blocks in your calendar.
5. Before exams: mixed questions across all chapters, solo or in a duel with a friend.

Fewer apps used properly beats a folder full of apps you opened once.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J. & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. APS summary
2. Roediger, H. L. & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. PDF
3. Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T. & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. PubMed
4. Ward, A. F., Duke, K., Gneezy, A. & Bos, M. W. (2017). Brain drain: The mere presence of one's own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2(2), 140–154. Journal
5. AnkiMobile Flashcards, App Store listing (scheduling and FSRS). apps.apple.com
6. Forest: Focus for Productivity, App Store listing and partnership with Trees for the Future. Wikipedia