Back to school in UAE? Five apps every university student should download

University life comes with plenty to keep track of, from lecture notes and presentations to assignments, exams and, of course, trying to stick to a student budget.

The good news is that your phone can do more than just hold your university timetable. These five apps can help with everything from studying and organising your work to finding discounts and making your next presentation look better.

If you have a presentation coming up and don’t want it to look like a collection of plain slides, Canva is an easy place to start.

The app has hundreds of templates that can be customised for presentations, posters, projects and other university work. You can choose a design, add your own information and change the colours, fonts and images to match your project.

It is also useful when you need to make a quick change to a presentation from your phone rather than opening your laptop.

Best for: Presentations, projects and visual assignments

Studying can get overwhelming when you have notes, readings and slides piling up from different classes.

Stubbly.ai can help turn your study material into something easier to work through, making it useful when you are trying to get through a large amount of information before an exam.

Instead of staring at pages of notes wondering where to begin, you can use it as part of your study routine to help break your material down and make revision feel more manageable.

Best for: Revision and making study material easier to work through

Sometimes you don’t need a complicated study system. You just need somewhere to put everything down.

Notes+ can be useful for students who like keeping their lecture notes, reminders and university to-do lists in one place.

You can use it to write down points during a lecture, plan what you need to finish that week or keep quick notes that you don’t want to forget.

It is particularly handy for those moments when an idea suddenly comes to you in the middle of class and you need somewhere to save it.

Best for: Notes, lists and staying organized

Being a university student comes with one very useful perk: student discounts.

Tolaab brings student offers together in one app, covering everything from restaurants and cafes to shopping, entertainment and activities.

Instead of asking every time if a place offers a student discount, you can check the app and see what is available. Once you find an offer you want to use, you can scan the QR code directly through the app.

So whether you’re looking for a cheaper coffee between lectures, planning a meal with friends or heading out for an activity, it is worth checking Tolaab first.

Best for: Student discounts, restaurants, cafes, shopping and activities

If your university folder is full of lecture slides, PDFs and notes, NotebookLM could become one of your most useful study tools.

You can upload your own study material and use it to help you understand what is inside. Need a quick summary of an entire chapter? You can do that. Only struggling with one particular slide? You can focus on that too.

One of its useful features for students is the ability to turn your material into quizzes and flashcards, giving you a way to test yourself instead of simply reading your notes over and over again.

It can be especially useful before exams when you want to turn a long chapter into something you can revise in a shorter amount of time.

Best for: Summaries, quizzes, flashcards and exam revision

Save these before the semester gets busy

You don’t need to download every productivity app you see. A few useful ones can be enough to make university life feel a little more organised.

Keep Canva for your next presentation, Notes+ for the everyday reminders, Tolaab for student deals and NotebookLM for those “I have 100 slides to study” moments. As for Stubbly.ai, it can be another useful addition to your study routine when you have a lot of material to get through.