SPECIAL MENTION: Students’ and teachers’ days of carrying heavy textbooks and binders may be numbered. Flexcil, a notetaking app available on iOS and Android, provides students, professors, and more the ability to seamlessly read, annotate, and take notes of PDF documents on their devices—a big improvement over similar apps, most of which can perform just one of these functions at a time. Selected as a featured app by Apple, Flexcil ($6.99-$8.99 for the standard version) is used by more than 4 million people worldwide. —Mariah Espada
More Must-Reads From TIME
- What We Know So Far About the Deadly Earthquakes in Turkey and Syria
- Beyoncé's Album of the Year Snub Fits Into the Grammys' Long History of Overlooking Black Women
- How the U.S. Shot Down the Alleged Chinese Spy Balloon
- Effective Altruism Has a Toxic Culture of Sexual Harassment and Abuse, Women Say
- Inside Bolsonaro's Surreal New Life as a Florida Man—and MAGA Darling
- 'Return to Office' Plans Spell Trouble for Working Moms
- 8 Ways to Read More Books—and Why You Should
- Why Aren't Movies Sexy Anymore?
- How Logan Paul's Crypto Empire Fell Apart