Reviewed by
But First Things First...What Is ADHD?
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a common neurological disorder that affects both children and adults.
In fact, according to the Center for Disease Control, 9.4% of children between the ages of 4 and 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD.
In adults, 2.5% are estimated to be affected by it.
The most common ADHD symptoms for children and adults include impulsivity, difficulty concentrating on tasks, hyperactivity, and forgetfulness.
While some people may be familiar with ADHD as a children's diagnosis, many aren’t aware it can progress to adulthood.
Are you feeling disorganized and is having trouble staying focused?
If you are, don’t worry!
These smartphone tools will help you create to-do lists, prioritize important tasks, and even help set reminders.
Best 9 ADHD Apps To Help You Get Things Done
1. Evernote
App Store: 4.4✦
Google Play Store: 4.2✦
Price: Free/ $7.99 per month
With Evernote, there's no need to worry about forgetting an idea, — just write it down wherever you are using voice dictation if necessary.
Evernote is the ultimate app for anyone that needs a task manager or virtual storage system.
If you’re coping with ADHD, it will allow you to quickly jot down the tasks for the week, keep up with your schedules, add reminders, or use it as a notepad.
You can also use it as a note-taking app and save items you may want to pursue later, such as your favorite articles, websites, photos, videos, and more!
Evernote syncs with numerous cloud applications such as Google Drive, Gmail, and Outlook.
2. Brain Focus
Google Play Store: 4.4✦
Price: Free
Designed primarily on the Pomodoro Method, Brain Focus is a management app that will help you set up on-tasks and off-tasks time, especially when you need to focus.
The app will silence your mobile device notifications, so distractions are not an option when you're on a task.
When using the Brain Focus app, you select the time you need to focus, and it will use your countdowns to track how much time you spend on a particular task.
This app would work perfectly for people with ADHD who easily get distracted, as it blocks all the apps that the user selects as distracting.
3. Remember The Milk
App Store: 4.7✦
Google Play Store: 4.6✦
Price: Free/ $3.99 annually
Remember The Milk is another must-have ADHD app if you have forgetful problems.
The app will make sure you accomplish all your tasks by helping you come up with a task list along with its subtasks.
In fact, it is a streamlined to-do-list app for individuals who might want to set reminders that are less subtle to be ignored.
This handy app comes with a heap of features that allow the user to color-code tags, assign each task a due date, set goals, and save helpful information for later use.
The beauty of using Remember The Milk app is that you can assign or share your to-do lists with other people to get the task done faster.
Another feature that sets it apart from creating a task list is the ability to organize your priorities, lists, and more!
The app is user-friendly, wherein the users can integrate it with their Google Calendar, Gmail, and other cloud-based apps.
You can follow through with your due dates via IM, text, mobile notifications, Twitter, and email.
So, rather than having incomplete tasks on your bucket list, increase the chances of achievement with this app.
To unlock more of Remember The Milk features, you’ll need to purchase its Pro subscription, although it has a free trial option available.
4. MindNode
App Store Only: 4.5✦
Price: Free
ADHD brains may feel cluttered more often, making it hard to focus on a single task for a more extended period.
To make it worse, this condition can take a toll on the individual’s personal, mental health, academic, or professional life.
However, MindNode saves the day by allowing virtual or analytical thinkers to create a virtual representation of their thoughts to help them brainstorm and execute their ideas.
In a nutshell, MindNode will make your mind mapping more effortless.
Brainstorming and organizing your ideas in intuitive ways, such as images, links, and notes as they come to you helps adults with ADHD to stay focused on the idea behind their thoughts.
This iOS mobile application will also help people living with ADHD sort out their ideas, starting with the central thoughts as they progress to more complex ones.
The bottom line is that MindNode technology is more beneficial to individuals seeking to be more creative and free with their mindmapping.
5. Asana
App Store: 4.7✦
Google Play Store: 4.6✦
Price: Free
Whether or not you have ADHD, you know how overwhelming it can get when trying to break tasks into small bits — but the feeling doubles for people with ADHD.
And if you’ve ever wondered how you can add a structure in your life — without procrastinating — Asana can help.
Organize and coordinate your must-dos with this project management tool.
Simply, the Asana app allows users to break their to-do tasks into small bits and arrange them according to their priority levels.
The app is free and can be used by teams or individuals to organize and collaborate workflow of actionable tasks to keep track of completed tasks.
With Asana, you can visualize your project milestones and set goals for each milestone.
The user-friendly features and usability ease make this app very beneficial to adults coping with ADHD.
Breaking down larger tasks into small actionable tasks will help ADHDers to brush off the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Moreover, users can share and assign tasks to others as well as access the project boards to see tasks assigned to you or others.
6. Sleep Cycle
App Store: 4.7✦
Google Play Store: 4.7✦
Price: Free/ $39.99 per year
Let’s be honest. People diagnosed with ADHD often experience a chaotic sleep pattern, either sleeping too much or not enough at night.
In fact, it has been estimated that up to 70 percent of adults with ADHD experience a sleep deficit.
But with Sleep Cycle, you can reset your sleep cycles for a better ADHD productivity cycle.
The app automatically tracks your sleep patterns by listening to various sounds, including coughing and snoring, and analyzes the overlay audio recording of these sleep patterns with the help of learning algorithms before presenting them to you in the form of data and graphs.
Once it identifies your sleep cycle, the app monitors your movements and gently awakens you at the optimal moment -- mostly in the lighter sleep stage.
Depending on your sleep statistics, you can analyze your sleep patterns to see the amount of time you spent sleeping on each sleeping stage.
7. Due
App Store Only: 4.7✦
Price: $6.99 per month
Set yourself up to get your tasks completed and stay on top of your deadlines with Due.
The app has a sleek and persistent interface, which makes it recommendable by experts.
The auto-snooze feature will keep pinging you in preset intervals until you mark your preset tasks as complete -- great news for ADHDers who can quickly get distracted and procrastinate out their first reminder.
Additionally, the app automatically reschedules the must-do’s and sends push notifications for the next interval.
You can plug in the tasks and corresponding reminders at your preferred time to help you meet your daily schedules and do your projects at the right time.
Over time, you can stay focused on your daily chores with the help of Due’s “12 Quick Access Times” feature.
8. Focus@Will
App Store: 4.3✦
Google Play Store: 3.5✦
Price: Free 1-week trial | $9.99 per month
Even though you’re a ride-or-die for streaming or listening to music while working -- whichever it is -- sometimes it can be distracting, especially for adults with ADHD.
However, Focus@Will is a game-changer music-centric app wired to help you pay attention and improve your focus.
This ADHD app is scientifically engineered wherein any audio frequencies with similar human voices are extracted since we’re prone to pay attention to them.
Therefore, its music channels are equipped with scientifically designed kinds of music based on individual’s personalities to help you stay on track.
In short, it is “re-mastered, re-edited, and removed all the distracting elements to the music which creates a hyper-focused flow, that makes you four more times productive than normal music.”
Although you have to pay for a subscription to stream the music channels, you can still access a one-week free trial.
9. Todoist
App Store: 4.8✦
Google Play Store: 4.6✦
Price: $36 per year
Todoist is a productive habit tracker that will help you create a priority task list and set reminders for your upcoming tasks and long-term goals -- so you can sort them out later, each into a different category.
With quick-add features, you can set weekly or daily goals and reminders on recurring deadlines and even develop a personalized routine to follow.
Another great feature of Todoist is that you can track your productivity with Todoist’s Progress Summary and see how many tasks you have completed and the upcoming tasks.
This app even lets you integrate your projects with other apps to help you share and spread your tasks across various cloud-based apps.
This way, you remain focused without distraction even if you decide to switch from one app to another.
Todoist is a great intuitive ADHD app for both adults and children as an organizing tool to help ADHDers keep things going.
Take our fun online quiz to visualize your ADHD traits and learn more about your brain!
TAKE THE FREE TEST
Bottom Line
ADD/ADHD doesn’t have to be a hindrance.
There are many ways to treat the symptoms of this disorder, including prescription medications, hospitalization, or psychotherapy, for example.
Also, there are many ADHD apps that can help you stay organized and focused on the task at hand -- whether getting work done or making sure your sleep cycle is in sync with natural light cycles.
Downloading ADHD apps on your mobile device may not seem like much, but they play a significant role in our ADHD treatment journey.
Have you tried any apps? What's worked best for you? Let us know in the comments below!
Visualize and assess 25 ADHD traits and understand how they affect your life.
Learn more-2.png)
ADHD Apps: FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
How advantageous is it to use apps when you have ADHD?
As you might already know, ADHD can affect your executive functions. That means it may be a little more difficult for you to plan, prepare, and decide. Apps allow you to stay organized, help you plan your days, and give you peace of mind in knowing that you don’t have to rely on your ADHD brain alone.
What are some of the apps that you can take advantage of?
Some apps that you can take advantage of are Evernote - for planning, Remember the Milk - for reminders, Brain Focus - for the Pomodoro Method, and Sleep Cycle - for checking sleeping patterns (as some people with ADHD might also have trouble sleeping).
Should you stick to the newer, more advanced apps?
The truth is, whether the apps are more advanced doesn’t matter as long as they help you with your concerns. For instance, some find Evernote useful because it seems to have “everything,” but others might prefer the simple to-do list apps because they don’t overwhelm their mind.
