In this post we talk about 19 useful apps for digital nomads!
As a digital nomad, being on the road can be fun. You get to meet people from various walks of life, learn their culture and see beautiful sights. However, aside from the exciting feeling you get from traveling to places you have never been before, there could be some nervousness because you are not familiar with your new environment.
We’ve found that there are some necessary apps great for digital nomads to make friends, learn about their environment, and help with their work on the road. These apps make sure you integrate seamlessly into the settings of any region you may find yourself. In this post we’re going to highlight useful apps for digital nomads so that you can have an awesome journey abroad!
19 Useful Apps for Digital Nomads
1. Guides by Lonely Planet
With the Guides by Lonely Planet app, you will know everything about a certain place, wherever you travel to. The details include offline maps, transport information, must-see sights and all other activities. You can also use a currency converter with this app. Just simply choose a city, download the city guides, then in the menu you can click on eat, sleep, shop, drink, or any activity you want to discover suggestions.
2. WiFi Finder
You can’t live without Wi-Fi when you’re traveling, so WiFi Finder is here to help you find it more quickly. Search your location and see if there is good Wi-Fi connection in the neighborhood. You can find Internet and hotspot in each continent, country and city, including USA, Europe, South America, and Asia. You can use it for email browsing, gaming, or video chatting, and you can see how many megabytes per second you are able to use.
3. The Toilet Finder
One problem you might face when traveling as a digital nomad is finding a toilet! Most times you don’t always have a toilet nearby, so there is an app for it. When you open The Toilet Finder, the nearest free toilets are shown. And after you have used the restroom, you can rate it in terms of if it is actually for free, if you’re at a location where you can eat nearby or shop nearby, and so on.
4. iExit
The iExit app is more for digital nomads on the road in the US. It is very practical if you’re driving yourself and you don’t know the roads well. It let you know what exits and what restaurants, stores, and gas stations (including accurate prices of gas at that exit) are coming up. It also lets you know how far you are to the next rest area – so this app is very useful for those van lifers!
5. Road Trippers
Road Trippers is similar and is very useful to plan a route and save all the activities you want to see. Discover interesting places along your route and save it, tell your friends, or get directions. It’s a great way to plan a weekend trip or a long trip especially if you are in an area you are unfamiliar with.
7. XE Currency
XE Currency is very useful when you’re in a different country and need to find out how much things cost in your own currency. For example, if you’re standing in a supermarket of a country with a different currency than your own, you can type in the figure of the price of what you want to buy and you will discover the value in the currency you are accustomed to.
8. The First Aid App
Hopefully you won’t need this one on your chip, but better be safe than sorry. You can use the First Aid App to find nearest hospitals or to check what to do in certain cases of emergency. For example, you can learn more about what to do in case of a cut, burn, broken bones and many other situations.
9. SkyScanner
SkyScanner is a famous app with which you can book flight tickets, hotels, cars and so on. The nice thing about it is that it is full of top deals, so you can choose from the one that suits your financial capabilities.
10. Sworkit
Although this is more of a personal fitness app, Sworkit is useful for digital nomads when they find themselves away from their normal environment and need to keep fit. Digital nomads can have a hard time finding ways to workout while abroad. Sworkit has workouts for whatever you’re trying to do. If you’re trying to do a quick one-minute workout, if you’re in the office and you’ve got 10 minutes to quickly do something to get your cardio going, you can use Sworkit to find the perfect exercise for you.
For example, if you search “strength” it will give you a bunch of strength related workouts that you can do. Then you can select the exercise, choose your time and begin your workout. You can do these quick, efficient workouts on a mat and on an open floor.
For digital nomads, sometimes you may get caught up in the minutia of work and you are consistently working for a long time. When you need to take a break, you should try doing a quick 5 or 10-minute workout with Sworkit (which is free). The app also has a premium plan for bonus features.
11. Moovit
For digital nomads that struggle with public transportation, the app Moovit will be your personal assistant when it comes to bus, train, and subway routes and times. You simply choose a location you need to get the best route for public transport.
12. Google Translate
Google Translate is an app most everyone knows, and it’s very convenient in every country. When you need to speak with locals in the country you’re at but you’re not familiar with the language, it can be beneficial to pull up the app to communicate. It’s not always grammatically correct, but people will still understand you.
Work Apps for Digital Nomads
The following set of apps will make your life as a digital nomad easier in terms of building your brand/business and being productive. They include:
13. Google Analytics
If you have your own website, you’ll want to have Google Analytics. Google Analytics is important to track all of your blog and website traffic in real time. You’ll also be able to recap on analytics to see where you’re traffic is coming from, what posts are doing the best, what social media channels may be bringing in traffic, etc. If you are running a campaign and you are out on the road, you may want to monitor the performance and see how it’s doing even while out and about. You will be able to see that through the app, which is really intuitive and responsive.
14. Facebook Ads Manager App
The Facebook Ads Manager app performs really well and is very effective for digital nomads. If you have Facebook ads up for yourself or your client, you can edit them, view them and look at their performance. On your road trip, it’s really easy to jump on the app and make quick changes. With the app, you can increase the budget, activate the ad, and assess the performance of the ad as well.
15. YouTube Studio
This is another analytics app that’s great if you’re a YouTuber. As a digital nomad, YouTube is an effective way to reach out to your audience. With YouTube Studio, you can look at the performance of your YouTube channel. It will tell you the watch time you have amassed, how many views you have, how many subscribers you have, etc.
The app allows you to look at your videos, playlists, comments, and more. You can also go to comments and reply to the comments from the app, which is really cool. While on the road, hop into the app and answer comments you receive so you’re not leaving people hanging.
If you hit the menu you can also look at analytics, which will be the section that shows you how your videos are performing, and which videos are your top ones. You can also use it to keep a tab on finances if you have monetized your channel.
16. Slack
Slack is another really cool app that lets you communicate with your team (if you have one) on the road. With Slack, you can answer messages and communicate with your team members via your phone.
It makes communication easy because your teammates can Slack message you with any concerns they have. With the app you can answer pretty efficiently regardless of where you are. The platform also lets you create multiple channels if you want to break your conversation our into different subtopics that different members would be allowed in. For example, if you want to talk about design in one channel, YouTube in one channel, blog, in another channel, you’re able to break it all up that way to allow for easy communication. Other features include taking and uploading photos, importing files, etc.
Since Slack is a communication platform, it can be likened to WhatsApp for business to help with seamless communicate within your team. The app is free as well.
17. Bit.ly
Bit.ly essentially shortens your links for you so that you can track them easier and make your URLs nice and concise. If you write content, you can create tracking links through bit.ly that you can place into your posts. You can do that all through the mobile app, and you won’t have to use a desktop. After creating the link, you can post it in as many platforms as you’d like – but you can also make different links for different platforms so you can track where clicks are coming from. This allows you to have trackable links that you can copy to WordPress, Instagram, Facebook or whatever platform you need. That way you can track your link performance to see how it’s doing without having access to your computer.
18. Mile IQ.
Mile IQ is an app that automatically tracks all of your driving, and you can choose either your personal or business rides for it to monitor. At the end of the year, all you have to do is export this as a CSV, send it to your accountant and you’re able to track all of your miles. If it’s personal, you swipe left, and if it’s for business you swipe right.
With the Mile IQ app, if you’re doing up to 40 drives a month, it’s free. Anything more is about $5-6 a month, but it’s totally worth it because it saves you a ton of time down the road while tracking all of your driving efforts. There is a tab on the menu that gives you monthly summaries, account settings, and all other financial details. So as a digital nomad, if you will be driving a lot on the road, the Mile IQ app is a must have.
19. Asana
Asana is a very effective management app for digital nomads. The app basically breaks down all of your tasks and is most effective if you have team members. So all you have to do is set the app up and create tasks for people anywhere you are in the world. Team members will check up on their name and see what upcoming tasks they have.
Conclusion
Hope you guys enjoyed this list of 19 useful apps for digital nomads! You can get all of these apps on iOS, and most of them are also available on the Google Play store. If you have any additions please let us know in the comments below!
