Want to know how AI-enhanced smart tech can boost your productivity? Check out these 12 time-saving apps.
Virtual Assistants
We’ve already looked at assistants such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which can perform several functions – chat, advice, image creation and so on – if you’re just looking for entertainment. Increasingly, however, such assistants are also available as business tools that integrate with a whole list of existing software. Microsoft’s Copilot, for instance, is available for free as a simple chatbot but can also manage workplace data, claiming to transform your working methods and thus your efficiency – at a price, of course. Whether these claims bear out depends on your work environment and will no doubt become clearer over time.
Writing and Proofreading Aids
As any writer will tell you, most of the time we use the same 500 words. The AI in tools such as Gmail Smart Compose knows this and will suggest words to you when you’re putting emails together, making messages faster to write (if not actually better). Of course, you still have to get the spelling and grammar right, hence the profusion of apps such as Grammarly, heavily promoted to students on an essay deadline. Some of these apps can also help you rewrite text in different tones of voice depending on the situation, such as if you want something to sound more friendly, more professional, or more humorous and so on. They can also help with clarity by suggesting more succinct ways to express your main points.
Transcription and Summarisation Tools
Got the minutes of a meeting to write up? Simply record the audio and let an app such as Otter AI transcribe it and summarise the conversation into bitesize chunks for your report. After all, what is a meeting but a set of spoken data? The same goes for that letter that your boss has dictated to you: let the AI do the work. Bear in mind, of course, that a decent app will require a subscription. Cheapies do exist, but who knows how accurate they are? You don’t want your $15m of sales to appear in the shareholders’ report as $15k. Watch out for data privacy, too.
Customer Service Tools
No-one likes engaging with a company’s customer services department, if said company even has one. You only ever phone them when you’re annoyed about something – which makes it paramount that systems exist that will solve your problem double quick. Can an AI do this? Apps like Hiver and Tidio think they can. The logic behind using AI to deal with a customer issue is that it knows which problems tend to come up based on past data, and can offer the right solution for the same reason. The jury is currently split, though: some users prefer a human interaction, while others can think of nothing worse.
Design Tools
Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator have always been the default image editing and document design apps in the business world, but what if you haven’t got the time or budget to skill up at pro level? Fortunately, a slew of easy-to-use, AI-driven tools such as Canva exist that will jazz up your photos and insert them in your chosen documents, whether that means work presentations, CVs, event invitations and so on. Don’t be depressed, designers: your artistic eye is unlikely to be replaceable by an AI. Machine learning does not necessarily equal aesthetic judgement and good taste… yet.
Scheduling and Calendar Assistants
Reclaim and Clockwise are just two of the many tools that can, in theory at least, revise and rejig your packed daily schedule so that it makes most sense, time- and budget-wise. Usually arranging schedules in pastel-coloured blocks (top tip: use soothing colours to avoid ‘schedule fear’) so that you and your team can see what everyone is doing at a given time, these apps take into account your habits (do you take 30 or 60 minutes at lunch?) and mesh them with everyone else’s needs. No more sending round 50 emails to see when everyone’s free for a meeting.
Email Organisers
The ideal practice with email, assuming it’s a significant communication medium for you, is to keep messages in your inbox only as long as they require you to do something based on them – in other words, treat your inbox like a list of jobs to do. However, what if you have 200 of the blighters? Split them into high- and low-priority tasks using an app such as Google Priority Inbox, which assesses your preferences and suggests which emails need sorting pronto and which can wait until you get back from your holiday. That way you can reply in a timely fashion to the crucial stuff and worry about the rest later.
Project Management Tools
Got several tasks on the go at once? Of course you do – this is 2025. Use a tool like Asana to keep on top of each project’s state of play without sticking Post-It notes all over your screen. What this and similar AI-fuelled apps do is assess where all your projects are at, keep user-friendly tabs on start and end dates, remind you of deadlines and ensure that your schedule doesn’t devolve into a giant pile of stress. The slight downside is that the app will message you on the regular to ask if you’ve completed Task A in time for Deadline B yet, an intrusion which you may not entirely welcome.
Human Resources Tools
HR is a profession fraught with pitfalls, including how to phrase messages to frazzled and/or embittered employees in a way that doesn’t annoy them, so apps such as Textio will HR-ise your text accordingly. As for actually hiring people – and not just any old people; the best candidates – tools such as CVViZ promise to use AI to get the staff you need on your interview list. The idea may sound a little spooky (who says who is the best for a given role?) but in the end, the AI is just doing what it does best – sifting through text (in this case, job applications) to find a desired result.
Marketing Tools
How can an AI help you market your services or products? Ask an app like AdCreative and the answer is that it makes your advertising more efficient, using the best buzzwords to target the most lucrative market sectors while feeding back on how your competitors are doing. Once again, data-mining of commercial messaging lies at the heart of what the AI does, studying a given environment to help you get the biggest bang for your buck, or in practice the juiciest leads for your salesforce. If this sounds as if it’s all about money, that’s because it is.
Time Tracking Tools
If your daily ten minutes scrolling through Instagram reels is beginning to look more like 45 minutes, even though you’re on deadline, don’t feel guilty – we’ve all been there. Instead, try a time-tracking tool such as SocialX to inform you exactly how much time you’re spending on non-work-related activities. The app doesn’t judge: it just lets you know more about your regular habits, so you can decide if and how to amend them. The AI-enhanced apps can also recommend personalised coaching based on what you want to achieve, whether that’s reducing your overall screen time or boosting productivity. Remember, most of us spend each day on eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep and eight hours doing everything else. How you spend those hours is entirely up to you.
Auto-completion Tools
TextBlaze is an example of an app that saves time spent writing things by using a predetermined code instead: for example, if you type /ty into an email, the words “Thank you for your time today, I really enjoyed our meeting” (or text of your choice) will magically appear. Sounds like a time-saver to us, and one which we suspect quite a few customer service staff (the human ones this time) already use in conversations that are often following scripted prompts already. Similar apps allow you to integrate messages into a variety of software types: anywhere, in fact, where standard text needs to appear. You may also notice autocomplete technology in search engines, your email and messaging apps, text editors and so on. These services can use AI to analyse the context of what you’re typing and provide relevant suggestions based on various factors – such as common or trending phrases, or similar things you’ve written previously – and can even adapt to your personal writing style.
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