Top 5 Remote Working Apps

Remote work is not always easy. Some people struggle with staying productive in their home office, others have difficulties with the communication between their clients or team members.

Luckily, there are plenty of remote work apps out there today that help you keep track of your tasks and make your online job easier. To help improve your work-from-home performance immediately, we’ve compiled our top 5 apps!

#1 - Slack

Slack is a messaging platform designed for teams and it is the ideal communication tool for remote workers. Instant messaging can be organized into channels where team members can join or leave the channel, based on what’s relevant to them. Slack also allows instant messaging between just two individuals for private conversations and it lets you “message” yourself to jot down notes or other important details. You will also find hilarious gifs, handy chatbots, and countless integrations to cut down on your emails.

Features We Enjoy

• passwordLive communication between every team member for seamless collaboration.
• Users can set availability statuses to focus on individual tasks as needed.
• Drag-and-drop file sharing for PDFs, images, videos and other files.

#2 - Google Drive 

Google Drive is the no-frills cloud alternative to Microsoft Office but it’s far more useful for remote workers than its Microsoft counterpart. Our reasoning for this is features like collaboration, file sharing, and content creation have never been easier with Google Drive. Along with the ability to create a document in seconds while automatically saving to your Drive in real-time takes away the worry of saving and organizing your files.

Features We Enjoy

• Word documents, spreadsheets, presentations and all of the essential docs we take for granted these days and it’s all free.
• The cloud element is so useful allowing teams to create, auto-save, upload, share, and collaborate on files.
• Real-time collaboration on Google Docs files works without any real lag getting in the way

#3 - Zoom 

Zoom offers a full suite of video conferencing and communication tool for businesses. That said the standout product for us is Zoom Meetings & Chat, which offers video and voice calls for serious teams. The preferences within Zoom are spectacular for remote work as well including audio and video recording options, password-protected meetings, and custom backgrounds to spice up your remote working experience.

Features We Enjoy

• Remote teams can run video meetings and one-to-one video calls.
• You can also run a group or one-to-one voice calls when face-to-face meetings aren’t necessary.
• Additional options that allow you to add more depth to your meetings

#4 - Screencastify

Explaining something to a team member can be tricky when you’re working remotely but Screencastify makes it easy to record video of your screen or with your webcam. This super simple app is a free Chrome extension that allows you to record video with your webcam or record your screen which can be specific to the web browser tab, the entire web browser, or your computer’s desktop. You can also choose between multiple cameras and microphones, if you are using more than one. And once you’re done recording, you can share it directly to YouTube, Google Classroom, or email or you can download the audio or video separately. 

Features We Enjoy

• Screen recording allows you to be specific about what you’re showing
• You’re only a few click away from learning this simple app
• Shares and downloads into high-quality audio and video 

#5 - Asana

To-do list apps may sometimes seem too simple for complicated team projects and remote working, but not for Asana. It’s easy to use, with to-do list based projects focused on due dates and priority status. The dashboards and status updates can be turned into something that lets you manage more complicated projects for all departments. List all your tasks and add them to Asana project lists, add sub-tasks, notes, and tags to keep track of everything in the task, and check off things as they’re done. 

Features We Enjoy

• Status updates allows you to see how your team’s projects are progressing
• Simple and easy to use interface motivates you to manage your projects
• Special features like lists, boards, calendars, and timelines help organize and plan tasks 

Bonus App - Stretchly

Learning to shut down and take a break can be tough when working remotely without those “at-work triggers”. Stretchly is a simple break time reminder app that reminds you at preset intervals. It’s fully customizable and can even be set up so that it prevents you from continuing work until the break has ended. The app enables both micro-breaks as well as scheduled long breaks that will keep you focused.

A small popup will let you know before it's time to take a break, and then remind you when it's time. One of the nicer features of Stretchly is that you can skip to the next break or micro-break at any time, in case you feel like stopping right now and not later. You can naturally customize the duration of micro-breaks and long breaks, as well as how long a break should last. 

Features We Enjoy

• Customizable duration of micro-breaks and long breaks
• Skip the break prompt if you’re in the middle of something important
• Helps to maintain interest and energy level