The best apps are as simple as the Pomodoro Technique to use, nice to look at, and don't add any extra distractions. Setting a timer shouldn't be a burden. Any developer can build a timer app, and there are a lot of poorly thought out, half-finished, and otherwise awful apps out there—none of them are on this list, I promise. RedNotebook is a popular software to create and store journals offline. It is a free and open source journal software for Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. It has a pretty simple user interface. From the left side, using Calendar, you can write a journal for a specific date. Diaries are a very good journal app. It has a multitude of functionality. Features include password protection, to-do list features, voice recording (with speech-to-text) and more. It has features for cost tracking, class notebook, trip diary,. PaperStreet Journal is a free journal app for Windows 10. You can start writing journal by adding entries for the current day. Using this journal app, you can create basic text based journals only, like reviews, articles, diaries, work logs, personal activities, etc.

Gone are the days when you would use a printed calendar to keep a tab on your days, festivals, or important tasks. Several modifications later, over the years, the calendar is an app now. No more do you have to follow a paper or desk calendar because life is about smartphones and laptops now.

You can either follow the inbuilt calendar on your devices or download an app for advanced functions. In short, it’s much more convenient these days, but yes, you still need a calendar. You can now do a lot more with these calendar apps. We especially like the sleek looks, added features, and the customization options. Windows being the highly used platform across the world, we have listed some of the best calendar apps for Windows for your convenience.

Mail and Calendar

For those using a Windows PC, Mail and Calendar by Microsoft Corporation is one of the recommended calendar apps. It’s a lightweight app that does not require as much space as Outlook. It’s an independent app and so, does not need to be installed separately as an Office bundle.

This app keeps you updated on your email messages, helps you manage your schedule, and stay in contact with friends, family, and colleagues. Whether you are working from the office, or from home, this app is perfect for quick communication. It also helps you concentrate on the major aspects of all your accounts. It’s compatible with popular accounts like Gmail, Office 365, Outlook.com, and more.

Price: free to download

Efficient Calendar

Efficient Calendar helps you manage your time efficiently, using the Calendar, Tasks and Events Modules. It comes with a responsive interface where the major features are located on the left end of the calendar. It also offers multiple calendar views (Day, Week, Month, and Year) along with list view helping you to keep track of your appointments and events.

It’s an easy to sync app that helps you synchronize your PCs and Mobile phones in just 4 simple steps. Among its other features are a powerful document letting you save your comments for ant tasks or events, option to set priorities for events and tasks, a regular reminder on the pre-set events or tasks, and a Recycle Bin (with backup and restore feature) where you can trash your old and unusable data.

Price: free version available; upgrade starts from $27.96

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is one free app which is super easy to use without compromising on any functionalities. The interface comes with a simple layout where everything is nicely organized. Swiftly add calendar events or advanced events in just a few key hits. Moreover, it sends repeated reminders, so that you do not miss on any important events and tasks.

Some of its other great features include,

• Ability to send emails and messages to yourself;
• Option to update the priority of certain events (free or busy);
• Option to share your calendars with each other;
• Ability to sync to any app on your system;
• Absolutely free of cost.

Moreover, you do not even need to check if your spouse is busy or your friends have planned for any trip. Simply download the Google Calendar and stay informed at all times without any hassle.

Price: free to use

Mine Time

Another great free calendar app is Mine Time, that’s easy to set up and simple. All you need to do is to connect to service accounts and voila! You can install this app or even update, in just one click. The best part is, it integrates with all your other calendars on the your device, such as, Google Calendar, Outlook.com, Exchange, iCloud, and all CalDAV service. So, you can have all the calendars at one single place.

Moreover, you can also view the insights that display the stats of how many times you caught up with your co-workers in the last few months, or how many times the date of an event has been changes, and much more. The responsive interface allows you to schedule events or carry out actions easily. This cross-platform app learns your daily arrangements and preferences using AI. Best of all, all this is available for free!

Price: free to use

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a lot more than just emails. It also integrates calendar along with contacts, task, and much more, all under one roof. The calendar function allows you to stay organized more conveniently. From booking conference rooms to keep a track of RSVPs for meetings, all that is possible directly from your calendar.

You can also share the calendars that help you to make plans and synchronize schedules, and even view the availability of your colleagues. Moreover, it offers company level security and keeps your sensitive data secure by working round the clock. Best of all, your travel schedules and bill due dates, are automatically taken up by the calendar and sends you regular reminders so that, you do not miss on your important events.

Price: 30-days free trial available; Upgrade starts from $70/Yr/PC

My Calendar

My Calendar by Microsoft, is one of the best calendar applications for Windows. It’s a pretty new app and is already doing well in terms of popularity. It comes loaded wit different categories that allow you to customize calendar views, offers viewing in live tile format, lets you add photos to birthdays, and task management.

Among its other major features are:

• Lets you view the calendar in day, week, and month;
• Option to quickly change between calendar views to view the chosen day in multiple views;
• Lets you view the birthdays, vacations, and other special events;
• Allows you to also view name days in the calendar;
• Different customization options available to view the calendar;
• Does not show up ads;
• Improved calendar view with week view in grid format;
• Allows you to select from multiple live tiles;
• Offers the option to manage tasks;
• Lets you choose visible calendars from all the calendars available on your system.

Internal birthday calendars are optimized and you can now add photos to birthdays within the calendar.

Price: free to use

Lightning Calendar

Lightning Calendar is a Mozilla project that helps you stay organized with your schedules and other important events in life. The calendar is completely assimilated with your Thunderbird or Seamonkey email. You can easily manage several calendars, build your own list for all to-dos, send an invitation to friends for special events, and even subscribe to public calendars using this calendar app.

Price: free and open source

One Calendar

One Calendar is one of the simplest and user-friendly calendar apps around, and that’s the whole reason why it is so popular. Offered by Microsoft, this app allows you to add all your calendars in one place under a good-looking, compact calendar option. What’s more? It’s also extremely customizable. Among its major features are:

• Provides a core platform where you can view Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, iCloud, Office 365, Exchange, Facebook events, and more, all at one single place;
• Brings all your calendars under one roof;
• Allows you to view and manage any appointments, events, and schedules so that you do not miss important events;
• Lets you filter the appointments you want to view, smoothly;
• You can add, update, and remove appointments, based on your requirements;
• Allows you to filter and search what you are looking for, quickly;
• Offers multiple views such as Day, Week, Month, and Year;
• The data stored on the device is secured;
• Lets you work in the offline mode without needing an internet connection;
• Compatible with several different calendars of Google and Office365;
• Offers customizable colors, weeknumbers, themes, live tile format, print option, and drag and drop facility.

Price: free version available; premium version available for $4.99

Hope Calendar

If you are looking for a straightforward app, but feature loaded, Hope Calendar can be a great choice. What we especially like is, no fine-tuning is required in the device settings since it simply blends with your current settings for the calendar and outlook. Some of its other features are:

• Simple and neat layout offering all that you want to view at first sight;
• Compatibility with other apps like, Google Calendar, Outlook, Yahoo, Exchange, Office 365, and iCloud;
• Offers heat map allowing you to view the busier days in a quick glance;
• Allows you to view your future appointments in an easy, live tile format;
• Facility to get an attractive imaged capture of your imminent days in an agenda view, easily;
• Option to view upto five appointments in a large live tile format;
• Allows you to add appointments easily by simply double-clicking or skipping to the current day with a click and hold;
• Option to hide appointments or get a quick view of the hidden appointments when required.

The best part is, it uses your current calendars and so, it does not need to be set up separately. Moreover, your personal data does not ever go to the servers.

Price: free version available; pro version available at $2.49

Chronos Calendar +

If you are a looking for a calendar that focuses majorly on the looks, then it has to e the Chronos Calendar+. It’s a chic calendar app with a host of features while maintaining its elegance. It’s loaded with attractive features and also provides integration with all the calendars on your device.

It provides support for multiple languages (more than 30) and offers holiday correction for different countries. Moreover, you can also customize the calendar in rich live tile format and also the calendar look. What’s more? It also features integrated holidays and other different special days for more than 70 countries, which is unique in itself.

Explore ore with Zodiac signs and moon phases. Smart add feature and the option to see the calendar in multiple views are some of the other major features to look upto.

Price: $2.49

timeTable Tile

timetable Tile lives upto its name by helping you to add your courses and lectures with the start and end time specified. You can also add the name of the place and the teacher and keep a tab on your courses and lectures schedules effectively. The main screen displays the lectures scheduled for today. You can alter the setting to display the past lectures for today.

Once the app is launched, it displays a live tile showing today’s lectures. Using the AppBar, you can reach the Course page and here, you can add, remove, change both the lectures and the courses. Semantic zoom allows you to easily find and open the courses. You can also navigate to the lecture with a Weekly view from the start screen. Here, you can view the lectures categorized by days.

Price: free to use

With a fast and busy schedule these days, it’s easy to forget your important events and miss on special days with friends or family. Download one of these popular calendar apps and never miss a date at work or with your loved ones.

Event Calendar

The Event Calendar, as the name suggests, is specially designed to keep track of event dates. For instance, you can easily keep a track of important events like marriages, festivals, birthdays, vacations, and so on, easily, using this app. It sends you regular notifications, keeping you alert till the event approaches. This app, basically, does not let you forget any upcoming events and even create a schedule a for those.

Among its other features are:

• Option to add different events and save them into the cloud;
• Option to view the notifications;
• Get notified on Desktop with the toast notification option;
• Allows you to save unlimited events on the cloud;
• Protects your sensitive information from unidentified access.

Price: free to use

I find passion in writing Tech articles around Windows PC and softwares

Intro

“How satisfied are you with your physical health in the past four weeks?”. Knowing how a patient is feeling, what their symptoms are, and if they experienced any changes is often essential information to healthcare professions and clinicians alike. The use of patient diaries, or symptom trackers, can offer valuable insight into any range of symptoms and assist in making more informed decisions about a diagnosis or treatment based or recognise symptom fluctuations accompanying a new drug.

Depending on the clinicians or the research, self-reported questions on symptom tracking can vary immensely both in detail and time. Doctors will frequently ask their patients to keep a diary for recent health events, such as pain, fatigue and quality of life over the last 24 hours, the previous week, or the last month. The timeline of these symptoms can be analysed together with new treatment regimens or lifestyle modifications to gain valuable insight into a patient’s response.

So what are our options for symptom trackers? How can we also promote self-management from the patient’s side to take more charge of their health? In the past, we have relied on pen, paper, and a good memory. The downsides to these diaries and methods however often lead to low adherence, misplacement, and time consuming analysis. By shifting these diaries to the small buzzing electrical devices we all carry in our pocket, we can remind patients to answer at predefined times, we can create backups of the data, and instantly analyse it.

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What is a digital symptom tracker?

A digital symptom tracker is a computer software that allows a person or patient to self-report medical events and track what they felt and when it happened.

Traditionally patients have used paper booklets to track their symptoms. Paper logs have many upsides, they work anywhere, don’t require extra devices (beyond a pen), and they never run out of batteries. But this also means they can be misplaced or lost anywhere, without a backup, and the processing of paper diaries and notes also has its obstacles ; interpreting handwriting can lead to mistakes and data analysis is not instant.

To cope with the challenges of pen and paper data collection doctors and researchers have been using digital symptom trackers for decades.

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Best Offline Diary Apps

With the advent of the smartphone, virtually anyone carries in their pocket a powerful note-taking device. App-based diaries ensure that entries can happen anywhere, anytime and can be coupled with push notifications to ensure measurements are not missed.

Key features to look for in a health journal app

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1. Data protection

Data security is a crucial feature of these sorts of systems. Although any app with annotation or data collection capabilities may seem fit for tracking our health, there are essential data protection features that must be regarded when using a mobile app for tracking our health.

An example of the standard security features that a health journal app should have is passcode locking. If someone finds a smartphone with medical data, they should enter a passcode to unlock it, even if the smartphone has a general passcode enabled.

Also, the data should be stored locally encrypted. If the device is lost, this will mitigate the risk of someone gaining unlawful access to that data.

Clinicians and patients should look into what standards and regulations the mobile application they want to use complies with, such HIPAA, 21 CFR Part 11 (FDA) and Good Clinical Practice.

2. Data sharing and remote access

One of the benefits that a health journal app has over paper is the ability to visualize the data and share it with others quickly. Not all mobile apps store data in the cloud, some only locally.

Assure that you choose an app that is capable of providing remote access to the data and that even if the device would be lost, the data can be retrieved. If you are doing clinical research, check that the data can be exported in CSV or SPSS and with enough metadata that other researchers could possibly use it in the future.

3. Data collection versatility

Best Offline Journal App

Logging symptoms is all about capturing qualitative and quantitative data. In practice, this means creating a form with variables and fields. The complexity of your questionnaire will depend on the kind of data you want to collect. In some cases, advanced features might be required such as branching logic (a new page or question appears dependent on the answer of a previous one), automatic calculations, image and video capture.

Make sure the app you want to use will be able to handle the kind of symptom data you want to keep track of.

Best Offline Diary App Free

4. Reminders and push notifications

Best Offline Diary App Download

Making data collection a habit is no easy task, with the many distractions that patients have they will likely forget to enter data. Increasing engagement and adherence can be aided by push notification that remind a patient when to check their blood pressure or answer a set of questions on how they are feeling.