Imagine this:

You’re sitting in your office, or maybe at your kitchen table, sipping coffee and trying to plan your day. You have a meeting in an hour, a project deadline looming, and an ever-growing list of errands to run. As you frantically scribble notes and reminders on sticky notes and random scraps of paper, you can’t help but feel like there must be a better way to stay on top of it all.

Enter daily planner apps— these digital lifesavers help you plan, prioritize, and streamline your day, so you can conquer the chaos and focus on what matters most.

In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of daily planner appsand highlight the 5 best free options with features available today.

Let’s begin.📖 ✍️

What is the definition of Daily Planner apps?

A daily planner app is a software or app specifically designed to help you organize, schedule, and prioritize tasks, appointments, and other daily activities. These apps typically offer a wide range of features, such as task lists, calendars, reminders, time tracking, and goal setting, to keep you focused and on track. To be considered a top daily planner app, it must meet the following criteria:

• Free and open-source: Allows for accessibility and customization even if you don’t have much of money.
• Enhances productivity: Streamlines task management and helps you get more done in less time.
• Keeps things organized: Provides a clear and structured interface to manage tasks, events, and ideas.
• User-friendly: Intuitive design and ease of use, catering to users of varying technical expertise.
• Robust feature set: Offers a comprehensive suite of apps and functionalities to address a wide range of planning and organizing needs.

5 Best Daily Planner apps For 2023

1. AFFiNE

AFFiNE is an innovative and comprehensive daily planner app designed to help you organize, manage, and collaborate on tasks, projects, and information. As a next-generation knowledge base, AFFiNE combines the best features of popular apps like Notion and Miro into one powerful, flexible, and user-friendly platform. It focuses on data security, privacy, and collaboration, making it the perfect choice for managing your daily plans, personal knowledge repository, and team projects.

What you can do with AFFiNE’s key features:

1. Local-first design: AFFiNE prioritizes data security and privacy, ensuring your data remains stored on your local device unless you actively delete it.
2. Multiple workspaces: Create different workspaces to manage various types of data, like managing your daily tasks, personal knowledge repository, and team projects simultaneously.
3. Pages within workspaces: Organize your tasks, notes, and ideas in different pages within each workspace, making it easy to navigate and find what you need.
4. Powerful search functionality: Quickly locate the documents, tags, or actions you want with a modern search app that can handle multiple workspaces and pages.
5. Advanced collaboration capabilities: Invite friends or colleagues to become collaborators in your workspace, engage in real-time multi-person editing, and share your workspaces with others.
6. Time tracking and goal setting: Use AFFiNE’s built-in features to track your time spent on tasks and set goals to improve your productivity.
7. Open-source: As an open-source app, you can access AFFiNE’s code, allowing for customization and the ability to deploy the server on your own computer or data center. Here are some quick view of what you can do with AFFiNE core features

• Database
  • Easily create, organize, and track your daily note like never before. Say goodbye to complex processes and welcome an unprecedented ease-of-use way

• Powerful Edgeless mode
  • Visualize and connect your daily ideas smoothly with better cartoon-style shape, slick pen, and connectors. No constraints. Limited only by your imagination. Ohhh, by the way, images now are supported to upload!! We just make everything easy for you, now you may enjoy your drawing time!

• Notion/html/markdown import-supported

  • Effortlessly import Notion, HTML, or Markdown content into AFFiNE with just a few simple clicks, preserving formatting, and structure, and saving time, enhancing user experience. Say goodbye to the complicated process of manually converting and adjusting content.

• Tags- Enhance Content Organization and Discoverability
  • Assign descriptive tags to your content, enabling effortless categorization and quick access to relevant information whenever needed.

• Collections - Unleash the Power of Smart Collections
  • A few steps to set criteria, collect filtered pages, and effortlessly curate frequently used content, ensuring efficient organization and easy retrieval and comprehensive management.

• Effortlessly navigate through your notes by seamlessly linking related pages, ensuring a smooth and convenient experience.

AFFiNE’s Price:

In addition to those mentioned above, AFFiNE is a fantastic, completely free daily planner app that welcomes everyone to experience its powerful features, making it a delightful surprise for those seeking a comprehensive solution for their daily planning needs.

• Come and check with our latest Stable version, enjoy your creative moments.
• For more things related to AFFiNE, Come and check out our website: AFFiNE — All In One KnowledgeOS
• Wanna try it online:https://app.affine.pro/

2. Clickup

ClickUp is an outstanding productivity app and one of the top online planners designed for individuals and teams of all sizes to manage their to-do lists effectively.

Regardless of your role — be it a task manager, a student handling assignments, or a parent putting together a grocery list — ClickUp has the potential to be your ideal weekly planner app.

Here’s a quick look into some useful Clickup features:

1. Task Management: Create tasks, subtasks, and checklists to break down your daily plan into manageable steps. You can easily set priorities, due dates, and assign tasks to team members.
2. Customizable Views: Choose from various views like list, board, calendar, and Gantt chart to visualize your daily plan in a way that suits your workflow best.
3. Time Tracking: Use the built-in time tracking feature to monitor the time spent on tasks, helping you stay on track with your daily plan and improve productivity.
4. Reminders and Notifications: Set reminders for important tasks and receive notifications about upcoming deadlines, ensuring you stay on top of your daily plan.
5. Goal Setting: Define and track your goals in ClickUp, which helps you stay focused on the objectives that matter most in your daily plan. Clickup Price:

ClickUp has a Free Plan, but it won’t cover all the funtionalities you need most, $5/user per month is necessary if there’s more you wanna do with clickup

Knowing more about AFFiNE or Clickup, which one is most suitable to you, can check this article: https://affine.pro/blog/seven-best-open-source-clickup-alternatives-2023

3.Notion

Notion is a versatile all-in-one workspace application designed to help users with note-taking, project management, and task organization. It has gained significant popularity among professionals and teams across various industries. As an excellent app for managing daily work plans, Notion’s flexibility and wide range of features cater to users with diverse requirements, making it a go-to choice for many.

1. Tasks and to-do lists: Create tasks and to-do lists to track and manage your daily responsibilities.
2. Project boards: Use Kanban-style project boards to visualize your daily work plan and monitor progress.
3. Calendar view: Plan and schedule your tasks in a calendar view, making it easy to see what’s coming up in your daily work plan.
4. Databases: Create and manage databases to store and organize information related to your daily tasks and projects.
5. Templates: Use templates to quickly set up pages or databases for recurring tasks or projects, saving time in your daily planning. Notion price:

Notion’s free plan still provides a comprehensive set of features for individual users and small teams. However, for those who need more advanced capabilities, collaboration options, and support, upgrading to a paid plan might be necessary.

Knowing more about AFFiNE or Notion, which one is most suitable to you, can check this article: 5 Best Open Source Alternatives to Notion (affine.pro)

4.Trello

Trello is a popular visual project management app that uses boards, lists, and cards to help you organize your daily tasks. With its simple, drag-and-drop interface, Trello is easy to use and offers a variety of integrations with other productivity apps.

1. create boards for projects or categories, lists for stages or tasks, and cards for individual tasks or subtasks, making it easy to organize and prioritize your daily work plan.
2. Drag-and-drop Interface: Trello’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface allows you to quickly move tasks between different stages or lists, making it simple to update your daily work plan as priorities change.
3. Due Dates and Reminders: Assign due dates to cards and receive reminders before the deadlines, ensuring that you stay on track with your daily work plan. Trello price:

Trello also offers the Free Plan, but there are some limitations that might affect its usability for certain users or more complex projects. So you still need to pay extra $10 to have more useful features.

• Wanna read more comparison articles related to Trello, check this: 6 Best Project Management Tools to boost productivity in 2023 (affine.pro)

5.Todoist

Todoist is a popular to-do list and task management app that helps you organize and prioritize your daily tasks. With its clean and user-friendly interface, Todoist offers features like due dates, recurring tasks, and reminders to help you stay on top of your daily plan.

1. Task creation: Easily create tasks with deadlines, labels, and priorities to stay organized and focused on what matters most.
2. Project organization: Organize tasks into projects and sections to visualize and manage your daily work plan more effectively.
3. Recurring tasks: Set up tasks that repeat daily, weekly, monthly, or with a custom frequency to help you manage your routine activities. Todoist price:

Todoist offers various pricing plans to cater to different users’ needs. These include a Free plan, a Premium plan, and a Business plan. However, the free plan doesn’t include reminders, which can be crucial for staying on track with daily tasks and deadlines.

Which Daily Planner App offers the best solution?

While each of the daily planner apps discussed offers its own unique and appealing features, we encourage users to choose the ideal option based on their specific needs and pain points. However, with a humble perspective, we still propose that AFFiNE emerges as the ultimate winner in this evaluation, providing a comprehensive and versatile solution for managing daily tasks and goals, catering to a wide range of user requirements.

AFFiNE is still in its beta, but we are continuing to build to a more feature-rich and stable build. Come and join us on our journey over on our media platforms.

• Official Website: https://affine.pro/
• GitHub: https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE
• Discord: https://discord.gg/Arn7TqJBvG
• Telegram: https://t.me/affineworkos