5 apps that will make your morning commute easier

The morning commute to work or school can seem like it lasts forever, especially if you don’t have a physical book to read or someone to talk to. Fortunately, there are plenty of apps available for your smartphone or tablet that can make traveling a little less tedious.

Whether you want to pass the time by listening to your favorite playlist or a captivating new audiobook, immersing yourself in a confusing mobile game, continuing to watch the latest TV series that got you hooked, learning a new language, or simply keeping track of your trip – and planning for possible cancellations or delays – there’s an app that can help. Below, we break down five apps that will help make your morning commute go by quickly. We’ve tried to include a mix of free and paid apps, but note that they may require an internet connection for some features (or a bit of planning ahead).

It may seem like an obvious choice, but Spotify is the most popular music streaming service for a reason. With millions of tracks available, you’ll likely never run out of music to listen to, but we find the Premium membership features to be the most beneficial for commuting. In addition to benefits like lossless audio and ad-free music listening, Spotify Premium subscribers can download and listen to music, podcasts, and audiobooks.

This is especially useful if your commute often has an internet signal going in and out, or if there’s simply no internet access at all, because you can pre-download the playlists, audiobooks, and podcasts you want to listen to at home, then listen to them uninterrupted while you travel. Up to 10,000 tracks can be downloaded to up to five devices, although your monthly audiobook listening hours are limited to 15 hours.

However, for those who can’t swallow the uncomfortable truths about actually using Spotify – like the growing amount of AI garbage – or who can’t justify paying $12.99 per month for an individual account, there are cheaper Spotify Premium alternatives that are worth a try.

I know, I know, Candy Crush Saga is so 2012, but around 180 million people still play King’s tile-matching puzzle game once a month, and many play on their commute or while traveling. Indeed, Candy Crush Saga is an easy-to-play, free-to-play time killer that offers a stress-free gaming experience without requiring extensive gaming knowledge or an Internet connection (although some features, like the Boost Wheel, require one).

But Candy Crush Saga isn’t just mindless entertainment. There are proven cognitive benefits to playing matching games like this – games that require you to line up three identical objects on a board to clear them – including improved coordination, shape recognition, problem solving, memory and visual search performance.

With over 21,000 levels available and new levels added every week, you’ll be hard-pressed to run out of new levels to play every morning. You have a limited number of lives (five in free-to-play mode), but there is a trick to refill your lives when you run out. Simply go to the manual date and time settings on your smartphone or tablet and set the date to tomorrow, open the Candy Crush Saga app to see your lives recharged, then set the date back to normal.

Citymapper won’t really make your travel experience any less tedious, but it can help you save time on your commute. Available in several major cities across the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Asia and Europe, Citymapper is a free mobile travel planning app that lets you define where you want to go – including when you want to depart or arrive – and provides the different routes and travel options available, as well as specific directions for getting there.

Even if you know your usual route, this is especially useful when you need to know about delays or reroutings in real time to avoid cancellations and stay on time for work or school. We find that in some cities, like London, it’s more up-to-date and more accurate than Google Maps.

If you’re on a work trip to another city, it can also be a lifesaver when it comes to getting to and from the office (provided the city is one the app is compatible with), as it shows exactly which bus or train you should board, where the stop is, the best section of the train to board and how long it will take you to walk from one platform to another, as well as walking directions. It will even show you the air-conditioned route on particularly hot days.

The only downside to Citymapper is that while you can save trips to your home screen so they’re available offline, finding a new, unsaved route on the fly requires an internet connection.

If you want to use your commute time productively, why not spend it learning a new language? Duolingo is a free app that offers 40 language courses for English speakers, including courses in Spanish, French, Irish, Italian, and even fictional languages ​​like Klingon and High Valyrian. There is also a math course for kids that covers calculus, geometry, algebra and more.

Duolingo uses research-based teaching methods combined with fun, bite-sized lessons to help you learn to read, write, and speak the language of your choice. Lessons take the form of interactive exercises, quizzes, and stories, and players can earn experience points by completing them, with their weekly score determining their ranking in the game’s competitive leagues. Although Duolingo is largely free, some features, like ad-free use and unlimited courses, require the paid Super Duolingo subscription, which costs $83.99 per year/$12.99 per month, or Duolingo Max, which costs $168 per year/$30 per month, and includes AI features. However, this growing use of generative AI has led some to abandon Duolingo.

Like Spotify, this may be an obvious choice, but the advantage here is not just the ability to watch TV shows and movies, but also download them to the Netflix app and watch them offline. If you’re watching a particularly gripping documentary series that you can’t wait to see the next episode of, or just want to watch a light movie during your commute, you may be able to download it to your smartphone or tablet and watch it without interruption, even without an internet connection.

To do this, browse the Netflix app for the show or movie you want to watch, select it, and check if there is a “Download” button under the “Play” option. If so, you can select it to download the entire movie or series. If you only want to download selected episodes of a TV show, select the download icon next to the episodes you want to save to your device. Just make sure you have a stable internet connection when you do this (ideally Wi-Fi to save your data usage).

Netflix plans that have ads, like the Standard with Ads plan, only allow 15 downloads on your device at a time, while ad-free plans, like Premium, allow up to 100 active downloads, but these plans cost more.