Shovel - Study Planner 4+

This app has a such a great concept behind it that really gives me, a grad student with a full time job, hope I can get everything done without any of my work suffering.

But, there are a few tiny glitches that get annoying when they pile up. 1) The widget doesn’t work because it doesn’t stay “logged in” when the app is logged in. 2) There’s no way to add a widget to the Home Screen for the latest update. 3) The phone app is just kinda slow and lacks functionally (which I can accept if everything else worked perfectly). 4) My app sends two notifications for plans: one for the actual time duration and another for the time it starts up until 11:59pm. Again, not a huge issue but annoying.

This app has so much potential and I really don’t want to see it stop getting the updates it needs. I’m on my free trial and I’m concerned about subscribing because it feels like this app will gradually lose more and more functionality.

I know that it’s primarily for Desktop and I do it use it that way, but I’m on my phone WAY more than my computer. I’d love to see this app grow and continue using it over the next three years!

I think the concept for Shovel is amazing.. but there are a few issues with the actual execution. Tho I don’t think they’d be hard for the app developer to fix. I understand that the main way to edit things is on a computer, but! There should be a “hard copy” (so to speak) downloaded on the app. That only gets updated from the server. As in it should have an offline mode. Right now their server is down; and not only can I not access it on my computer (which is understandable since the computer version is solely web access) but I also can’t access it on my phone. This is a huge flaw. What if I hadn’t written down my assignments anywhere else? Or what if I simply wasn’t in an area with WiFi or cell service and wanted to check my assignments? I think it’s crazy that I have to be hooked up to the internet to do so. Please please add an offline stored version on the app. And also. Please fix the server. I’d love to give this app 5 stars. But not even being able to see all the info that I took hours to set up this week is really really not great.

So I’m actually a professor, not a student, but I absolutely love Shovel. I have just personally set it up so that my research, grant proposals, and other miscellaneous item are also “classes” and my assignments for my actual classes are things such as “preparing class material” or “grading homework”. I truly think this is a great app for anyone (student, teacher, or random person) who has anxiety about getting things done. It’s really helped me feel calmer knowing that everything has it’s time to get done. To me, it’s completely worth the yearly subscription.

If I had any suggestion for the developers, it would be to make options for the program to be more flexible (I.e. not only for students). I can see this being such a useful tool for anyone who likes block scheduling. Like I said, with just a tinch of creativity it’s easy enough to make it work for anyone as is, but I think a lot of people don’t realize that.