shares
Disclosure: This page may contain affiliate links, meaning we receive a commission if you decide to make a purchase through our links, but this is at no additional cost to you. Please read our disclosure and privacy statement for more info.
*Last updated – July 2021
Shift planning is a heck of a lot easier with the right shift work calendar app! Being able to simply visualize your shifts, personalize your days with color, images, notes or reminders takes the stress out of juggling a busy shift work schedule. There are plenty of apps out there, but which apps make everything easier and don’t further complicate a complex shift work life? You’ve come to the right place.
Staying organized as a shift worker is made super easy with an app, but there are so many options to choose from! Throughout this post, we will explore the best of the bunch and why they make our favorites list.
10 Best Shift Work Calendar Apps
…to keep you organized and make the shift planning process a breeze
While writing this post about the best shift work calendar apps, we took particular notice of:
- Ease of use and set up
- Android or iPhone compatibility
- Visual appearance
- Ability to add and edit multiple shifts at once
- The ability to personalize your roster, even when working rotating shifts
- The tools available to keep track of wages
- Widget availability (to display on a desktop)
Find an app which suits you and your needs, not necesarily the one which is most popular
My nursing friends all have different apps based on personal preference, so keep looking until you find the perfect fit!
Shift planning 101: Get a shift work calendar app to stop you missing out on stuff!
The apps listed below are all in alphabetical order. Be sure to continue all the way to the end, where we list out our top 3 recommenced shift work calendar apps!
Click Up
Where you can get it:
What makes it stand out:
- Organise all your “bits” in one place. From work tasks to home life it’s easy to get organised.
- For work things, you can bring all of your work together in 1 place with integrations (see how here)
- Excellent medical scheduling software for healthcare professionals who are either running their own clinic or anybody responsible for organizing the daily running of the facility.
-
100s of customizable features (
check them out here
)
- Free Forever Plan with unlimited tasks & members, or upgrade for $5 or $9/month for more storage and extra bells and whistles.
Areas for improvement:
- With so many features it can take a moment to get your head around it. It’s a very powerful tool.
- Not specifically suited for shift workers and their rosters. It more so manages tasks rather than your roster. it would be cool if it had this feature.
Bottom line – Click Up
An incredible tool to organise up coming tasks to limit the stress and anxiety of forgetting something.
I love this softwear and use it to manage my “to do list.” I do however rely on a different app to manage my roster.
Google Calendar: Time Planner
Where you can get it:
- App Store
- Google Play
What makes it stand out:
- Multiple calendar views. Quickly switch between month, week and day view
- Sync events from multiple Google accounts. Great when managing a family or both your home and personal life.
- Insert ‘ add location’ to know where you need to go. Integrates with maps on your phone at the click of a button.
- Create to-dos and use reminders to give you a nudge something is upcoming.
- Ability to add personal goals for the week
Areas for improvement:
- Not specifically suited for shift workers when quickly adding in various, rotating shifts
- Google picks up on keywords likes, gym, dentist, drink, dinner and associates this with events with no ability to disable currently
- Unable to customize fonts or ability to categorize reminders
Bottom line – Google Calendar: Time Planner:
Used by plenty, this calendar app is a beast when it comes to organizing not only events but reminders and goals.
Keep in mind it’s not specifically designed for shift workers, so the level of customizable capabilities a shift worker looks for may not be there. But it does fit nicely if you’re a primary Google user across most facets of your life.
MyDuty – Nurse Calendar
Where you can get it:
- App Store
- Google Play
What makes it stand out:
- Widget available
- You can manage vacation days
- Ability to create groups. View your friends or families schedules from any device when online.
- Customization of alarm sounds and settings
- Available on Android and iOS
Areas for improvement:
- Unable to use symbols to represent shifts – colors and words only
- Some users state issues with alarms randomly going off which are part of the default setting
- A number of comments suggest issues when using the widget. However, customer support is available and had resolved it in a number of instances.
- Unable to assign multiple shifts on one day
Bottom line – MyDuty – Nurse Calendar:
MyDuty – Nurse Calendar does suggest from its title that it specifically targets nurses, however, it can be used for various shift work professions and provides adequate shift work planning.
If you want to sync your calendar with your friends and family this is the app for you!
My Shift Planner – Calendar
Where you can get it:
- App Store
- Google Play
What makes it stand out:
- Comprehensive shift work calendar app packed with various features
- Syncs with Google Calendar with ease (on the paid version)
- Ability to personalize your own experience
- The free version has ads but they are not intrusive
- Ability to add in overtime, paydays and holidays
- Sends alerts when you need to leave for work
- Incredible customer support
- Backup storage capabilities, in case you accidentally remove something you shouldn’t.
- Widget available for Android and iOS
Areas for improvement:
- Due to the number of features and personalization, it takes a little while to set up and navigate
Bottom line – My Shift Planner – Calendar:
Amazing FREE shift work calendar app!
Ability to customize your own experience by changing colors, shifts and adding paydays.
It is a little more complicated than some others on the market due to the level of detail but it is totally worth it for the user experience.
Shift Calendar / Schedule
Where you can get it:
- Google Play
What makes it stand out:
- Easily share your roster with your friends and family
- Ability to edit multiple shifts at one time
- Rotation repeat option
- Quick set up
- Ability to set alarms
- Visually appealing
Areas for improvement:
- Only able to share one month at a time to friends and family. Not great for shift workers who need to plan a long time in advance.
- Unable to add appointments
- No ability to keep track of hours worked per week
Bottom line: Shift Calendar / Schedule:
Helpful app to keep track of your shift work schedule. Simple yet very effective. A small thing, but not being able to share a calendar more than a month out stopped us from using this. The creator of this app must not have the social schedule like us at The Other Shift!
Shift Days – Work Tracker
Where you can get it:
- App Store
What makes it stand out:
- Easy to allocate multiple shifts per day
- Ability to add notes to each shift
- Rotational shifts feature
- Color coding used to distinguish between shifts
- Push notifications and reminders
- Ability to save to the cloud
- Simple and effective platform
Areas for improvement:
- Basic visuals and limited color choice
- Unable to use images/emojis to identify shifts on the monthly view
- The can be used for free, though you have limited ability to change the start of the week, share rosters or change the time format on the free version. They’d like you to pay.
Bottom line – Shift Days – Work Tracker:
We found this to be a basic app with limited capabilities. The model of having a free version, but then restricting my feature set, did deter me. I found it super simple on the free platform, though if you don’t need nor want the paid elements, this could be what you’re looking for.
Shift Work Calendar
Where you can get it:
- App Store
- Google Play
What makes it stand out:
- Ability to use emojis to highlight any date
- Save your calendar as an image and send it to others via email
- Widget available
- Choose between a light and dark theme
- Able to be synced with Google Calendar
Areas for improvement:
- No auto-population plan for repeating roster patterns
- Unable to highlight the full day as a different color, such as school holidays as it only appears as a dot
- No search capabilities
- Unable to track wages and/or income
- Free app, with a premium plan available
Bottom line – Shift Work Calendar:
Super simple yet effective app to organize your shift work life. The free version provides majority of what you’re looking for. The premium version on the other hand does sync with Google Calendar, gives you the ability to view and input others shifts and there is no advertising.
Shift Worker
Where you can get it:
- App Store
What makes it stand out:
- Choose from visually pleasing, easily identifiable icons. The ☀️ for day shift or a 🌙 for night shift.
- Enter different shift rotations that can fill in future dates automatically in the once instance.
- Ability to send your shifts to others via email, MMS, Twitter or Facebook
- Easily add notes to any selected day
- Show alternative weeks
Areas for improvement:
- Basic app with limited capabilities
- Small cost involved
Bottom line – Shift Worker:
Shift Worker is designed for people who need a quick and easy way to enter and view their shifts. Its rating of 3.6 from 5 on the App Store would leave a new user a tad concerned, though this is one app that’s VERY popular in my workplace.
If you’re after a basic app which allows you to organize your shift work calendar in a visually pleasing manner – this is a great app. However, if you’re wanting a higher level of personalization you may struggle with the limited amount of features.
Spark – Shift Calendar
Where you can get it:
- App Store
- Google Play
What makes it stand out:
- Preset shift schedules to choose from – a fairly extensive list too!
- Set shift labels and color code – visually appealing
- Guided help – when first starting, the app educates you on how to use it.
- Repeat feature – schedule events out as far as a year
- Setup multiple alerts – for a person who never notices the first.
- Statistical information – see data by event type (eg. holidays, overtime, etc.) and know how much is available and what’s been used.
- Transfer your calendar to another user
- Send a trade request – connect with your work colleagues who also use the app to request a shift swap
Areas for improvement:
- Startup process takes time – you must create an account.
- Forces you to sync your existing calendar, turn on notifications.
- Provide you with a 30 day free trial, though you must pay after that
Bottom line – Spark – Shift Calendar:
The app seems to be extremely feature rich and was easy to navigate. The setup seemed a little cumbersome and could have been made easier, though once you were in and got going then the app added real benefit.
With over 5k ratings and at 4.8 stars on the App Store, I’d suggest the users are pretty happy with what they have purchased.
Work Shift Calendar
Where you can get it:
- Google Play
What makes it stand out:
- Able to share multiple peoples shifts and compare rosters
- Ability to set multiple alarms alarms
- Include actions at the start / end of each shift. Things like turn on / off WiFi, switch to sound / vibration / silence mode or set on / off Bluetooth
- Ability to create notes, with reminders and alarms attached to each shift
- Widget available
- Colour coding feature
- Ability to track income
- 4.7 star rating from over 82k reviews on Google Play.
Areas for improvement:
- Limited color choice
- People have suggested you may experience some issues when syncing to Google calendar
Bottom line – Work Shift Calendar:
Basic app with everything you need to stay organized. Has less ‘bells and whistles’ over other shift work calendar apps, but it does the job. Based on their ranking in Google Play, this app’s loved by most who use it.
Recommended Time Management Resources for Shift Workers
While the apps discussed above are amazing, there is more help available for those who want to become better at managing their time.
We’ve found a number of resources, some free and others paid, which can help those who struggle with managing their time allocation each day. Combine this with the apps listed above and you’ll find not a minute of your day is lost ever again.
Check out those we’ve listed below and we always enjoy feedback from those who’ve found a game changer not listed here.
- Book: Work Energy: Finish Everything You Start and Fearlessly Take On Any Goal. (This book is not directly related to managing ones schedule, but it was transformational for us at The Other Shift with regard to mindset and maximising the most from any task. A must read from our perspective.)
Notice Dan’s Blue Light Blocking Glasses? They stop headaches and eye strain for good! See why we love them and how to get yourself a pair here.
Other Articles From The Other Shift Assisting With Shift Work Schedule Management
What You’ve Been Waiting For…. Our Top 3 Shift Work Calendar Apps:
Based on our own personal usage, these are our top 3 apps for any shift worker wanting to better manage their own schedule.
- My Shift Planner – Calendar
- Shift Worker
- Work Shift Calendar
Those are the 10 Best Shift Work Calendar Apps…
Shift work calendar apps not only allow us to stay super organized but they also give us the opportunity to share our roster with our family and friends to maximize our every day (both professionally and socially).
That long overdue catch-up with a close friend or family member is a reality, though it does require a little extra planning to get there.
Now, even though you’ve come to an article talking about apps, some of you might be old school. The paper diary might still be a comfort but let’s be honest, they are not overly practical in this day and age. Do you want to lug that big thing around with you all day? Nup didn’t think so.
Shift work calendar apps are a big part of life in our household and we hope you found a gem you can’t wait to try.
Cheers,
Disclosure: This page may contain affiliate links, meaning we receive a commission if you decide to make a purchase through our links, but this is at no additional cost to you. Please read our disclosure and privacy statement for more info.
Emma @ The Other Shift
Hey there! I’m Emma Smith a passionate, Registered Nurse from Australia. Together with my husband Daniel, we run The Other Shift. Our sole aim is to help shift workers and those on unusual schedules find balance between work and life. I understand the challenges of fitting in exercise, maintaining relationships and getting enough quality sleep, but I’m excited to show you that it’s possible to do shift work and still thrive. Read more about us and our story here.
