If you don’t want to pay for Microsoft’s AI-powered Microsoft Office, there are alternatives—including Zoho’s free Zoho Office Suite. Zoho’s alternatives to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Google Keep launch today, complete with their own intelligent features that are arguably friendlier than Microsoft’s own.

The updated, smarter Zoho Writer 5 word processor and Zoho Sheet 5 spreadsheet join Zoho Notebook, a new addition that intelligently transforms links into “cards” that pull data from the web. The suite also includes Zoho Show, a free alternative to PowerPoint. For this revision, the Zoho Office Suite includes Zia, an AI assistant that Zoho integrated into its CRM solution last year.

Zoho does charge $3 to SMBs to use the suite, and $6 per user for enterprises. If you’re a single home user, you pay nothing, though you’ll need to sign up for a Zoho account. All of the Zoho Office Suite apps are available on the web as well as on iOS and Android, but require an Internet connection. The exception is the new version of Writer, which is now available in an offline mode.

Writer’s new features include the Zia-powered spelling and grammar checker, which includes Flesch-Kincaid readability analysis as well as writing tips; offline mode and a dark mode; and forms and signature integration. In Sheet, Zia can automatically construct pivot tables and reply to plain-language queries, even on mobile. And in Notebook, Zoho’s Zia now constructs the sort of “cards” you might find in Twitter or Facebook, where a link will expand to show the title and any art associated with the link.

What this means to you: Microsoft’s Office suite is undoubtedly the powerhouse office suite, and as we’ve recently seen, Microsoft will do just about anything to keep you locked into an Office 365 subscription. Zoho, though, has been quietly providing a solid alternative for years. You can still import Office files (Writer, for example, accepts DOCX, DOC, DOT, TXT formats and more, and exports to DOCX, too) while keeping your files within Zoho’s workflow. Microsoft may make it a bit easier to save documents in its OneDrive cloud, but you can also connect to a cloud service within Zoho. The key point, of course, is that it’s all free to the home user.

Zoho Writer 5

Zoho’s apps have always catered to the business user, even if it’s an individual working at home. Many of Writer’s new features are geared toward helping automate business tasks like filling in forms, or integrating with Zoho’s other tools like Mail, Cliq, and Zoho Connect. But Zia’s Writer integration should directly appeal to the consumer.

Zoho

As you type, Writer reads your text and tries to improve it, with color-coded squiggles that apply to, say, passive constructions, wordy phrases, and run-on sentences. Writer sums up all of these in a sidebar to the right of the text. (Zia doesn’t appear to be present in offline mode, however.)

It should go without saying, but Zoho says that all of your files and text will remain confidential, and will never be sold to advertisers.

Other features within Writer 5 include: 

• A document automation hub, with document generation and automation tools to help you create automated forms, including the ability to generate fillable fields
• Form automation, which allows clients to generate their own forms
• Integration with Zoho’s CRM tools, which pulls in customer data as a data source
• Signature collection, both e-signatures and “wet ink”
  

  Zoho

• An offline mode, where your twenty most recent documents and anything new you’ve created are stored offline, than synced when you reconnect
• A dark mode
• Content creation tweaks, including a “focus typing” mode that highlights the current paragraph and an optional “typewriter” clacking noise that can play as you type.

Zoho

Zoho Sheet 5

Microsoft has made AI a focus of Excel over the past few years, and the new version of Sheet is no different. Zia is designed to make it easier to parse your data, especially within the mobile version of Zoho’s Sheet.

Zoho

Within Sheet, Zia will now recommend and construct specific charts, allowing you to drag and drop them within an existing spreadsheet. Zia will also scan your spreadsheet for data and then group it into pivot tables—connected charts that summarize your data, and adjust on the fly. Zia also allows you to query the data using plain English, though it’s not quite clear how deep this capability goes.

Zoho

Zoho taps AI in other ways, including a new data-cleaning tool that can sift through a spreadsheet and find duplicates and errors. As you enter data, sparklines provide in-cell graphs that can give you a snapshot of trends. Finally, if the AI isn’t enough, you can apply your own with drag-and-drop custom functions, as well as new data APIs. Zoho Sheet now integrates with Zoho Flow and Zapier to provide automated workflows with third-party data.

Other new Sheet features include:

• Drag-and-drop columns
• File import/export between OneDrive, Google Drive, box and Dropbox
• Three new chart types: histogram, pareto, and wordcloud
• Zoom in/out of spreadsheets
• Multirange selection support, among others

Zoho

Zoho Notebook

The first version of Zoho Notebook looks a lot like Google Keep, and that’s a good thing. Like Keep, the app’s mobile interface appears to be the primary form of interaction, though there’s a web interface as well. (Each syncs to the web automatically.) There are several types of Notebook notes: plain text, a checklist, audio, photo, sketch, file, and a “smart” note.

Zoho

It’s the last format where Zoho intelligently applies context to a note, such as a recipe. Put a link to a recipe inside a smart note and Zoho Notebook will not only list the entire recipe with illustrations, but turn the ingredient list into a checklist as. Drop a YouTube link into a smart note, and it will open the player; drop a link to a news site and it will expand the story. More types of smart cards or notes will be added over time, Zoho said.

Zoho Show

Zoho’s presentation app doesn’t appear to have received as many updates as the other apps, but Zoho’s touting a couple of new features. Its interface allows users to select from a variety of themes, and Show now allows users to run presentations on Apple TVs as well as Android devices, by turning the presenter’s mobile phone into a controller and using it to control the presentation on multiple TVs at once. Again, it’s all free for home use.

If you’ve been using Android for more than a few generations, it can be easy to forget just how far we’ve come. Google has added a ton of useful features to Android, and some of the best don’t get as much attention as they deserve. But we can fix that. Here are the five most underappreciated features hiding in the latest versions of Android. 

Notification channels

Notification overload is common when you have a bunch of noisy apps installed. But you don’t have to shut off all your notifications or uninstall any apps just to reduce the clamour. Android supports notification channels, allowing you to cut down on the noise while still getting the information you care about.

Google

All apps targeting Android Oreo or later have notification channels, which are accessible by going to Settings > Notifications, then clicking on an app name, and then clicking Notifications. Once here, you can uncheck any of the sub-categories to block specific types of notifications unique to the app. You can also tap on the name of the channel to change its priority and behavior. For example, you can prevent pop-over alerts but still have a notification appear in the shade.

Customize optimized apps

The introduction of Doze Mode in Android 6.0 changed everything. Finally, you could leave a phone sitting for a few hours and not have to worry about some background app frying your battery. However, sometimes you want trusted apps to have full background access—for example, Google Photos so it can upload your images faster. Luckily, you have access to the Doze Mode settings.

Google

The menu is a bit buried in newer version of the OS. As of Pie, it’s in Settings > Apps & notifications > Advanced > Special app access > Battery optimization. Simply find the app you want to exempt and tap to switch from “Optimize” to “Don’t optimize.” As long as the app is a good piece of code, it shouldn’t wreck your battery. Just don’t exempt too many apps from Doze.

Scheduled Do Not Disturb

So you picked a neat ringtone, great. That doesn’t mean you want it going off in the middle of the night or during a meeting. Enter Android’s Do Not Disturb feature, which includes scheduling settings. 

Google

Go to Settings > Sound > Do Not Disturb. Under “Turns on automatically,” you can choose when Do Not Disturb activates and shuts off by creating a new “Time” rule. This is part of the system-level Android settings, so it will even sync across devices when you set up a new phone.

App shortcuts on your home screen

Google added App Shortcuts (initially called Launcher Shortcuts) to Android back in Android 7.1, but it’s easy to forget they’re lurking behind your icons. A long-press can provide quick access to specific parts of the app, saving you time. However, you can do more than tap on those shortcuts. You can also add them to your home screen.

Google

To save one of the app shortcuts from an icon, simply long-press on the icon to open the shortcut lits. Then, long-press and drag on the shortcut you want to use. Drop it on your home screen, and the shortcut will be available just like a regular app icon. One tap and it opens the predetermined part of the parent app. For example, you can create a Message shortcut for the person you text the most, a shortcut to compose a new email in Gmail, and a shortcut to set a new alarm in Clock.

Pin in share menu

Android’s share menu—that interface where you can pick from a list of apps to share web pages, photos, and other types of content—has some problems, but it’s vastly more usable now that you can pin apps you use frequently. The share menu can be quite sluggish, after all. So setting the most important sharing icons at the top could save you from opening the full share panel.

Google

To pin an item in the share list, you’ll have to find it one last time. Then, long-press and select “Pin.” That sticks the item at the top of the share menu permanently. This is quite useful if you want to pin, say, Messages at the top of your sharing interface.