Your computer’s calculator app stinks. Here are 4 better alternatives.

The calculator app that comes with your computer is like an old-fashioned pocket calculator, which is a bit strange.

The word processor on your computer will not pretend to be a piece of paper and insist on letting you draw words instead of typing. The address book app on your computer won't force you to browse through virtual pages, nor will it limit the number of entries starting with a specific letter. So why did the ready-made calculator app insist on becoming a screen reproduction of electronic devices in the 1960s with the same limitations?

There are better calculator apps on the market—they look more like text documents than pocket numeric keyboards, and are easier to use.

These applications, you can call them Notepad calculator, allow you to write equations and view answers in real time, and also provide natural language parsing, unit conversion, and even built-in connections to calculate currency value. These tools allow you to type "How many cups are 16 tablespoons equal" and get the actual answer.

(If you want to know, that's 1 cup).

Numi

Numi is one of the first notepad calculators I noticed and my personal favorite. You can do simple numeric operations by using the application as a normal calculator - just enter the equation and you will see the results. But Numi also supports natural language, so when you type "6k divided by 12", you will also get the correct answer.

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According to the developers, Numi supports every distance, length, area and volume unit, percentage, time zone, currency and cryptocurrency, as well as various trigonometric functions you can think of. So, for example, the platform can calculate how many centimeters 3 inches are equal, what is 5% of 123, how much euros are equal, or what the price of a bitcoin is. There is more to dig into here, including the ability to set variables at the beginning of the document and use them later.

Numi is available for free on macOS. The full version, including unlimited notes and iCloud sync, is available for a one-time payment of $20.

Parsify

Parsify is very similar to Numi, but is also available for non-Mac users. You can write equations in the left panel and use natural language, and the results will be displayed on the right. This platform also supports tabs, which means you can open multiple documents at the same time.

According to the Parsify documentation, this application supports unit conversion, currency and cryptocurrencies, as well as time zones. Like Numi, you can use "prev" to extract the solution from the previous line and set the variable at the beginning of the document for later extraction.

Parsify is available for free on Windows, macOS and Linux, but the files are limited to the Five Elements. The full unlimited version costs $29.

Evaluator

Evaluator is different from other applications in this list. You can have it run in the background and call it by pressing the keyboard shortcut Alt Space. A small window will appear in the center of the screen, ready to let you do some numerical operations.

You can enter any math you want to solve and you will see the answer in real time. If you press the Enter key, Evaluator will copy the latest answer to your clipboard so you can paste it into any other application, which will be very handy if you are using a spreadsheet.

Evaluator doesn't offer many fancy features like the app above - it doesn't have currency support and can't handle natural language. But it makes up for that by always being ready and being the fastest digital calculator.

Evaluator is available for free on Windows and macOS.

Numpad

Numpad runs entirely in the browser, which means you don't need to install anything to start using it. It is completely free to use and even supports sharing your files with others – just click the Share

button to copy the link.

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Open the website and you will see the document immediately, you can even edit it to learn about all the features of the platform. Numpad can perform basic mathematical operations, unit and currency conversion, percentage calculation, etc. It even supports calculating dates – for example, you can type "December 25, 2022 - 80 Days" to find out when the 80 days before Christmas is. If you are interested in things like this, the app also supports keyboard shortcuts you use in text editors Vim and Emacs.

Numpad is free and available on the Internet.

Other ways to quickly perform numerical operations

In fact, you don't need a dedicated application to perform fast calculations. Here are some other ways you can get the machine to do the heavy lifting for you:

• Google search. Type and search for any equation to get answers, including unit or currency conversions, etc.
• Windows Start Menu. Open the Start menu and type any equation to see the results appear in the right panel. It's a little lagging, but it works.
• Spotlight on macOS. Type the command space key to bring up the default search tool, and type any equation to see the answer immediately.
• Voice Assistant. If you like to do math loudly, Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri can all answer basic math questions.

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