How to Pass Your Driving Test with Your iPhone

Once upon a time, if you or your teenage progeny decided that a driver’s license or learner’s permit was a desirable object to have, you would take a trip to the DMV to pickup your free copy of the official driver’s manual of your state. You would then pretend to read this book long enough to convince those around you that you were indeed ready to pass the test and proceed to take the exam however many times it took you to answer just enough questions right to earn a passing grade.

These days studying for the written driver’s test is of course a more technological exercise. All you need is an iPhone and a free afternoon and you’ll be ready to ace that test in no time. Below we’ll take a brief look at four apps that will help get you on your way to asking dad if you can borrow the car next weekend.

Drivers Ed

Drivers Ed provides you with everything you need to pass the written driver’s exam with flying colors; free.

To begin the studying process, the first thing you do is grab your state’s driver’s manual. You can download the manual as a PDF and read it right in the app. To further your studying process, you can use flash cards and focus on memorizing the most important information about the test.

Drivers Ed

Once you think you’re ready you can begin taking practice exams. You can choose the length of the practice exam to fit your free time, anywhere from 5 to 100 questions.

The practice tests randomly pull questions from a bank of over 350 questions so you’ll never have the same test twice and can be sure you’re covering a great deal of the material that will likely show up on your actual exam.

Price: Free
Developer: DriversEd.com

New Driver Central

New Driver Central is a surprisingly full-featured free application that uses a unique goal-based system to help you learn the material. As you study and learn, you earn “golden keys” by completing various sections. You must earn all ten keys to know that you’re ready for the real test.

New Driver Central

As with the previous app, you choose your state and begin reading the appropriate driver’s guide. There’s also a guide for parents included.

Once you’ve read the material, take a practice test to see if you’re ready to take a trip to your local DMV for the real thing. The app even helps you locate your nearest DMV or DOL.

Price: Free
Developer: Swerve

DMV Test Prep

DMV Test Prep contains multiple tools for helping you learn the rules of the road. The practice test bank consists of over 150 questions and the app allows you to select your test size (5 – 150 questions).

DMV Test Prep times your practice tests so you can easily monitor your progress and will assign a pass/fail grade at the end of the test.

DMV Test Prep

Apart from the practice tests, the app also contains flashcards for both rules and road signs. Over 120 signs are included so you can be confident that you can handle anything that shows up on the test. There’s also a question browser that lets you quickly view each of the 150 questions and their respective correct answers.

Overall it’s a solid app but doesn’t necessarily have much to offer for $2.99 that you won’t get with the two free apps above.

Price: $2.99
Developer: Phoxware LLC

Drive Safe

Just as with the previous apps, Drive Safe allows you to download and read the official manual of your state.

Once you’ve read the manual, simply start a new pretest to see if you’ve learned the material.

Drive Safe

Each exam is tailored to your home state and is randomly generated from a large pool of possible questions. Again, not much here that you’re not going to get in the free apps.

Price: $1.99
Developer: Senstic

Alternatives

The apps above are targeted mostly at individuals in the U.S. that are shooting for a typical driver’s license. If you’re a professional and need to study for your CDL, check out CDL Test.

For those outside the U.S., try MyLicence if you’re in the UK and Basic Theory Test if you’re from Singapore.

If reading a driver’s manual is intimidating and you’re more of a visual learner, check out Driver’s Ed: Video Edition to study for the test through a series of 24 instructional videos.

Conclusion

Preparing for your written driver’s exam has never been more easy or convenient. With practice tests in your pocket you can study for a few minutes any time you like and familiarize yourself with the types of questions you’ll be expected to answer.

As I alluded to above, though all four of these apps get the job done, I definitely recommend downloading one or both of the free apps before forking out a few bucks for the others. I was actually more impressed with the features and interface of both free apps than I was with the paid alternatives.