Do you want to try something new to improve your mood? Journaling has been proven to have positive benefits for mental health.
Why? Because it’s important to let things out instead of holding things in.
Most of the following apps for iOS and Android offer free features to help improve mental wellness and in-app purchases for a more enriching experience.
Best Journal Apps for Therapy
The following are the best journal apps for therapy and mental wellness.
1. The 5 Minute Journal App
The 5 Minute Journal app is a self-care tool that leverages the principles of positive psychology to enhance your happiness in just 5 minutes a day. Available on both Apple and Google Play stores, this app offers a guided gratitude journaling format that is designed to make journaling a breeze.
The app is built around the idea that cultivating gratitude can positively impact all areas of your life, from personal growth and emotional intelligence to meaningful relationships and enhanced productivity. It encourages users to jot down the things they’re most grateful for each day or lessons they’ve learned, making it easy to practice gratitude on the go.
The 5 Minute Journal app features an intuitive journaling experience with a guided flow for both morning and evening entries. It also includes daily notifications to keep up with a rewarding journaling habit, daily inspiring quotes and weekly challenges, and secure passcode or Touch ID protection to keep your journal entries private.
The app also offers a premium subscription with additional features, such as the ability to attach photos or videos to your daily prompts, create custom questions tailored to your mood and goals, and track your emotions to gain insights into how they influence your days. You can also back up your entries and export your memories to PDF, HTML, Dropbox, and more.
With a 4.8-star rating on both platforms and positive user reviews, the 5 Minute Journal app is a popular choice for those seeking a simple and effective tool for daily self-reflection and mental wellness.
2. Alan Mind Daily Journal App
The Alan Mind Daily Journal app, also known as “Jour” is a digital therapy tool that aims to provide self-care for your mental health. Available on both Apple and Google Play stores, this app is designed to help you build a healthier and more mindful lifestyle.
Alan Mind is more than just a journaling app; it’s a personal therapist that guides you through the practice of journaling and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Whether you want to live more mindfully, are going through a stressful period, want to combat specific anxieties, or just want to feel more focused and in control, Alan Mind is there to assist.
The app offers interactive guides tailored to improve confidence, gratitude, and focus or address anxiety, loneliness, and goal-setting. It makes the benefits of a journaling practice easy and accessible. All entries are automatically encrypted, and users can set their own encryption key, ensuring maximum security. The developers promise not to sell user data or host ads within the app.
Alan Mind offers daily questions tailored to you, your day, and your mood. It also provides step-by-step approaches to building a mindful lifestyle, finding peace of mind before bed, practicing focus and gratitude in the morning, learning positive mental habits to address stress, anxiety, and sadness, and much more.
The app has a 4.9-star rating on the Apple Store and a 3.9-star rating on Google Play. The app offers a free version, but a premium subscription is available for $59.99 per year, which provides access to additional features and content.
3. CBT Thought Diary App
The Clarity – CBT Thought Diary app is a comprehensive mental health tool that combines the principles of CBT with mood tracking to help manage stress, anxiety, and negative thoughts. Available on both Apple and Google Play stores, this app is designed to help you develop healthier thought patterns, build resilience, and foster personal growth.
Clarity makes it easy to check in with yourself through mood, emotion, and activity tracking, generating personalized insights to help you understand your mood and behavior patterns. It empowers you to make informed decisions and implement positive changes in your life, ultimately leading to a healthier, happier mind.
The app’s digital CBT thought record helps you identify and challenge unhelpful thought patterns (AKA cognitive distortions) to create lasting, positive changes in your mental health. It offers a variety of psychoeducational programs tailored to your needs, helping you to reframe negative thoughts, overcome impostor syndrome, face your fears, and much more.
Clarity also features an AI-powered chatbot that serves as your personal interactive mental health assistant, available 24/7. It engages you in supportive dialogues, helping you challenge negative thoughts and guiding you toward healthier thought patterns. Additionally, the app offers audio mindfulness meditations and breathwork to help you find moments of peace and relaxation amidst the stress of daily living.
The app has a 4.8-star rating on the Apple Store and a 4.4-star rating on Google Play. The app offers a free version, but a Pro Mode is available for $69.99 per year, providing access to additional guided journals, assessments, programs, crash courses, insights, custom emotions & activities, additional notifications, export, and data sync features.
4. DailyBean Mood Tracking & Journal App
The DailyBean app is a simple and intuitive journaling tool designed for those who want to record their daily lives. Available on both Apple and Google Play stores, this app allows you to record your day with just a few taps, making journaling a breeze.
DailyBean offers a monthly calendar that lets you see your mood flow. You can take a look at how you feel during a month with five mood beans. If you click on the bean, you can immediately check the record you left that day. You can choose your mood for the day and summarize the day with colorful icons. You can also add a picture and a line of notes.
The app provides category blocks that allow you to select only the categories you want. Blocks can be added or deleted whenever you want, and categories will be updated continuously. DailyBean also offers statistics that analyze mood and activity on a weekly/monthly basis. You can look at your mood flow through statistics and see what activities affect your mood. You can also check the number of icon records weekly and monthly.
The app has a 4.8-star rating on the Apple Store and a 4.5-star rating on Google Play.
5. Daylio App
The Daylio Journal – Daily Diary app is a versatile and user-friendly tool that allows you to keep a private journal without typing a single line. Available on both Apple and Google Play stores, this app is designed to help you track your moods, activities, and overall well-being.
Daylio is more than just a journaling app; it can be your fitness goal pal, mental health coach, gratitude diary, and mood tracker. It encourages you to care for your mental, emotional, and physical health through self-care and self-improvement.
The app is built on three principles: reaching happiness and self-improvement by being mindful of your days, validating your hunches, and forming new habits in an obstacle-free environment. It’s super simple to use – you can create your first entry in just two steps.
With Daylio, you can pick your mood and add activities you’ve been doing during the day. You can also add notes and keep an old-school diary. Daylio collects recorded moods and activities in the statistics and calendar, helping you understand your habits better and become more productive.
Daylio offers a range of features, including reflection as a daily habit, discovering what makes you happy, using a big database of beautiful icons for your personalized activities, exploring exciting statistics about your life on weekly, monthly, or yearly charts, and much more.
The app has a 4.8-star rating on the Apple Store and a 4.7-star rating on Google Play.
6. Day One Journal App
The Day One Journal: Private Diary app is a comprehensive journaling tool that has reinvented how we journal. Available on both Apple and Google Play stores, this app allows you to record your life as you live it, securely saving audio, video, photos, notes, and more wherever you are, whenever you want.
Day One is the original digital journal app, with a decade of updates and feature additions, making it the world’s most private, trusted, and easiest-to-use journaling app. It has a beautiful, award-winning design and offers unlimited text entries and powerful, rich text formatting with markdown. You can have different journals for every aspect of your life, and your entries are kept secure with automatic backups, end-to-end encryption, and passcode, TouchID, or FaceID.
The app helps you form a habit and stay consistent with streaks, calendar views, programmable reminders, and unique daily journal prompts. It also offers more than words, with unlimited photos and videos, auto-importer for your Instagram posts, handwritten entries or drawings, and voice recording and transcription.
Day One Journal is cross-platform, available on iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac, and allows you to text or email entries straight to your journal. It also has a feature called “On This Day” that allows you to revisit past memories. Tags, favorites, and search filters make it easy to find what you’re looking for, and the map view quickly shows all the places you’ve journaled from.
The app has a 4.8-star rating on the Apple Store and a 4.3-star rating on Google Play.
7. Fabulous Daily Habit Tracker App
The Fabulous: Daily Habit Tracker app is a comprehensive self-care tool designed to help you build healthy habits and improve your life one step at a time. Available on both Apple and Google Play stores, this app is more than just a habit tracker; it’s a self-improvement, coaching, and mental health platform.
Fabulous aims to structure your life, create healthy habits, focus on deep work, and foster a sense of community. It encourages you to be grateful, provides daily coaching series, allows you to write your to-do list, journal your thoughts, do short workouts and breathing exercises, listen to daily affirmations and meditation sessions, and keep a gratitude journal.
The app offers a range of features, including coaching series grouped by topics like anxiety, self-love, productivity, or depression, unlimited habits for your morning and evening routines, new Premium Journeys for better mental health, self-care, and fitness, and personal one-on-one coaching for better motivation and focus.
The app has a 4.6-star rating on the Apple Store and 4.3 on Google Play. The premium plan costs $39.99 and offers features like restoring backup for premium users, refined habits, and joyful living.
8. Gratitude Journal App
The Gratitude Journal, Affirmation app is a comprehensive self-care tool designed to help you focus on your mental health and cultivate a sense of gratitude in your daily life. Available on both Apple and Google Play stores, this app provides you with all the tools and reminders you need to gain motivation and develop a healthy self-love routine.
Gratitude Journal, Affirmation offers a range of features, including a gratitude journal, affirmations, vision board, and daily motivation content. The gratitude journal helps you reflect on all the little blessings in your life, shifting your perspective to focus on what is good. The app sends you reminders with prompts to help you build the habit of journaling, and you can add photos to your journal entries, build a gratitude journal streak, and access hundreds of journal prompts.
The app also provides hundreds of affirmations that you can listen to or read, as per your need. You can write your own affirmations, add music, and record your voice to them. The vision board feature helps you visualize your dreams and goals through photos, quotes, and affirmations.
The app also offers a feature called “Daily Zen” where you will find gratitude quotes, motivation quotes, thought switch ideas, thank you cards, affirmations, blog articles, and real-life stories of people who changed their mindset with gratitude.
The app has a 4.9-star rating on the Apple Store. The premium plan costs $29.99 and offers features like restoring backup for premium users, refined habits, and joyful living.
9. Me+ Daily Routine Planner App
Me+ Daily Routine Planner is a comprehensive self-care and habit-tracking app designed to help users adopt and maintain good habits. Available on both the Apple Store and Google Play Store, Me+ is designed to help users integrate good habits into their lifestyle, leading to a more wholesome and fulfilling life.
The app provides a daily routine planner and self-care schedule to help users establish and maintain healthy habits. Users can gain a new outlook, confidence, and strength by repeating good actions daily and following the planner and self-care schedule. Obstacles that seemed unsurpassable will soon be overcome and forgotten.
Me+ offers a variety of features, including a daily routine planner, habit tracker, mood, and progress tracker. Users can create their own daily routines, track their self-care plan, mood, and progress daily, and set friendly reminders for their to-do list. The app also provides comprehensive, evidence-based self-care information.
Potential benefits of using Me+ include boosting energy, improving mood, slowing aging, and increasing focus. The app allows users to build their own self-care schedule with the icons and colors they choose and record their daily goals, habits, moods, and more to celebrate their success and growth.
The app has a 4.6-star rating on the Google Play Store and a 4.8-star rating on the Apple Store, with users praising its effectiveness in helping them establish and maintain healthy habits. The premium subscription is available at $39.99/year and $9.99/month to provide unlimited access to the VIP features.
10. MindDoc Companion App
The MindDoc: Your Companion app is a leading monitoring and self-management tool for promoting emotional well-being and coping with mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, and eating disorders. Available on both Apple and Google Play stores, this app has been developed by clinical psychologists in close collaboration with leading researchers.
MindDoc allows you to log your mental health and mood in real time, providing insights and summaries on your symptoms, behaviors, and general emotional well-being to help you recognize patterns and find the best resources for you. The app also features a library of courses and exercises to assist you in your emotional well-being journey.
MindDoc can be used by itself for prevention or self-help or as a part of treatment with a mental health practitioner. The questions, insights, courses, and exercises have been developed by clinical psychologists and are aligned with international treatment guidelines for mental disorders. As an option, Apple Health data can be linked to the app to detect patterns and relationships between your emotional well-being and mood.
The app has a 4.7-star rating on the Apple Store and 4.2 on Google Play. Users have praised its effectiveness in helping them understand and manage their mental health.
11. Mind Journal App
The Mind Journal: Diary, Mood Tracker app is a self-discovery journaling tool designed to provide immediate relief from anxiety and depression. Available on the Google Play Store, this app uses CBT techniques to help users understand their emotions and life goals.
Mind Journal is not just a diary; it’s a comprehensive mental health tool offering various features. It includes a mood tracker diary that allows users to keep track of their mood dynamics, a self-care diary for learning new ways of thinking and overcoming depression, and mindfulness journaling to help users unwind at the end of the day.
The app also provides guided reflection prompts to improve mindfulness and gratitude and offers various psychotherapy methods for fast anxiety relief. Users can also listen to meditations and affirmations for good sleep.
One of the unique features of Mind Journal is its ability to identify the prerequisites for depression, such as the time of day that causes a bad mood, particular activities responsible for negative thoughts, and ineffective behavior.
The app has a rating of 4.7 out of 5 on the Google Play Store, indicating its effectiveness and user satisfaction. Users have praised the app for its reminders, which help them set a routine and focus on gratitude, and its ability to provide a comprehensive picture of mental health.
In summary, the Mind Journal: Diary, Mood Tracker app is a powerful tool for mental wellness, offering a variety of features to help users understand and improve their mental health. Whether you’re looking to track your mood, develop a self-care routine, or simply reflect on your day, Mind Journal is a great tool to consider.
12. Moodflow Mood Tracker App
The Moodflow: Symptom & Mood Tracker, Diary app is a comprehensive tool designed to help you track your emotions, moods, and general well-being. Available on the Apple Store and Google Play Store, Moodflow is your companion in understanding your emotional health and improving your mental wellness.
Moodflow is a FREE app that captures your emotions, moods, thoughts, and general well-being. It provides a daily survey that you can fill out to gain insight into what influences your mood over time. The app allows you to rate your day, pick the emotions you experienced, write a note about anything relevant from the day, and pick the activities you were involved in.
The app offers many features, including mood tracking, a year in pixels, a diary, habit tracking, a gratitude journal, routines, a photo album, and sleep tracking. It also provides comprehensive, evidence-based self-care information. Moodflow encourages you to develop better habits by including 28-day challenges. These challenges have different difficulty levels and will ensure you create simple but powerful habits.
Moodflow has a 4.8-star rating on the Apple Store, with users praising its effectiveness in helping them understand and manage their moods. The premium subscription, Moodflow Plus, is available at $3.49/month, $14.99/year, or $9.99 for a lifetime subscription, providing unlimited access to the VIP features.
13. Moodnotes Mood Tracker App
Moodnotes – Mood Tracker is a user-friendly mood-tracking and journaling app designed to help you improve your thinking habits and take control of your mood. Available on the Apple Store, this app empowers you to track your mood over time, avoid common thinking traps, and develop perspectives associated with increased happiness and well-being.
Created by design experts and clinical psychologists, Moodnotes is grounded in the scientifically supported content of CBT and positive psychology. The app includes an Apple Watch app and iCloud sync/backup, making it easy to use across multiple devices.
Key features of Moodnotes include tracking your mood and identifying what triggers it, scanning your face automatically using your device’s camera, keeping your memories with photos or pictures, reading self-awareness articles written by mental health experts, and developing healthier thinking habits. The app also helps you learn about “traps” in your thinking and how to avoid them, reduce anxiety, enhance your sense of well-being, and bring new, helpful perspectives to situations.
The app has a 4.7-star rating on the Apple Store with over 10.7K ratings. Users have praised its effectiveness in helping them understand and manage their moods. The premium version allows for unlimited daily entries, personal statistics, and mood insights, notes to enrich mood entries, access to the “Notable insights” section for learning more about your mood, and more full-text articles for self-understanding.
14. Reflectly AI Journaling App
The Reflectly – Journal & AI Diary app is a personal journaling companion that uses artificial intelligence to help you structure and reflect upon your daily thoughts and problems. Available on the Apple and Google Play Stores, Reflectly is designed to help you deal with negative thoughts, increase positivity, and improve your overall well-being.
Reflectly uses positive psychology, mindfulness, and cognitive behavioral therapy to provide you with personalized motivation and prompts. The app offers a range of features, including mood tracking, personalized questions based on your diary entries, and daily motivation quotes and challenges. It also provides you with advanced statistics, actionable insights, and much more.
The app is designed to help you understand your thoughts and moods better, providing you with insights and patterns based on your entries. It’s like having a personal, AI-powered journal that’s there for you whenever you need it. You can write down how you feel each day, and Reflectly will provide you with personalized motivation and prompts to help you reflect deeper.
Reflectly has a 4.6-star rating on the Apple Store and 4.3 on Google Play. The premium version allows for unlimited daily entries, personal statistics and mood insights, notes to enrich mood entries, access to the “Notable insights” section for learning more about your mood, and more full-text articles for self-understanding.
15. stoic
The stoic Journal & Diary app is a mental health companion that uses the principles of Stoicism to help users understand their emotions and provides insights on how to lead a happier, more productive life. Available on both the Apple Store and Google Play Store, the app is designed to help users prepare for their day in the morning and reflect on their day in the evening.
Stoic provides a range of features, including mood tracking, guided journals with thought-provoking prompts, habit tracking, and mental health exercises. The app also offers tools such as meditation sessions, breathing exercises, and a “Stoic Shield” feature that blocks distracting apps to help users focus. Additionally, it includes a sleep journal to help users overcome insomnia and a collection of inspiring quotes and affirmations.
The app is designed to help users become less emotionally reactive, kinder, and better at resolving conflicts. It also provides a space for users to journal with voice notes and pictures/videos of their day. Users can choose from topics in productivity, happiness, gratitude, stress & anxiety, relationships, therapy, self-discovery, and much more.
The app has a 4.8-star rating on the Apple Store and a 4.0-star rating on the Google Play Store, with users praising its effectiveness in helping them understand and manage their moods. The premium version allows for unlimited access to premium features on a subscription basis.
16. Tangerine
The Tangerine: Self-care & Goals app is a comprehensive tool designed to help you form habits, track your mood, and journal your thoughts. Available on the Apple Store, Tangerine is your guide to daily self-care, helping you improve your overall well-being and happiness.
Tangerine allows you to create and track habits while reminding you to do them and celebrating your achievements. It also features mood tracking, a technique in positive psychology that includes tracking, recording, and analyzing a person’s mood. This helps you reflect on your days and realize what activities in your life make you happy or sad.
In addition to tracking your daily mood, Tangerine also offers a journaling feature. You can write down your thoughts as they pop up or leverage one of the app’s guided journaling templates. Journaling has become a hallmark of the self-care movement, helping you prioritize and clarify thinking, and giving you a boost in mindfulness, memory, and communication skills.
Tangerine also provides insights and stats on your routine and how much you’ve evolved with elegant and comprehensive reports. It integrates with the Health app to automatically complete health-related habits.
The app has a 4.7-star rating on the Apple Store. The premium version allows for unlimited habits, unlimited reminders per habits, insights & stats, adding photos to your notes & journal, and access to all guided journaling templates. The premium subscription is available at $2.49/month, billed yearly as one payment of $29.99, or $4.99/month.
17. Vos Journaling App
The VOS Mental Health Journal app is a comprehensive mental wellness companion that goes beyond the traditional journaling experience. Available on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, this app is designed to help users reduce stress and anxiety and improve their overall mental health.
VOS is more than just a journaling app; it’s a holistic platform designed by psychologists to help users build a positive self-image and mental strength. Upon starting their journey, users are asked about the aspects of their lives they’d like to improve. Based on the user’s input, VOS creates a personalized well-being plan.
The app offers a variety of activities, including self-help tips, breathing exercises, meditation, inspiring quotes, and affirmations. It even provides a 24/7 online therapy chat with advisors who can connect users to a psychologist anytime they need. The app also features an AI-powered Smart Journal and mood tracker, which helps users understand their emotions and track their mental health over time.
One of the unique features of VOS is its integration with Google Fit, allowing users to track how their physical activity impacts their mental health, stress, or sleep. The app also provides personalized insights, showing users how their mood evolves over time and what factors affect their mental state.
Mental health professionals recommend VOS, which is available in multiple languages. It has a strong user base with over 3 million happy users worldwide, and it’s rated 4.8 out of 5 on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
In summary, the VOS Mental Health Journal app is a comprehensive tool for mental wellness, offering a variety of features to help users understand and improve their mental health. Whether you’re looking to reduce stress, improve sleep, or simply understand your emotions better, VOS is a great tool to consider.
18. Zinnia
The Zinnia Journal & Planner app is a comprehensive digital journaling and planning tool designed to help you cultivate mindfulness and self-care in your daily life. On the Apple Store, Zinnia offers a creative and fun way to keep a digital journal and planner, adding new content every month.
Zinnia encourages you to get into the healthy habit of recording your day, goals, priorities, and special moments. With daily reminders, the app helps you stay consistent and on the path toward a more mindful and organized self. It offers a variety of fun but practical journaling templates that provide a colorful structure, such as habit trackers, to-do lists, weekly logs, and more.
The app also syncs across iOS devices (iPhone and iPad) for an unparalleled workflow. Zinnia is the most expressive way to document what matters most to you. You can keep a diary, create a collage or scrapbook, schedule self-care moments, and record meaningful day-to-day interactions with style and ease. The app also includes a vast library of washi tape, brushes, stickers, and other decorative elements to personalize your spreads.
Zinnia has a 4.6-star rating on the Apple Store, with users praising its effectiveness in helping them understand and manage their moods. The premium version allows unlimited pages and journals, export capability, and access to Zinnia Studio content. The premium subscription is available at $3.99/week for the weekly plan, $9.99/month for the monthly plan, and $39.99/year for the yearly plan.
Beyond Journaling
If you feel you need something more than a journaling app, you may also want to consider online therapy.
The following apps are two leading platforms for online therapy, providing professional help from licensed therapists. Both apps offer a convenient way to receive personal and professional help when needed.
BetterHelp Therapy App
BetterHelp, available on Apple and Google Play Stores, boasts over 30,000 licensed, accredited, and highly experienced therapists covering various areas – from depression and anxiety to family and couples therapy. When you sign up, the app matches you with an available therapist based on your needs, preferences, and location.
The app offers unlimited private one-on-one communication with your therapist. You can message your therapist as often as possible, schedule live sessions, or use the secure messenger.
In addition to individual therapy, BetterHelp also provides access to constructive, educational group webinars. The app has a strong user base with over 1 million downloads and is rated 4.8 out of 5 on the Apple App Store and 4.6 out of 5 on the Google Play Store.
Talkspace Therapy and Support App
Talkspace, also available on Apple and Google Play Stores, is the most convenient and affordable way to improve mental health. Get matched with a licensed therapist in your state from the comfort of your device and message via text, audio, and video.
The Talkspace provider network has thousands of licensed therapists across the 50 U.S. states who have been vetted and accredited according to NCQA standards. They have experience treating the most common mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, substance use, stress, relationships, PTSD, and more. T
Millions of people have already used the app, and it is rated 4.8 out of 5 on the Apple App Store and 4.4 on Google Play.
Conclusion
Be sure to try out a few apps until you find the perfect fit for your needs. Then set aside time each day to let your thoughts flow out of your head and free your mind.
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