No paid promotions here. Our experts test each app for an honest review. Learn more
Best Journal Apps 2021: Money-Saving Review
Journaling apps can help you track your mood, explore your emotions, be more productive, and remember the moments of your life, big and small. We tested ten journaling apps to find the best value.

Introduction
We're living in historic and challenging times. Keeping a journal can document your life or manage the stressful emotions you may be feeling. A journaling app can help, so we tested ten to find the best free and paid choices.
Our favorite journaling app was the feature-rich Day One Journal, but beginning journalers might prefer the simple, quick, and effective Five Minute Journal, our runner-up. We also loved the emoji-based Daylio, the coaching templates provided in Journey, and the video diary 1SE. Here's how we chose:
Best for keeping track of your whole life
No matter you want to use your journal for, Day One can do it and do it well. This feature-rich app can help you capture and organize ideas, thoughts, and moments.
Why we chose Day One:
- Free app with $34.99/year premium upgrade for voice memo and robust notebook features
- The app has a simple and intuitive interface that makes it easy to quickly add notes, pictures, videos, and other memories from your day.
- Day One also collects metadata, so you can effortlessly track your location, how many steps taken, and other details from the time of each entry. This can assist your memory and also help you learn more about your patterns (if your mood improves if you’ve moved more in a day, for example).
- Powerful tool for productivity and self-discovery when combined with the web app. You can augment multimedia and short text notes from the app with longer more traditional journal entries on a real keyboard
- The basic version has a lot to offer, but we recommend the upgrade here
Best for: remembering every single detail.
Read Day One Journal's Full ReviewBest Return on Your Time Investment
If you want to reap the benefits of journaling, but don't have a lot of time and/or appreciate structure, Five Minute Journal is for you.
Why we chose Five Minute Journal:
- Only a $4.99 one-time purchase for a daily journal that anyone can get into
- Simple and effective. Answer prompts in the morning and evening and upload an image every day. It takes five minutes (or less) but can have powerful effects
- Designed based on principles from positive psychology, the prompts help you think about what you're grateful for and how you can make your life better.
- Just a few minutes can improve mood and productivity.
- Notifications remind you to make your entry, and the low time commitment and easy-to-use interface make it easy and rewarding to return each day
- If you're looking for lots of features or the ability to write free-form journal entries, this is not the app for you. But if you're looking for a quick and simple way to reflect on your day and boost your mood, Five Minute Journal is worth the money.
Best for: those who value efficiency and structure.
Read Five Minute Journal's Full ReviewBest Templates for Wellness and Personal Development
With this richly-featured app, you can make text and photo entries or journal in a more structured way with a large library of guided prompts.
Why we chose Journey:
- Free version with an upgrade for $3.99/month, $29.99/year, or $89.99/lifetime.
- Premium version features include expanded coaching features, email entries, and syncing with Google Drive.
- Journey is a richly-featured journaling platform that helps you record your life through notes, photos, and video entries. The app works especially well in conjunction with the web app.
- Journey has a rich library of guided prompts that help you on your wellness journey.
Best for: living your best life and recording it all.
Read Journey's Full ReviewBest Mood Tracker
Don’t want to type? With Daylio, you can track your daily moods and activities without touching the keyboard.
Why we chose Daylio:
- Free app with upgrade for $2.99/month or $23.99/year
- If you want to track your mood and activities but don't want to write, this is the app for you
- Make entries by selecting emoji that correspond with your mood and what is contributing to it. This quick (and fun) practice helps you track how you feel and why, and can lead to powerful insights
- Tracks stats to see how your moods change over time. This is a powerful tool for understanding the patterns of your moods
- Fun interface awards badges for accomplishing different things to make mood tracking rewarding
- The premium version includes a passcode lock for privacy and an expanded emoji library. While this is not a significant improvement over the free version, the extra emoji options are delightful, and the price might be worth it for a smile. Still, you definitely don't need to upgrade to get the main value from this app.
Best for: visual thinkers and emoji lovers.
Read Daylio's Full ReviewBest If You Don't Even Have Five Minutes/Best Video Diary
Why we chose 1SE:
- Free app with PRO upgrade for $49.99 per year.
- With 1SE, you record your life one second a day, creating a kind of time lapse video as you go.
- While you lose a lot of detail with this method, it provides a quick snapshot that over time reflects the texture of your life -- and it's fun.
- The app is easy to use and requires very little time for a lot of enjoyment.
- The upgrade allows you to take slightly longer videos, make more projects, and collaborate with others. For most users, this is probably not necessary.
Best for: hitting the highlight reel of your life.
Read 1 Second Everyday's Full ReviewEverything We Recommend
-
Our PickThe popular, award-winning journaling app is now available on Android! Our daily journal app will keep track of every chunk of your memory in a convenient and secure way… and it’s versatile too. It can be your calendar journal, memory journal, travel journal and it’s great for both men and women.
💡 Simple Memory Calendar
From once-in-a-lifetime events to everyday moments, Day One’s elegant interface makes journaling about your life a simple pleasure. Keeping calendar & journal of every day of your life with photos has never been easier & more enjoyable.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ “Day One makes keeping a journal delightfully easy.” — Wired
👆 Create Habits
Easily make journaling a part of your life:
✓ Reminders
✓ In-app and System Notifications
✓ Calendar, you can go through your online journal in a glance
📒 Life-Enriching Benefits
Reap the rewards of your consistency:
✓ On This Day flashbacks and Nearby entries.
✓ On-the-spot memory enhancement. A memory journal book that will always remind you of the best moments.
📳 Preserve Every Moment
There’s no limit to the memories you can save in Day One:
✓ Unlimited photo storage (Premium only)
✓ Unlimited journals (Premium only)
✓ Social media with Day One's IFTTT integration
🔒 Secure Your Memories
Day One Sync provides peace of mind:
✓ Passcode and Finger Print lock, ultra secured journal app
✓ End-to-End Encryption (coming soon to Android)
✓ Sync/Backup across all your devices (Premium only)
✍️ Focused Writing Experience
Day One’s clean, distraction-free interface makes it easy to write down what’s important:
✓ Powerful text formatting with Markdown. One of the best journals for editing & writing
✓ Cross-platform support (mobile, desktop, and web)
📒 Recall Every Detail
Metadata automatically records the finer points of life:
✓ Location journal, keep exact location of your memories
✓ Time and date
✓ Temperature and weather
🗓️ Organize Your Entries
Finding any memory is fast and easy:
✓ Powerful search through your journal diary
✓ Multiple journals (Premium only), great for both men & women
✓ Tags to find your daily journals easily
✓ Star favorite entries
✓ Browse by calendar, timeline, maps, or photos
📲 Share Your Memories
Our export options make it easy for you share your journals:
✓ Export to JSON and plain text (PDF Coming soon)
–
“If you’re looking for a fantastic journaling app, or a great app for logging and recording various events and milestones of your life, then by far and away the best pick is Day One.” —The Sweet Setup
–
Also available from Day One:
Day One Premium
✓ Unlimited Photo Storage
✓ Unlimited Journals
✓ Cloud sync to all Day One apps
✓ Unlimited encrypted cloud storage
✓ Automated Entries (IFTT integration)
✓ Prioritized customer support
✓ Android Launch special: $2.99/monthly and $24.99/yearly (US Dollars)
Premium FAQ: dayoneapp.com/premium/faq
–
Start appreciating life more & get Day One Journal.
Don’t ever say “I don’t remember” or “I can’t seem to remember that day”.
Perfectly be aware of your great memories & remember every detail and great day of your great life.
Download Day One Journal now for FREE and start a positive and lasting change in your life.
–
For technical assistance or other inquiries, email: support@dayoneapp.comCostFreeFreeIn-App Purchases$2.99 - $34.99 per item$3.99 - $34.99 per item -
Runner UpThe Five Minute Journal is the simplest thing you can to start your day happier. Based on proven positive psychology research, it focuses your attention on the good in your life and helps you set purposeful action in just 5 minutes a day! It’s the journal that WORKS.
“There are plenty of benefits to journaling, whether you take time to write out your full thoughts or just spend a few minutes jotting down the things you're most grateful for every day or lessons you've learned. Five Minute Journal makes this process easy enough to do on the go.” ―Lifehacker
★ FEATURES ★
• Beautiful, Intuitive Journaling Experience – The Five Minute Journal app has been designed to capture the physical Five Minute Journal experience. Getting around the app is a breeze and adding entries could not be easier.
• Timeline View – Quickly access previous journal entries and view short daily excerpts. Tapping on an entry leads to a full day review.
• Photos – Capture and view your magical moments with a daily photo.
• Timeline Photo View – See a photographic timeline view of all your daily photos.
• Daily Quotes & Weekly Challenges – Receive an inspiring quote daily and weekly challenges that can be shared across social media.
• Easy Journal Entry Navigation – Quickly cycle through previous journal entries by swiping right or by tapping on a specific date in calendar view.
• Reminders – Set daily notifications to ensure you never miss a day of your Five Minute Journal.
• Passcode Protection – Keep all your journal entries private with secure passcode protection.
• Backup/Export to PDF – Easily backup/export all your entries to PDF, Dropbox, and more. You have the ability to select a date range or all entries.
★ REVIEWS OF THE FIVE MINUTE JOURNAL ★
"The Five Minute Journal is one of the simplest ways I have found to consistently ensure improving my well-being and happiness. Both in terms of achievement and actual measurable, quantifiable results." ―Tim Ferriss, New York Times Bestselling Author
"I start and end my day with The Five Minute Journal. It really only takes 5 minutes a day. I love it!" ―Mimi Ikonn, co-founder Luxy Hair
"I do The Five Minute Journal every morning and it puts me in the right frame of mind to start the day." ―Pat Flynn, Smart Passive Income
The Five Minute Journal has been featured in Lifehacker, BuzzFeed, Business Insider, Fast Company, and the Four Hour Blog.Cost4.994.99In-App PurchasesNoNo -
Also GroovyJoin millions of Journey users and create a healthier, happier mind. A sanctuary for your mind and soul, Journey will help increase your positive energy, be more grateful and a calmer mind by building healthy thinkings through journaling.
We’re more than just a journal, or a diary; we’re your own motivational coach and happiness trainer. Let's embark on a fabulous journey of self-improvement today.
Top Reasons You Need Journey:
⁃ Want to find a place to keep daily reflections privately
⁃ Want to pour your feelings/brain dump
⁃ Want to keep a affirmation and gratitude list
⁃ Struggle to maintain a journaling routine
⁃ Want to get out of depression
⁃ Have anxiety and cannot calm the thoughts in your mind
⁃ Track the achievements you've made in life
Journey Benefits:
⁃ Focus and Concentration
⁃ Better Sleep
⁃ Managing Stress
⁃ Calming Anxieties and Meditation
⁃ Happiness
⁃ Healthier Mind
⁃ Better Habits
⁃ Motivation
Integrated Coaching:
Ready for a healthier mind? Take your life to a new level by using our integrated journaling prompts by Journey coach:
⁃ Inspire Me
"One good quote is worth a book". Receive daily inspirational quotes by famous people. Think and write how the idea applies to your life.
⁃ Gratitude 365
"Whether you appreciated and give thanks for will increase in your life". Write 3 things you are grateful based on a topic of the day.
⁃ Love & relationship
Reflect on your romantic relationship and identify habits that you need to build, problems that you need to fix, and the issues that you need to prevent in your relationship.
And More...
Journey Features:
⁃ Sync to cloud via Google Drive
⁃ Passcode and fingerprint protected
⁃ Available on mobile, desktop and web
⁃ Integrate Journey coach: a daily/weekly journaling prompt
⁃ Beginners step-by-step guide to journaling
⁃ View entries in timeline, calendar, map
⁃ Advanced search: Activity, mood, favorites
⁃ Compose entries via email
⁃ Link to Zapier
To learn about Journey, please visit this page:
https://journey.cloud.
Permissions Required
⁃ ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION: Determine precise location to retrieve places and weather
⁃ READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE: Import diary entry
⁃ WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE: Export and share journal entryCostFreeFreeIn-App Purchases$0.99 - $89.99 per item$3.99 - $89.99 per itemDaylio enables you to keep a private journal without having to type a single line. Try this beautifully designed & stunningly simple micro-diary app right now for FREE!
😁 WHAT IS DAYLIO
Daylio is a very versatile app, and you can turn it in whatever you need to track. Your fitness goal pal. Your mental health coach. Your food log. Your gratitude diary. Mood tracker. Exercise, meditate, eat, and be grateful. Take care of your mental, emotional, and physical health. Good self-care is a key to improved mood and reduced anxiety.
This is the time for your wellbeing, self-improvement, and self-care. Use Daylio as your daily bullet journal. We build it on three principles:
✅ Reach happiness and self-improvement by being mindful of your days.
✅ Validate your hunches. How does your new hobby influence your life?
✅ Form a new habit in an obstacle-free environment—no learning curve. Daylio is super simple to use, create your first entry in two steps.
For anxiety and stress relief, make sure to include activities that help you to cope with negativity. Everybody can use a mood boost! You can measure their impact on your mood in stats.
🤔 HOW DOES IT WORK
Pick your mood and add activities you have been doing during the day. You can also add notes and keep an old school diary. Daylio is collecting recorded moods and activities in the statistics and calendar. This format will help you to understand your habits better. Keep track of your activities and create patterns to become more productive!
You can review all entries in the statistics on charts or the calendar and share them with your friends.
To make it even better, Daylio allows you:
⭐ Make reflection a daily habit
⭐ Discover what makes you happy
⭐ Use a big database of beautiful icons for your personalized activities
⭐ Mix and match your own moods using funny emojis
⭐ Explore exciting statistics about your life on weekly, monthly or yearly charts
⭐ Deep dive into advanced statistics for every mood, activity or group
⭐ Customize color themes
⭐ Enjoy nights with dark mode
⭐ See your whole year in 'Year in Pixels'
⭐ Create daily, weekly or monthly goals and motivate yourself
⭐ Build habits and collect achievements
⭐ Share statistics with your friends
⭐ Safely back up and restore your entries via your private Google Drive
⭐ Set reminders and never forget to create a memory
⭐ Turn on PIN lock and keep your diary safe
⭐ Export PDF and CSV documents to share or print your entries
🧐 PRIVACY AND SECURITY
We are a top private journal since we do not store or collect your data.
At Daylio, we believe in transparency and honesty. Your data is stored locally on your phone. You can optionally schedule backups to your private cloud storage or take your backup file with you anywhere. Data are entirely under your control at all times.
Data stored in the app's private directories are not accessible by any other apps or processes. Your backups are transferred to the Google Drive via the secure (encrypted) channels.
We don't send your data to our servers. We don't have access to your entries. Also, any other third-party app can't read your data.CostFreeFreeIn-App Purchases$0.99 - $32.99 per item$2.99 - $23.99 per item1 Second Everyday is a video diary that makes it easy to take your day-to-day moments and create a meaningful movie of your life. It’s a home for all your notable memories, not just the Insta-worthy. Get started with 1SE today!
REBUILT FROM SCRATCH: This is an entirely new generation of the 1SE app, rebuilt from the ground up to deliver the best possible experience to our Android users!
2x winner of the “Best Use of a Mobile Camera” WEBBY Award.
Featured by Apple, BBC, TED, CNN, Fast Company and more!
"For over 6 years, I've been recording 1 second every day, so I'll never forget another day ever again. This project has had such a positive impact on my life. This lead to the development of 1 Second Everyday; which makes it easy for anyone to do this too. Being able to relive every single day has provided me with a treasured perspective on life. It holds me accountable for making each day notable. When I turn 40, I'll have a 1-hour compilation that encapsulates my 30s. If I live to see 80 years of age, I'll have a 5-hour video that summarizes 50 years of my life."
- Cesar Kuriyama, 1SE Founder
Why 1SE is awesome:
- AD FREE: 1SE is free to use without ads!
- ROTATE & FILL THE FRAME: Pesky vertical videos? Begone! Lopsided videos ruining your mash? No more! You can rotate and fill the frame to your heart's content.
- UNLIMITED MASHING: Make 1SE videos of any custom length. Monthly, seasonal, or the past 5 years. You're in control.
- 2 KINDS OF PROJECTS: Start out with two different styles of projects, ‘Freestyle’ for events or trips and ‘Timeline’ for a classic day to day video diary.
- NOTES: Take note of your day and leave a private message for yourself.
- REMINDERS: Set up friendly creative reminders, so you never forget a day!
- PRIVACY: Your seconds are never shared with anyone unless you decide to do it.
Our core app is free to use but if you want to help support our growing team while gaining access to more features try 1SE Pro!
1SE PRO FEATURES:
- Unlimited backup: Secure your life’s most precious memories and never lose them again!
- Unlimited projects: Create as many Freestyle or Timeline projects as you want.
- Multiple snippets a day: Up to two separate snippets in a day.
- Longer snippets: Capture up to 3 seconds per snippet!
- Add music: Gain access to royalty-free songs and add some music to your mashes!
- Brightness: Edit the shadows and exposure with our updated snippet selector.
- Remove 1SE Branding: Remove the date and logo at the end of your videos.
Pro & Subscription FAQ: https://help.1se.co/pro-faq
Privacy Policy: https://1se.co/privacy/
Terms of Use: https://1se.co/terms-service
We love your feedback and appreciate your reviews. Reach out to us at support@1secondeveryday.com
Follow 1SE on:
- Instagram: @1SecondEveryday
- Twitter: @1SecondEveryday
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/1SecondEverydayCostFreeFreeIn-App Purchases$5.99 - $49.99 per item$0.99 - $49.99 per item
The 411 from our Appventurer
How we tested?
After surveying the journaling apps landscape to find out which were most popular and get a range of different styles, I began the testing process. I explored each app, checking out the different features, and thought about the best way to integrate each into my life. In many cases, that meant setting notifications to make an entry one or more times a day.
Why get the app?
We traditionally think of journaling as writing long entries to record and process our lives, an activity that does not lend itself to the tiny screens and keyboards of our phones. But many journaling apps break down that model to unpack what journals are actually used for, so many of these apps ultimately only do one (or a few) things in a way that is conducive to the smartphone ecosystem.
Three of our top apps are designed to be used solely on the smartphone app — recording mood and activity through emoji, writing short entries in response to prompts, and creating video of important moments.
The other two apps on our list are best used in conjunction with a web version, but the app is an important value-add because the portability enables you to take photos, videos, and quick notes wherever you are and then expand on them later.
More About Day One Journal: Our Pick
There are so many different ways to use a journal: capturing thoughts and ideas, remembering moments, planning for the future, processing the past, building habits, tracking progress, and more. Many apps shine at one or more of these, but Day One does them all and does them beautifully. The seamless interface allows you to quickly capture moments and thoughts in any medium you want, while powerful metadata and sorting tools help you make use of what you've chosen to remember.
For a feature-rich app, Day One has a surprisingly simple layout. To make an entry, simply hit the plus sign and select the medium you want to use. Basic users can choose between text and photo, and the upgrade adds voice notes, PDF uploads, Apple pencil (or finger) "handwriting," and video support. Then you just type/click/speak away. This frictionless process means that capturing all the little details of your day can be done effortlessly. And that means you'll make more entries. The more you add to Day One, the more powerful a tool it becomes, so the ease of use really counts here.
For better and worse, our phones track a lot of our behavior. Day One puts that information to use by automatically tagging entries with metadata from the time they were posted: location, time of day, weather, number of steps taken, etc. This information would be arduous to add on your own but can be useful to have. You might want to know the location of a photo, the date of an event, or track the relationship between your mood and the number of steps you've taken in a day.
Since Day One makes it so easy to add posts, it would quickly become overwhelming without ways to sort them. Fortunately, Day One has powerful organizational tools that let your entries work for you, rather than just disappearing into the void. You can tag your entries and then filter by whatever criteria you need. With the premium upgrade, you can also create multiple journals, perhaps using one for business ideas and one for personal journaling.
While One Day will serve you well as a basic journal, it's powerful enough to be used as a primary organization system for your life. You could use it to capture all the moments of your day and then use tags or multiple journals to plan meals, make to-do lists, brainstorm new ideas, and anything else you can imagine. Because the app syncs with a web app, you can make longer entries on a normal-sized keyboard. There is also a library of templates, and you can create your own as well.
The basic version of Day One has a lot to offer, but the premium features, particularly voice notes and multiple journals, add a ton of value. This is one I'll be continuing to subscribe to, and I recommend at least trying the free trial of the upgrade.
Snags but not drags:
There's a lot to One Day -- enough that there are countless YouTube tutorials and even an 8-session course. So for maximum effectiveness, there is a learning curve.
That said, without using any of the tutorials, I found it quite easy to jump in and start making entries. So you can get quite a bit of use out of the app just by making photo and text notes throughout your day, then learn new features as they seem useful/necessary.
As with many feature-rich apps, using just what you need is a good way to begin. And Day One would be useful even if you never used anything beyond the basic journal entry functions.
More About Five Minute Journal: Runner Up
I'm a lifelong paper journaler. I handwrite long entries to process my feelings and dream about the future. This is time-consuming, and although I feel it improves my life, it's difficult to quantify how. I'm likely to continue journaling in this way, but a week with the simple framework of the Five Minute Journal definitely showed me the value of a fast and structured approach. Even after a few days, I felt happier and more focused. If more traditional diary-keeping doesn't appeal to you, check out the fast, structured, and data-driven approach of the Five Minute Diary.
While some of the apps on this list have more features than I could mention, I can tell you everything Five Minute Journal does in a single paragraph that will take you less than five minutes to read. In the morning, the app gives you three prompts: three things I'm grateful for, three things to make the day great, and a daily affirmation ("I am ..."). At the end of the day, you fill in two more prompts: three amazing things that happened today and how could I have made the day even better. At some point during the day, you add an image. Aside from an inspirational quote or weekly challenge when you open the app, that's it.
But the power of the app lies in its simplicity. You don't have to think too much about how to use it or spend too much time on it. Resistance to journaling apps develops when you don't know what to do with them, and this one is completely clear.
Using principles from positive psychology, the Five Minute Journal works by bringing your focus to goodness and gratitude in the morning and reflection in the evening. This simple routine increases happiness by calling your attention to the good things in your life and helps you improve by moments of evening reflection.
While most of the other apps I tested were free with a subscription upgrade, the Five Minute Journal is a one-time purchase of $4.99. This app is not for everyone. If you already keep a journal or want to write at more length, have more flexibility, or record more information, this is not for you. But if you're curious about journaling and want a structured approach that doesn't take much time, the cost is well worth it.
More About Journey: Also Groovy
Like Day One, Journey is a full-featured journaling app that you can customize to your needs. The name is apt — you can choose your own journaling journey. If you want to make free-form entries, you can add them easily, whether you want to make quick notes on your phone or more extensive entries via the web app or tablet. You can add photos as well. In the evening, the Journey automatically takes you through a series of reflection questions about your day, although you can turn this off if you don’t like it.
What really sets Journey apart is its Coach feature, an extensive library of guided prompts to expand your journaling practice. These are generally a series of themed prompts that you do for about a week. To ring in the new year, Journey offered some guides to start the year off on the right foot, including starting a positive self-care routine and tips for letting go. There are series on the foundations of journaling, overcoming anxiety, self-discover, empowerment, and more.
You can keep track of your progress through these coaching guides via the Today tab, which also charts your mood over the course of the week and notes what activities make you feel happy. Once you’ve been using the app for awhile, you’ll also see a “throwback entry” from past days, a nice touch that helps you remember the past.
The premium upgrade gives you access to more of these guides, and you can browse them before deciding to upgrade. If you like the structure of guided journaling, but also appreciate trying new things, Journey’s upgrade could be worth it for you. If you have wellness goals for this year, Journey could help you on your way to many of them.
The premium upgrade also allows you to make entries via email, which could be handy if you don’t have access to your device. It also lets you back up your journal to Microsoft Word or convert it to a PDF. And it includes additional color themes, which allow for more customization -- not worth the price on their own, but a nice bonus if you want the other premium features.
More About Daylio: Also Groovy
The biggest stumbling block to successfully journaling on a smartphone is the small keyboard. Despite all the texts and tweets most of us make from our phones, writing long blocks of text is still difficult (and probably bad for our thumb joints). Moreover, not everyone wants to write long journal entries. If you’d rather take a non-text-based snapshot of your daily moods and activities, no keyboard of any size required, Daylio is the app for you. As often as you want throughout the day, you can make an entry in Daylio by selecting the emoji that represents your mood (rad, good, meh, bad) and the emoji that represents what activities you’ve been doing. These are sorted into categories: social, hobbies, sleep, food, health, better me, and chores. And you can customize the options according to what applies to your life.
At first, I did this just at the end of the day, and it was useful to see how my mood did relate to my activities. But since the app was so quick (and fun!) to use, I wanted to get a more granular look at my day, especially since I know my mood tends to be better in the evening than at some other times of the day. So I set the app to notify me five times during the day to make an entry. Let me tell you, I do not have a great track record with responding to notifications, especially if they are numerous. But I really enjoyed visiting Daylio, with its cute little faces, and I really got a good sense of how my mood changes throughout the day.
The app helps you understand this data, too, with a mood chart that shows you the rise and fall of your moods over the course of however long you want to see. You can also see a count of how many times you experienced each mood, how often you did each activity, and what your average daily mood was. Daylio also awards badges for continued use.
There is a premium upgrade available for $2.99/month or $23.99/year. The upgrade gives you access to a larger library of emoji for mood and activities. I don’t think that really adds enough functionality to the app to make it worth paying for, and I will probably cancel my premium subscription after the free trial. However, the extra emoji and additional themes and styles really made me smile.
More About 1 Second Everyday: Also Groovy
1SE is a video diary, but you don’t record yourself talking about your day or take video of important moments in all their (typically more than one second) glory. With 1SE, you record exactly one second of every day.
I will be honest: I was skeptical. It seemed like it would be impossible to make anything meaningful in that amount of time. And in a single day, it is. But even over the course of a week of testing, I was moved and delighted by the series of images of my week, and I think I would be even more so with a longer string of videos.
Cesar Kuriyama, the app’s creator, began taking daily video snippets while taking a year off work, and found it effective at efficiently capturing his experience. Watching his TED talk about the experience of creating the video — a year in six minutes — gives you a good sense of the power of this practice. His images are a bit more exciting than mine, which were almost exclusively from dog walks, but I did feel my week of seconds captured my pandemic life.
You can record directly in the app, or import a video from your library (Apple Live photos work well here because they record a second automatically). You can work from a longer video and select the second that you want, and can add filters and other editing features. I found this a little tricky at first, especially since I kept trying to narrate and could never say anything short enough. But as I embraced the idea of just a single image, it became easier.
1SE has a premium upgrade that allows you to collaborate with others, record 1.5 second videos, and make more projects beyond your diary. For example, I added a project called “Dogs” with video clips of my dogs. Never mind that my diary project also consisted entirely of dog clips. (As does my phone library, for that matter.) For me, these features are not worth the upgrade price, but someone who likes to play around more with video or wants to collaborate on a project may find the price well worth it.
Other Apps Considered
A simple journaling app that consists of notebooks that you make unprompted entries in, Penzu is a good app but has fewer features than most of the other apps we tested. The $4.99/month upgrade has no free trial and only offers more notebooks. It also crashed multiple times while I was testing.
However, if you're looking for a straightforward way of journaling in multiple notebooks, it's worth checking out the free version. The notebooks are presented like composition books with attractive covers, in a simple and appealing interface. You can add a passcode lock for added security.
This journaling app sorts entries into multiple categories, which seems useful but I found really counterintuitive. It was awkward to use and a struggle to return to each day. Folders include business, entertainment, friends, love, and more, with tags for dreams, ideas, and more. For me, these were not natural journal categories. Many other apps I tested include prompts that help the process but also serve as tutorials that get you going with the app. That might have been helpful here, or perhaps this one just isn't for me. For a very reasonable $7.99/year, Diaro adds PDF exports and Cloud sync. This could be worth checking out as a cheaper alternative to Day One.
Daybook is a great journaling app with lots of features. It has lots of prompt templates and allows you to journal both freely and with assistance. It's not on our list because it's quite similar to Journey, and we preferred that app.
A $29.99 per year premium upgrade adds custom templates, Alexa/Google Assistant support, printing, and more. Like Daybook, they have a lot of fun and useful guided journaling options, so this is another great one to check out.
Grid Diary uses a highly structured journal format, although you can change what the prompts are from a large library. The grid in the title refers to the journal format, a grid of questions that help you reflect on your day. These can generally be answered in a few words and provide a great way to check in on how things are going and how they might go better. This works really well as a smartphone app, as you don't need to answer at length. Not for you if you're looking for flexibility, but a great structured option.
Elisi is a good looking app with too many features that don't integrate that well with each other. Elisi has lists, a planner, a habit tracker, and more, so if you want all this in one place, it's a good one to check out. But I found it confusing to use, and often ended up putting the same information in multiple places and not tracking items.
Never miss out on savings
Get latest deals & coupons to your inbox
Caroline Rothnie
WriterHard as I try to keep a minimalist phone, I can't stop downloading more apps. In addition to my can't-live-without apps for organization, music and podcasts, fitness, and meditation, I'm constantly trying out new ones. So I love apps, but it's a complicated relationship -- some of my favorites are for keeping me off my phone/internet.
In second grade, I attempted to do a book report on a story I had written myself, so you could say I've always thought of myself as a writer. These days, I write a wide variety of web content with a focus on mental health and productivity. I also write personal essays. I live in Kansas with my husband and two dogs.
Mohammed
well done ... thanks