Mood tracker apps make it easy for you to monitor your mood as well as track habits, food intake, sleep patterns and other activities.
By tracking your mood for an extended period of time you can discover triggers that negatively impact your mood (study) and watch out for mental health issues, such as depression or bipolar disorder.
Want to start tracking your mood in a simple yet effective way and reap the benefits? Check out some of the best mood tracker apps in this post and find one that works for you.
The Benefits of Mood Tracking
Apps to track your mood help you to get in touch with your feelings, analyze negative thought patterns, and discover causes and triggers for mood swings, anxiety, and depression. By getting to the root of your bad moods you can also develop strategies to lift yourself up and positively affect your mental health.
- Identify the triggers for your negative behavior and low mood⁺
- Develop strategies for managing your mood and behavior⁺
- Get in touch with your feelings and back in control⁺
- Monitor if medication or therapy is working as planned
Mood Tracking empowers you to understand your triggers and early warning signs as well as develop strategies to counteract negative moods. An improved understanding of your own health is the key to lasting wellness. The purpose of a mood tracker app is not to keep a record of illness, but to plan for wellbeing.
Features to look out for
There are many mood tracker apps out there and not all are created equal. While some use a cognitive behavioral therapy approach, others serve as a mood and habit tracker and some simply allow you to track your mood and activities. When choosing the best mood tracker app for your purposes here are a few key features to look out for:
- Reminders: A mood tracker app is meant to make your life easier by allowing you to effortlessly log your mood each day. The best apps for mood tracking have a notification feature so you are prompted each day at a specific time to enter your mood.
- Activity Tracker: Mood tracking is helpful but only gets you this far, if you are not aware of the context they appeared in. By tracking your activities you can better identify triggers and wellness strategies.
- Customization Options: Moods are very personal and the app experience feels more approachable if you can personalize it. The best mood tracker apps will allow you to customize colors, emojis, emotion and activity tags, notifications and more.
- Personal Notes: Even if you don’t journal daily having an option to note important events and other things together with logging your mood can be very helpful.
- Additional Support: Especially bpd mood tracker apps and depression mood tracker apps should include additional information regarding your mental health, e.g. educational websites and links to mental health professionals near you.
- Community Support: If you don’t like to share about your mental state with friends and family anonymous community support is an important feature to make friends and ask for advice.
Best Mood Tracker Apps
The following list is a collection of the best mood tracker apps that are currently available including mood and habit tracker apps, the best free mood tracker apps, the best mood tracker apps for android, bipolar disorder mood tracker apps, and more.
Daylio: Best Overall Mood Tracker App
The Daylio Mood Tracker is one of the easiest ways to track your mood. The award-winning mood tracker app offers you a pick-and-choose option of different emojis to match your mood of the day. In a second step you can add activities, such as working, dating, sleeping or working out and enter short journal entries. The design of the app is colorful which makes it fun to keep up with the tracking process. With the “Calendar and Statistics”-Feature you can view your best days, a chart displaying your average Monthly mood and other statistics. If you want to keep your moods private, you can set a PIN to lock the app.
Daylio is a great tool for visual people who prefer to choose an image to express their mood rather than finding a word to describe it.
- Android, Rating: ø 4.6 with 308.412 ratings (26.11.20)
- iOS, Rating: ø 4.8 with 28.800 ratings (26.11.20)
- Free available: Yes (additional premium features available at $2.99/monthly, or $23.99/annually)
Multi-Device-Ready- Special Features: available in different languages, option to track moods via messages
- Recommended for: Everyone
Moodflow: Best Free Mood Tracker App
Moodflow is a free and simple mood tracker app that uses a year-in-pixels approach to visualize moods and emotional patterns in your life. You can enter your mood by choosing one of five emojis with the option to use tags (e.g. cheerful, bored, calm or sad) to describe your emotions. After entering your mood you can make a note for the day and tag some of your daily activities, such as family, shopping or me-time as well as tracking your sleep time and quality. Other nice features include the option to upload photos from your smartphone that can be stored in the Moodflow Cloud with the premium version and a gratitude journal. The premium version also offers post geotagging, setting daily routines, and adding weather data.
Compared to other apps with free versions Moodflow doesn’t have any ads and the free version already offers all necessary features to successfully track your mood and analyse them by looking at the statistics. Moodflow is recommended for people who like a clean and user-friendly design and who value the option to fully customize the app.
- Android, Rating: ø 4.4 with 1591 ratings (26.11.2020)
- iOS, Rating: ø 4.9 with 138 ratings (26.11.2020)
- Free Version: Yes (additional premium features available at $3.49/monthly)
Multi-Device-Ready- Special Features: available in different languages
- Recommended for: Everyone
iMoodJournal: Best for In-Depth Tracking
The iMoodJournal has been made “The Best Bipolar Disorder iPhone and Android Apps of the Year” by healthline and is a much more in-depth mood tracking app than many other available mood tracker apps.
At $2.99 you get a powerful mood tracking tool that allows you to also track sleep, medication, stress and energy levels and many other factors. On a daily basis you can input your mood, use the app as a journaling tool, add photos of yourself and use hashtags to describe your emotions. iMoodJournal recommends recording your moods and emotions and add self-portraits two to three times a day over the course of at least one to two weeks to get the most out of the app. After recording your mood and activities for several weeks the daily, monthly and weekly mood charts generate meaningful output to support you in influencing your mood positively. The in-app reports automatically detect correlations between logged experiences and activities and moods.
Especially people who suffer from depression, bipolar disorder and other mental health issues can benefit from this tool that allows in-depth tracking and thereby helps users to gain new insights into potential triggers of mood changes and into their mental health. The app can also be used when working with a therapist. The user-friendly interface makes it easy to keep up with the habit of mood tracking.
- Android, Rating: ø 4.3 with 1537 ratings (26.11.2020)
- iOS, Rating: ø 4.3 with 140 ratings (26.11.2020)
Free Version:$1.99 on the Google Play Store, $2.99 on the App Store- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: English, French, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Apple Watch
- Recommended for: Especially recommended as bipolar mood tracker app
Pixels – Mood Tracker: Best for simple overview
Pixels combines bullet journaling with mood tracking. Each day is a pixel and you can log your mood by choosing an emoji, an emotion tag, and adding thoughts through simple notes. The data can be analyzed through the insights and statistics feature that offers graphs and other analytics tools.
The app can be used to track your mood during therapy or as part of a mental healing process. Trust is key in any healing process, therefore Pixels keeps your data private and the development of the app is transparent. Ads in this mood tracker app are optional and ensure the ongoing development of the project.
Create a “Year in Pixels” to get an overview of your mood, set reminders to keep up the new habit and customize the colors of your Pixels to suit your taste.
- Android, Rating: ø 4.7 with 22.087 ratings (26.11.2020)
- iOS, Rating: ø 4.6 with 116 ratings (26.11.2020)
- Free Version: Yes (in-App purchases starting from $1.49 on the Google Play Store, $1.99 on the App Store)
- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: English, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Turkish
- Recommended for: People with mental health issues
MyTherapy: Best medication reminder and health tracker app
MyTherapy is the best free mood tracker app to not only track and analyze your mood but also log interventions, such as medication, therapy and exercise that correlate with your mood. The app has been backed by research with the most recent study performed by Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin. People can use the app to set reminders for their medication, get reports and track weight, sleep, blood pressure, blood sugar and more.
As a medication reminder and health tracker app, you can also take notes of symptoms and well-being, get personalized tips for your treatment, and connect with family and friends to get encouragement and support. Health reports are emailed to you and the app is completely free of charge as well as ad-free.
- Android, Rating: ø 4.7 with 85.427 ratings (26.11.2020)
- iOS, Rating: ø 4.7 with 3.474 ratings (26.11.2020)
- Free Version: Yes
- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian
- Recommended for: People who rely on medication
Moody Month: Best for mood and female cycle tracking
The Moody Month app supports women in tracking their mood and their hormonal fluctuations over the course of their menstrual cycle to identify and understand how hormonal swings, lifestyle changes and other factors influence their well-being. The app can also be used to track your fertility.
You can log your energy, mood and stress levels to receive daily wellness tips specifically tailored to your cycle and forecasts on what is happening in your body each day. Additionally, you can write or record personal notes and discover mood patterns by reviewing live reports of your data.
Wellness tips are written by an expert team of female health specialists and the app also offers daily fitness, mindfulness and nutrition content based on your needs.
Android: not available on Google Play Store- iOS, Rating: ø 4.3 with 3.147 ratings (26.11.2020)
- Free Version: Yes (additional premium features available at $3.99/monthly)
- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: English
- Recommended for: Women who want to get in touch with their monthly cycle
Mood Log: Best mood and habit tracker app
The free mood tracker app Mood Log uses color coded mood tracking to help you monitor your mood changes over time in a simple and effective way. By adding mood tags such as depression, anxiety, stress, headaches, menstruation and more you can identify factors that influence your mood as well as mood changes due to lifestyle interventions.
Keep it simple with this mood and habit tracker app or set reminders for medication and other wellness related habits. Statistics based on your input enable you to identify mood triggers and positively impact your mental health and overall wellbeing.
- Android, Rating: ø 4.4 with 1.203 ratings (26.11.2020)
iOS: not available- Free Version: Yes (in-app purchases available at €2.99)
- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: English, German
- Recommended for: People who appreciate a no-frills approach
CBT Thought Diary: Best CBT based app
The CBT Thought Diary app is based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which focuses on identifying negative and distorted thinking patterns to change your mood, emotions and behavior positively. CBT Thought Diary makes it easy to go through the process of identifying, challenging and reinterpreting negative thinking patterns by documenting not only emotions and thoughts but also daily moods.
As an extra feature you can practice gratitude using a simple in-app diary and also record any important life events that may serve as reminders to appreciate life or as a way of becoming aware of things that negatively impact your mood.
- Android, Rating: ø 4.5 with 2.023 ratings (26.11.2020)
- iOS, Rating: ø 5.0 with 6 ratings (26.11.2020)
- Free Version: Yes (additional premium features available at $4.99/monthly)
- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: English, Apple Watch
- Recommended for: People who want to identify and change negative thought patterns
Worry Watch: Best for dealing with worries
Worry Watch is a specific anxiety and depression mood tracker app that is aimed at people who struggle with overwhelming negative and fear-based thoughts they cannot control. With Worry Watch you can track these thoughts and the correlated feelings over time and then categorize them based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy.
By logging your worries and collecting data you can identify thoughts that trigger anxiety and find ways to turn your anxiety into a positive experience thereby gaining back some control in your life. You can choose from six categories of context when recording your worries: professional life, family, money, health, social life and other. Data can be analyized by viewing worries by outcome, category, context or day. The observation over the course of several weeks and month will enable you to see that most of the time, worries don’t come true.
Android:not available on Google Play Store- iOS, Rating: ø 4.6 with 225 ratings (26.11.2020)
Free Version:No, available at $3.99- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional Chinese
- Recommended for: People who want to track their anxiety and turn them into positive experiences
eMoods Bipolar Mood Tracker: Best bpd mood tracker app
As a BPD Mood Tracker App this app was built for people with bipolar personality disorder but it is also suitable for people with anxiety or depression and for anyone who wants to track their mood. With the help of the app you can see differences in low and high moods over time and observe how medication, lifestyle, sleep and even the season impacts your mood.
For each entry you rate your mood, irritability and anxiety on a four-point scale. You also have the option to record any psychotic symptoms and log behavioral data (e.g. exercise, food, therapy). In the notes section you can add any other relevant information.
- Android, Rating: ø 4.5 with 4.206 ratings (26.11.2020)
- iOS, Rating: ø 4.5 with 50 ratings (26.11.2020)
- Free Version: Yes (in-app purchases available starting from €0.75 on Google Play and €0.99 on the App store)
- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: German, English, French, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish
- Recommended for: People with bipolar disorder
Moodtrack Social Diary: Best for community support
Moodtrack Social Diary is a simple mood tracker app that helps you to graph your moods with very little effort. After collecting data for several weeks you can look back at your moods to learn about yourself, illustrate patterns and find triggers for certain moods. This habit empowers you to manage your moods and make better decisions.
With Moodtrack Social Diary you can also see what others are experiencing in their moods and chat anonymously to form friendships and support networks around your habit of mood tracking. The idea is to get help when you need it and give support when you feel like it.
- Android, Rating: ø 4.3 with 2.286 ratings (26.11.2020)
- iOS, Rating: ø 4.5 with 767 ratings (26.11.2020)
- Free Version: Yes (in-app purchases available starting from $0.99 on the Google Play Store)
- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: English
- Recommended for: People who want to connect with others
MindShift: Best to learn new and relaxing behaviors
Like many other mood tracker apps MindShift is based on the scientifically proven strategies of cognitive behavioral therapy, which can support people who struggle with symptoms of anxiety and depression. The app is designed to help people ease their mind and identify and manage triggers between therapy sessions.
MindShift can be personalized so you can use the app to learn new and relaxing behaviors in stressful situations. By tracking your moods, thoughts and behavior you can develop thought patterns that lead to a happy life and develop practical steps and habits to conquer anxiety.
- Android, Rating: ø 4.2 with 1.324 ratings (26.11.2020)
- iOS, Rating: ø 4.5 with 26 ratings (26.11.2020)
- Free Version: Yes
- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: English, French
- Recommended for: People suffering from anxiety
Track Your Happiness: Best for understanding individual happiness level
This app was developed by Harvard University Researchers who believe that measuring the experience of many individual moments throughout the day and over the course of several weeks can give an accurate overview of your life happiness and help you understand what determines your happiness.
This mood tracker app sends you text messages to gain insights into your mood and well-being. For every 50 responses it generates a happiness report, so you can see which activities make you feel the happiest.
- A
ndroid:not available - iOS, Rating: ø 3.2 with 61 ratings (26.11.2020)
- Free Version: Yes
- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: English
- Recommended for: People who want to track their happiness
Smiling Mind: Best for mood tracking and mindfulness
Smiling Mind is an Australian app that doesn’t only enable you to track your mood but also offers a whole collection of different mediation for different skill levels and situations. Meditations are suitable for adults as well as for children. It also includes a “Mindfulness Curriculum” that is often used by teachers and can help users with mental health issues to learn new techniques to improve their mood.
- Android, Rating: ø 3.7 with 3.252 ratings (26.11.2020)
- iOS, Rating: ø 4.3 with 1.1K ratings (26.11.2020)
- Free Version: Yes
- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: English
- Recommended for: People who want to track their mood and cultivate mindfulness
Self-help for Anxiety Management: Best for managing anxiety
The app Self-help for Anxiety Management (SAM) is especially beneficial for those who suffer from anxiety and want to learn how to manage their anxiety. SAM offers useful information, helpful resources and guidance. The app includes 25 self-help tools from which you can choose the most suitable tool for your needs. Create your own toolbox to gain back control over your life and connect with people through a closed social network.
Great usability combined with anxiety management strategies backed by science make SAM a great self-help option.
- Android, Rating: ø 3.9 with 2.964 ratings (26.11.2020)
- iOS, Rating: ø 4.0 with 60 ratings (26.11.2020)
- Free Version: Yes
- Multi-Device-Ready: Yes
- Special Features: English
- Recommended for: People who want to manage their anxiety
Other Mood Tracking Apps:
Conclusion
Mood tracking is an effective self-therapy tool that can help you prevent or tackle mental health issues, like depression, panic attacks, bipolar disorders and anxiety, by recognizing early symptoms and warning signs 1Caldeira, C., Chen, Y., Chan, L., Pham, V., Chen, Y. and Zheng, K. (2018). Mobile apps for mood tracking: an analysis of features and user reviews. AMIA … Annual Symposium proceedings. AMIA Symposium, [online] 2017, pp.495–504. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5977660/..
However, tracking your mood is not only beneficial if you are dealing with mental health issues. Using a mood tracker app to log your moods and other factors creates awareness for your feelings and their root causes. By developing more self-awareness and a better understanding of yourself, you can take charge of creating a happy and healthy life for yourself.
I want to encourage you to try whichever of the mentioned mood tracker apps resonates with you and stick with your new habit of mood tracking for at least two weeks. The more data you collect the better the insights you gain and the wellness strategies you develop.
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