Journaling is a simple activity that can manage your plans and thoughts in your life. The thing is, journaling isn’t something you just do once or twice–consistency is the key. Despite this basis, you have to be highly dedicated so that the new habit can be favorably built. Try using the best journal apps to encourage your daily writing routine.
Classic materials–paper notebook and pen–do feel like giving an authentic journaling experience. However, apps offer much more than that. They let you include photos or audio, custom marking, turn-on reminders, sync with other apps, and so forth.
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Best Journal Apps Android Users Must Try
You recognize the essence of regular reflection and planning, but you don’t always succeed with these new habits. Despite those problems, it’s time for you to switch to the digital journal. We’ve put together a list of useful journal apps to kickstart your habit. Read on!
1. DailyBean
DailyBean is the simplest and cutest journal app. It allows you to fill in a track record of the days that have passed or even future plans.
This app is contained in the list of our best journal apps for some reasonable reasons. Firstly, it has remarkable functions but is wrapped in super fun usage like a game. You can see how you’ve been feeling for a month with a pea-shaped mood visualization.
This is how it works. Once after logging in to the app, it will immediately track your mood for each day. There are five different beans that represent different emotions, namely ecstatic, happy, indifferent, slightly sad and devastated.
Now, this is your job to determine what you are feeling. Then, mark the calendar with the beans you have chosen. Dailybean also offers several special icons besides mood beans. In the free version, you will get 13 particular events or topics that you want to track. You may reopen the notes on any day and edit them as much as you want.
This one of the best journal apps contains ads, sure. However, it isn’t disruptive at all. If you want to get rid of the ads or want to get more features, including special characters and themes, we recommend that you subscribe to the Premium Pass. The cost is around $26.99 a month or $239.99 a year.
If you want to try a single feature only, it offers in-app purchases that cost from $0.59 to $79.81 per item. Anyhow, DailyBean is free to download but costs $1.99/month after a 7-day free trial.
The Premium Pass comes with the ability to apply other themes besides green beans. For example, Cactus, Bunny, Kitty, and Planet for character themes, Spring Picnic Set, Autumn Leaves Set, and Halloween Set for season themes.
2. Presently
You ought to take some time each day to reflect on the things for which you feel grateful. Even in difficult times, there is much for you to be grateful for. Take, for example, writing your gratitude on one of the best journal apps we’ll cover.
As an American author, Melody Beattie said, “Gratitude makes a sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” If you are feeling down or just need a little motivation, bear the quote to your heart.
There are so many quotes that will motivate you within this app. Then, try writing down what’s going on in your head or life in the Presently app every day. But remember, this app only accepts entries about good things. It won’t let your negativity cloud the many wonderful things you receive.
Moreover, use today’s enthusiasm and gratitude to continue your days ahead. You can set daily reminders–just in case you forget.
What’s more, Presently is one of the best easy-to-use journal apps. If you like minimalist interface and layout design, you will definitely like it. There are 20+ themes that you can choose according to your style.
Not only that, Presently app is 100% cost-free and ad-free. Your entries are highly safe because of the great lock systems; a fingerprint and a face scan. So you are the only one in control of all the entries on your device.
3. Gratitude
Besides being useful for organizing your life plans, the best journal apps are also useful for improving your mental health. Gratitude app has proven this claim by offering several practical features. From gratitude journal, positive affirmations, and vision board, to daily motivation content.
It has tons of stories and articles that can transform your negative mindset. It gives you all the tools and facilities you need to gain motivation and raise your self-confidence. Then, you’ll be ready to live your life no matter how hard the obstacles are. That’s why Gratitude is on our list of the best free journal apps.
Furthermore, its clean and simple layout is a pleasure to use for crafting your journal entries. This app is also password protected so that no one can open your notes. Plus, it enables you to import and export journals from local storage.
In spite of everything, you can’t add video files to your journal. And then, you have to do the backup-restore setup manually.
In short, Gratitude is simply one of the best journal apps out there. But, your life will become so much more meaningful with this gratitude journal app. Now, you have two choices; joining the Gratitude Pro Plan subscriptions ($4.99 – $29.99) or picking in-app purchases ($2.81 – $58.14 per item).
4. 365 Gratitude Journal
365 Gratitude Journal is an application with a similar concept to the previous two applications. It encourages you to create new positive habits through gratitude and self-care.
This app is more than just a daily gratitude journal–it includes a collection of positive affirmations, mood trackers, games, happiness coaches, community, and others. One of the best journal apps is like a big family of gratitude warriors that want to improve the quality of your life.
You had better subscribe to GratPlus in as much as some excellent features are only available in the paid version. There’s nothing you need to worry about. 365 Gratitude Journal charges a pretty reasonable price.
If you want to experience unlimited access to all content and unlimited sync across all your devices, you can try the 7-day free trial first. After that, you have to decide whether to join Gratplus Subscriptions ($4.99 – $47.99) or buy the items separately ($1.31 – $58.14).
5. My Diary
If you are trying to switch from a paper to a digital journal, then My Diary app is the most suitable for you among the other best journal apps. You can use it as a repository for your personal experiences and secret plans. Not only that, this app supports adding recordings, images, photos, and videos as well as changing fonts and themes.
The most unique thing about this app is that there are various cute emojis and stickers. They make your diary journal more vivid and artistic. My Diary understands your feelings, which are sometimes difficult to express in words. Therefore, you can insert photos, pictures, stickers, or emojis to express your feelings.
To protect all your private secrets, set your diary app passcode by lock or fingerprint. Afterward, sync and backup to Google Drive or Dropbox to keep your data safe and to access across all your devices.
You can also export your daily journal to txt, pdf format or even print the part you think is most memorable. On the other hand, you can categorize your entries using tags, so that it’s easier for you to find them later.
Based on some feedback, one of the best journal apps has helped many users to reflect on what is in their hearts and minds. The features and layouts are helpful and aesthetically pleasing. For this reason, you might not be satisfied with just using the free version for a week.
If you intend to try it, there’s no harm in considering a subscription to the premium version or Permanent VIP, which costs around $0.91 to $45.07.
6. Daily Life
Daily Life is a minimalist online journal app. It provides all the features your diary needs. Therefore, squeeze out what is implied in your mind and heart along with telling about the special moments of your life in it.
Some of the best features in this journal app are almost the same as other apps. However, you can personalize your profile, use the map feature to journal special places, insert music, and use the pen drawing feature.
Plus, you can write down everything as much as you want without cut-offs. Absolutely, all your data will be stored safely because of the password protection, and sync to/from your Google Drive account.
In fact, there’s a user, who suffers from ADHD, found the hashtag feature very helpful. He/she can use multiple hashtags in one entry. So, those hashtags help him/her to track daily plans easily. He/she doesn’t have to worry about forgetting something on his/her daily list.
So far, the users are satisfied with the free version as well as the premium version. You should never hesitate to try one of these many best journal apps. You can download the Daily Life app on Google Play for free. After that, upgrading to the premium version that costs around $3.49 – $19.99, or purchasing per item for $1.31 – $16.27.
7. Grid Diary
Grid Diary is able to provide a unique experience for your journaling journey by showing various types of questions in the form of a grid. This might be the main reason why this bullet journal app was named “Grid diary” and the icon is in the form of a grid.
Its layout’s format will make it easier for those of you who want to write a journal but don’t know how to get started. Don’t take this the wrong way, using a pre-defined template or grid does not mean that your journal writing is limited.
Conversely, you can pick which question you want to use as a guide to writing in your journal. Because Grid Daily is built differently from the other best journal apps.
Following the start of reflecting on the experiences in your life, note everything that you have had or want to do, remark on something you just like, and write down gratitude for what you have gone through. In essence, the question in this app only functions as a guide, the rest you have to pour your original ideas more creatively.
All the habits you build with this app are in line with Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) in psychotherapy. Later on, not only your life plans are neatly arranged, but your mental behavior and health will grow much better.
Hence, Grid Diary deserves to be called one of the best beginner-friendly journal apps. Back to the remarkable features of the Grid Daily app, it has mountains of ideal features that you are looking for in a journal app.
Key Features
To help you out, these are the Grid Diary app’s key features:
- Eye-catching interface design
- Easy-to-understand layout
- Multiple journals
- Multiple export options
- Templates
- Prompts library
- Tags
- Stickers
- Reminder
- Markdown
- Attachments
- Passcode
- Dark theme
- … and many other features.
All of these useful features are available in the Basic Plan which is always free. Along with it, you can also choose between two subscription membership options in the pricing range, $2.9/month (3-day free trial) and $22.99/year (14-day free trial).
Some results studies have shown that writing a journal or diary improves your cognitive thinking. It helps to grow a healthy lifestyle with positive habits and energy. Moreover, it cuts down your bad behavior symptoms and disturbing thoughts.
Anyhow, these best journal apps give you a detailed and bird’s-eye view of what’s happening in your life. They help you to create your own world with just an app as well. Pick one of the most interesting apps, then keep your mind and heart healthy. Thank you!
