Best mood tracker app: 5 honest picks and how to choose

The best mood tracker app is the one you'll actually open on a bad day. That means it takes seconds, helps you put a word to what you feel, and shows patterns you can read without a stats degree. Quick picks: Daylio for logging without writing, Bearable for mood plus physical health, How We Feel for learning emotion words, Apple Health if you want it built into your iPhone, and WTMF if you want check-ins connected to journaling and someone to talk to.

Full disclosure: we make WTMF, so we've tried to be fair and factual about everyone else. Below is what tracking actually does, a checklist for choosing, and the five apps compared.

Do mood trackers actually help?

Mostly, they help by making you more aware of your own emotions, and that awareness seems to be what matters.

In a randomized trial with 114 young people aged 14 to 24, recruited through their GPs with mild or worse depressive symptoms, one group tracked their mood and stress on their phones for two to four weeks. A comparison group tracked only their daily activities. Tracking mood raised emotional self-awareness, and that rise in self-awareness predicted a drop in depressive symptoms.

A 2018 study of 234 people using a mood-diary app found something similar. The more people engaged with the app over 30 days, the more their depression and anxiety scores fell and their wellbeing rose. For people who started out clinically depressed or anxious, greater emotional self-awareness explained part of that change. The authors note there was no control group, so treat it as encouraging rather than proof.

The takeaway: a tracker isn't magic, and a calendar full of colored dots won't change much on its own. What helps is noticing, naming and reviewing. If you're new to the idea, our beginner's guide to mood tracking covers the basics.

What to look for in a mood tracking app

Before comparing apps, decide what you need. Run through this checklist:

• Fast check-ins. If logging takes more than about 30 seconds, you'll stop on exactly the days that matter most.
• Words, not just numbers. "Anxious" and "restless" are different problems with different fixes. Apps that help you name the feeling build the self-awareness the research points to.
• Context. Notes, activities, sleep or what you were doing let you connect a mood to a cause.
• Patterns you can read. Look for weekly and monthly views, and ideally some way of showing what tends to come before good and bad days.
• Privacy you understand. Where is your data stored, can you export it, and can you delete it? Mood data is about as personal as data gets.
• No guilt mechanics. Streaks and nagging notifications work for some people and backfire for others. Check that you can switch them off.

5 best mood tracker apps, compared

Daylio

Daylio is a micro-diary: pick a mood and the activities that filled your day in a couple of taps, no writing required. Notes, photos and voice memos are optional. It turns entries into stats, charts and correlations, plus a "Year in Pixels" view of your whole year. On privacy, Daylio says entries stay in the app on your device and aren't sent to its servers, with optional backups to Google Drive or iCloud and a PIN or biometric lock. Worth knowing: because your data lives on your phone, set up backups so you don't lose it when you switch devices.

Bearable

Bearable goes wider than mood. You can track emotions, sleep, energy, symptoms, medication, menstrual cycle and more, and it looks for correlations between your habits and how you feel. It was made by people with chronic health conditions, and it shows. The free version covers custom moods and symptoms with weekly reports, and a paid subscription adds features including correlation reports and your full history beyond the last 30 days. Worth knowing: if you only want a quick mood log, all those options can feel like a lot.

How We Feel

How We Feel is a free app from The How We Feel Project, a nonprofit. Its science team is led by Dr. Marc Brackett at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. The focus is emotional vocabulary: you check in, learn more precise words for what you feel, spot patterns over time, and try short strategies to regulate emotions in the moment. Worth knowing: it's built around learning and reflection, so it's less about correlating mood with sleep or symptoms.

Apple Health (State of Mind)

If you're on iPhone, you already have a tracker. In the Health app, State of Mind lets you log a momentary emotion or your overall mood for the day on a slider. You can add words for how you feel and what's affecting you most. Its charts show associations and line your mood up against lifestyle factors like exercise, sleep, time in daylight and mindful minutes, and you can set reminders. Worth knowing: it's Apple-only, and it's a log more than a guide.

WTMF

We built mood tracking in WTMF for people who want more than a log. Check-ins take two taps, notes are optional, and you get calendar, chart and cluster views across 7, 30 or 90 days. Each check-in links to your journal entries and chats, so you can see the context behind a dip, not just the color. Reminders are off by default, mood entries are encrypted on your device, and check-ins are free. Worth knowing: WTMF flags patterns as gentle observations, not diagnoses, and it doesn't track physical symptoms the way Bearable does.

How to make any mood tracker actually useful

The app matters less than the habit. Here's a simple two-week plan:

1. Pick an anchor. Check in at the same moment every day, such as after brushing your teeth at night. Tying it to something you already do makes it much easier to remember.
2. One word, one reason. Log the mood, then add the closest emotion word and one short reason ("tired, bad sleep" or "lighter, long call with a friend").
3. Log the good days too. Patterns only show up with contrast. Good days tell you what to protect.
4. Do a five-minute weekly review. Ask: when was I at my best this week? What came before my lowest day? What's one small thing to try next week?
5. Change one thing at a time. If late nights keep showing up before low days, experiment with that for a week before changing anything else.

Pairing a tracker with a few lines of writing makes the review far richer. We wrote about how journaling and mood tracking work together. If your low points cluster around rough, restless nights, that's a pattern worth acting on. For a structured approach to anxious days, try this mood-tracking guide for anxiety.

One honest caveat: if checking in starts to feel like homework, or staring at the chart makes you more anxious, scale back to once a day or take a break. Tracking is supposed to help you, not grade you.

When a mood tracker isn't enough

A tracker can tell you something's off. Sometimes you'll have a mood you can't explain, and that's normal. But the NHS describes depression as feeling persistently sad for weeks or months, rather than a few days. It advises seeing a GP if you think you might be depressed, and not delaying. Your mood log can make that appointment easier: it gives you concrete dates and patterns to talk through.

If you're tracking a diagnosed condition, ask your clinician which app or format they'd like you to use so the data is useful to them.

Whichever app you pick, the win is the same: noticing sooner and understanding yourself a little better each week. If you'd like your check-ins connected to a private journal and a voice that listens at 2am, WTMF is free to try.