Maintaining a daily diary helps keep yourself accountable, and a diary on your smartphone is a lot easier to keep on you at all times in case you need it randomly throughout the day.
When you write out your thoughts every day, it helps you reflect on the positives as well to help counteract that negative thinking. And even if you're generally a positive person, keeping a diary can still help you learn things about yourself and start new healthy habits!
Here are the best private diary apps for Android.
1. My Diary
My Diary has a clean interface that's easy to navigate. It has multiple free themes you can switch between, or even more themes if you upgrade to a paid plan.
For each diary entry, you can add your mood, pictures, stickers, or change the background. You can also customize the font you use as well as its size and color. There are so many ways you can make this diary your own and encourage you to write in it daily.
And of course, it locks. You can create a custom passcode to get into your diary or use a fingerprint locking system so you don't have to worry about remembering a password.
The pro version, which gives you even more awesome features and removes ads, costs $2.99/month, $15.99/year, or a one-time payment of $29.99 that gives you access forever.
Download: My Diary (Free, subscription available)
2. Diary with lock
The Diary with lock app from Writediary.com has a much simpler interface than a lot of other diary apps. It's to the point, but still stylistically pleasing.
You have a few select colors to customize the background of your diary; you can change the style of the date, the app shortcut icon, and the text styling; plus, you can add emojis in both the title and text of your diary entry to help explain your day even further.
Download: Diary with lock (Free, in-app purchases available)
3. DailyLife
DailyLife is a diary app, but it's also so much more. In addition to creating diary entries documenting your feelings and the weather in emoji form, you can also upload photos, attach music, draw with a pen, and even export your entries to PDF.
There are quite a few different fonts to choose from to make your diary reflect your personality. It's also incredibly easy to search for your diary entries if you want to go back and read something. You can either scroll until you find what you're looking for or you can use the calendar view to easily locate a past entry.
Download: DailyLife (Free, subscription available)
4. Daylio
Daylio takes on a more modern, minimalist approach to a diary. Instead of writing out a bunch of stuff about your day, you use icons and emojis to explain your day, track habits, and overall improve yourself. If you really want to write out something for the day, there is a notes section in each daily entry.
Daylio is really easy to use, especially for those who find writing a diary entry to be a bit time consuming. Using Daylio makes it easy to still reflect on your day while not having to put your thoughts into words if you don't want to.
Download: Daylio (Free, subscription available)
5. Life
This is another great diary app if you want something simple. There are three free color themes to choose from: white, dark gray, or pink. The dark gray is really nice if you're writing diary entries at night and want something a bit more like dark mode.
You can lock Life with a numerical passcode, use voice input to write your diary entries, and add photos to your entries. There's also an option to export your entries to PDF if you ever wanted a printed version of them.
Download: Life (Free, subscription available)
6. Diary from Ascendik Niš
If you want a diary that's a bit prettier and more fun to look at, this one from Ascendik Niš is a great choice. You can add up to three pictures per diary entry and those photos will display behind your entry on the home screen. If you choose not to add images, you'll just see a plain entry with the date, title, and your first two lines of text.
In addition, you can add emojis to your entries, use voice-to-text to write, and use tags to help organize everything. There are a ton of free font options to choose from and you can use a PIN or your fingerprint to lock your diary.
Download: Diary (Free, subscription available)
7. My Dark Diary
My Dark Diary describes itself as having a vampire/dark theme. And it certainly lives up to that description. There are no other colors to choose from besides dark gray for the background and light grey for the diary entries. Though there is a tiny bit of red on both the menu options and the button to create a new diary entry, which completes the vampire theme.
For those that like this aesthetic, this app does it really well. There are no fancy gimmicks or graphics, just a clean interface ready for your diary entries. There's one font color and font type to choose from, so all you have to worry about is consistently writing stuff in there. You can also add emojis, photos, and unique hashtags for your entries.
Download: My Dark Diary (Free, in-app purchases available)
8. Daybook
If you think you'd have trouble coming up with stuff to write in a diary entry, Daybook is probably the best app for you. Daybook provides a guided check-in and guided nightly reflection that can help you figure out what to write if you're feeling stuck. Then, after you've accumulated a few daily check-ins and nightly reflections, you can go to the Throwback section to see everything.
Or if you know exactly what you want to write, go right ahead. You can customize your font type and size as well as your theme. Then, you can set a security code for the app to keep everything private.
Another nifty feature is that you can connect Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, or Telegram. There are premium subscriptions available if you want extra features, but for those who just want the free version, you won't even have to put up with ads.
Download: Daybook (Free, premium subscriptions available)
Keep Track of Yourself
Using any one of these apps to keep diary entries, whether they're daily or weekly, will no doubt help improve your mental health and help you stay on top of your goals.
Keeping a diary is something most of us probably did as kids, but grew out of as we got older and our schedules got busier. Being able to have a locked diary on your phone is an easy way to make an entry whenever you want to and keep it safe from prying eyes.
If you do tend to lean into negative thoughts, it might also be worth it to try out a daily gratitude app too that will help you specifically pick out good things about your day.