These free digital journaling apps offer different options, such as stream-of-thought journaling, classic diary writing, and practices like gratitude journaling. Pick what works best.

Maintaining a daily journal is one of the best mental health practices. It helps you deal with differing moods, unloads your mind, and can be a way to center yourself. How you do the journal and which style you pick is up to you, though. The objective should be to create a journaling habit, and the app is simply a tool to get there.

1. ZenJournal (Android, iOS): Fastest Journaling for a Continuous Stream of Thought

Classic diary apps make a new entry for each day, asking for a title and a space to write your thoughts for that day. ZenJournal reimagines the idea of journaling by creating a space for a continuous stream of thought unseparated by dates.

The focus is on adding features that make it easier and faster for you to journal. For example, you start the app and just begin to write. The developers believe that by reducing steps, you'll journal more often.

ZenJournal also prioritizes privacy. By double-tapping on text, you can blur it while continuing to log your thoughts, which is great in a public place. Keep typing and your logs will be obfuscated as you go. Also, all of the data is stored locally on your phone only, with no online syncing. The app also lets you lock it with fingerprint or facial recognition.

The date is auto-saved in the app, just in case you want to go back and forth. You can also add hashtags while writing to track moods or other behaviors. And it supports a unified search for all your entries. The heatmap, which you can pull up at any time, shows your last 100 days of journaling.

Download: ZenJournal for Android | iOS (Free)

2. Gold (Android, iOS): One Sentence a Day if Regular Journaling is Too Overwhelming

If you can't handle the daily practice of writing a diary entry, Gold is the journal app for you. It's designed by someone who tried several journaling apps, gave up on them and decided to make an app that still lets you journal daily while not feeling overwhelmed. It's completely free, with no in-app purchases or ads.

Gold is about saving one "golden nugget" of memory every day. You're restricted to 100 characters in the entry, so you will really have to think about what part of the day was your highlight. It's a nice new way to approach journaling, especially when you're trying to create a daily habit. If you miss a day, it's easy to go back and add one sentence about yesterday, right?

Gold also connects with your phone's gallery to auto-import photos to attach to your journal. You can also add tags to each entry to make it easier to search later. Over time, as you build your journal, Gold will show you memories from the past to remind you of where you came from.

Download: Gold Journal for Android | iOS (Free)

3. Quid Sentio (Web): Share Your Journal With Close Friends

The prevailing notion is that a journal is supposed to be private and for your eyes only. But if you do have some close friends or a partner with whom you want to talk about everything, then Quid Sentio is an excellent app to share your diary.

The web app lets you compose a new entry in several ways. You can write text like a normal journal post or record an audio message of up to four minutes. You can also add an image and simply track your mood for the day. Finally, you can add tags to your entry to make it easier to search for it later.

By default, each entry is set to private. But once you've added your friends on Quid Sentio, you can choose to make any journal entry visible to selected friends. So let's say you don't feel like writing anything, set your mood to bad, and share it with friends; they'll still be able to reach out to you. It's the kind of digital diary that helps boost mental health in small but significant ways.

4. Diary.by (Web): Privacy-Friendly, Minimalist, Straightforward Journal App

Privacy is an inherent issue in a diary app. You don't want any other person to read these private thoughts, and not even an algorithm trying to create a profile to send you ads. Diary.by is a simple, privacy-friendly journaling app with no ads or tracking. In fact, the developer made it a point to write a privacy policy without legalese, so anyone can understand exactly what personal data on you it collects.

The other focus of Diary.by is on being minimalistic and straightforward. Yes, having lots of features in a journaling app is great. But it generally also leads to a bloated app. Diary.by keeps it simple with minimal coding (leading to fast load times), third-party libraries, social sharing features, and other unnecessary bells and whistles.

So what you get is a simple diary app to write a journal entry, save it as a draft, and publish it. Read through your past entries and make future ones like it was a private blog.

5. Three Things Daily (Web, Android, iOS): Simple Gratitude Journal With a Social Twist

The Three Good Things philosophy is a popular practice in gratitude journaling today. The basic idea is to write three good things that happened to you today, or you are thankful for. The more you do it, the more you start noticing things to be grateful for in your daily life. Three Things Daily (3TD) is a simple app to put this philosophy into practice.

Every day, 3TD will prompt you to write those three bits of gratitude, each in its separate box. You can also open the app at any point in the day and jot down an event when it happens. It doesn't have to be an important event; anything that makes you feel good can go in. And keep it brief so that you feel like writing in the app more often.

3TD also shows you the latest gratitude posts by other users, like a social feed of goodness. For those who are new to the practice, it can be a nice instructional exercise in how to do the 'three good things' practice and serve as a feel-good factor.

Download: Three Things Daily for Android | iOS (Free)

Have You Tried Paper Journaling?

Apps and websites make the journaling habit easier because having the ability to write your thoughts anywhere makes you more likely to do it. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work for you.

In fact, several daily journal practitioners prefer an old-fashioned pen and paper system. They say it's a cathartic release and feels more personal and intimate than tapping on a keyboard. It's worth trying out if you've always got stuck with digital journaling apps.