Keeping a welfare or gratitude journal simply means writing down what you’re thankful for on a regular basis. Welfare journaling is often recommended as a positive practice for your mental well-being, as it helps you to reframe your daily life in a more positive way, thus improving your self-esteem.
One way to make welfare journaling a habit is to install a program on your Mac that will prompt you to complete your journal daily and guide you through the process. Here are some of the best free journaling tools to download.
1. Stoic
Stoic is a sleek self-care companion that provides a blank journal page for you to record your thoughts, adding images if you choose. But that’s only part of the story.
Stoic provides all kinds of guided journals to steer your efforts, with categories such as Self-Discovery, Happiness, and Therapy. Via a range of guided visualizations, prompts, and exercises, you are led through an exploration of your own experiences and the lessons you can learn for the road ahead.
If you want to forge your own path, you may find the Kickstart Journaling prompts useful. These simple, thought-provoking questions will serve as a starting point for your writing, removing that blank-page terror that often puts people off starting a journal at all.
The Stoic app allows you to track your mental health and includes many more tools to help inspire you, such as a range of breathing exercises and meditations, quotes, and affirmations.
You can upgrade to Stoic Premium to unlock additional content, but there’s plenty included for free. Like all the apps on this list, Stoic syncs with its companion iOS apps, so you can carry your journal on your iPhone or iPad. Everything is stored in iCloud, so you won’t have to worry about the security of your innermost thoughts.
Download: Stoic (Free, subscription available)
2. Reflection
Like Stoic, Reflection adopts a minimalist, pastel-hued approach to the journaling experience. Respond to Inspiration prompts to get you started, or use the Guides section to help steer you through your journey.
The themed Mindful Activities are beneficial in this app, as they act as mini-tutorials, providing insights into your current state of mind and nuggets of guidance for your future direction. If you’re feeling committed, you can try one of the 7- or 14-day guided journeys.
Like Stoic, Reflection provides the app's core features for free, although you’ll need to upgrade to Premium to add images. You can sync between all your Apple devices, and everything is kept secure within your iCloud account, with a handy pin code to lock individual entries for an extra layer of protection.
Download: Reflection (Free, subscription available)
3. Moleskine Journey
Moleskine Journey is a sleek app that combines all the features of a diary and productivity app with a welfare journal, making it one of the best apps for keeping a journal on your Mac. This powerful app can be tailored to your specific needs, so if you’re trying to set goals or track a habit alongside your journaling, you’ll be able to put Moleskine Journey to good use. It
The journaling elements are less guided than in Stoic or Reflection, making Moleskine Journey an app for those who prefer the freedom of the blank page. Like Moleskine’s physical notebooks, the app is beautifully presented.
Moleskine Journey is one of those Mac apps that can help you sort out your life. Although free, you will want to upgrade to a premium membership to get around the strict 400-character daily limit. Look out for the bargain initial subscription offers when installing the app on your Mac or the accompanying iOS apps.
Download: Moleskine Journey (Free, subscription available)
4. Morning Pages
Morning Pages is a daily journal that encourages you to write a stream of consciousness without deleting your thoughts. It then collates your ideas and uses artificial intelligence to present you with insights into your emotional state from the words and phrases you’ve used most often.
This simple app can prove very revealing if used over some time. A little experiment revealed that 91% of the words this writer chose were positive.
Like the other apps on this list, Morning Pages supports multiple devices and provides the user with reminders and achievement badges to encourage regular journaling habits. It also offers password protection to secure your privacy. Upgrade to the Morning Pro plan to sync your writing across devices and unlock full functionality.
Download: Morning Pages (Free, subscription available)
5. Bears Gratitude
Bears Gratitude departs from the sleek interface of the other apps on this list. Instead, it’s unique in offering hand-drawn artwork of cartoon bears that can’t fail to make you smile. This approach instantly makes recording your innermost thoughts more personal, and it feels more like writing a card to yourself than opening a word processor-like program.
The Bears Gratitude approach is straightforward: complete one five-minute entry every day. Choose a suitable image from the art library to accompany your writing, and then reward yourself with a sticker to celebrate your win! You’ll get words of encouragement to help inspire you each day, and to access these messages quickly, you can just hit the app’s Home button.
Download: Bears Gratitude (Free, subscription available)
6. Everlog
Everlog is a neat, clean gratitude journaling app that does everything you need a welfare journal to do without fuss or frills. It’s designed to be fast and uncluttered. Just open, click the quill icon, and you’re writing.
Everlog offers some unique features. You can add comments to any of your journal entries, making it easy to go back and reflect on past events. It also supports Markdown syntax. And searching is easy, with a slick calendar interface.
Upgrading to the premium edition gives you the ability to create multiple journals. And everything syncs between devices using iCloud sync. You can protect your privacy with a passcode or by using Face ID or Touch ID.
Download: Everlog (Free, subscription available)
Enjoy the Benefits of a Welfare Journaling Habit
With so many terrific apps available, finding a journaling method to suit you is easy. From fully guided programs that even include meditations to sleek, simple writing interfaces, one of these free apps is bound to help you develop a regular journaling habit.
Having a journaling app on your laptop or desktop opens up more opportunities for you to record your thoughts, and it could even give you a mindful moment during a busy working day. And because these apps sync across all your Apple devices, you can simply use whichever one is to hand when inspiration strikes.