Best Mood Tracker Apps Compared (2026): Daylio, How We Feel, Bearable and More

The best mood tracker app is the one you'll still open six months from now, and that depends on what you want to learn about yourself. Below we compare four options, Daylio, How We Feel, Bearable, and EmoAtlas, on the things that matter day to day. Full disclosure: EmoAtlas is our app, so we've tried to be especially fair to the others and upfront about our own gaps.

How we compared mood tracker apps

We looked at each app through the same six questions:

• Speed of logging. Homework-like logging gets dropped.
• Emotion vocabulary. Specific feelings, not just "good" or "bad"?
• Pattern insights. Links between mood, sleep, and activities?
• Privacy. Where is your data stored, and who can read it?
• Export. Can you take your entries with you?
• Price model. Free, freemium, or donation-supported. We don't list prices because they change.

Everything below reflects each developer's official site or App Store listing at the time of writing.

Daylio

Daylio is one of the best-known mood trackers, built around speed. Its developer describes creating an entry in two taps: you pick a mood and the activities you did, with no typing required. Notes, photos, and voice memos are optional.

What it does well:

• Fast logging. The mood-plus-activities format is quick and easy to keep up with.
• Visual stats. Mood trends, monthly and yearly statistics, and the "Year in Pixels" view, which shows your whole year as a colored grid.
• Goals and habits. You can set daily, weekly, or monthly goals inside the same app.
• Local-first storage. According to the developer, entries are stored on your phone, and optional backups go to your own Google Drive or iCloud.
• Export. PDF and CSV export are offered. Check which formats your plan includes.

Things to consider: Daylio's core unit is mood plus activities, so it leans more toward "what did I do today" than toward naming precise emotions. It has a free version and a paid Premium tier, which unlocks extras such as more customization and advanced statistics. Check the current plan in the app. It's available on iOS and Android.

Best for: people who want a quick daily habit and like seeing how activities line up with mood.

How We Feel

How We Feel is made by The How We Feel Project, a nonprofit. It was created in collaboration with Yale's Center for Emotional Intelligence and is based on the work of Dr. Marc Brackett. The app is free, with no in-app purchases listed on the App Store, and it's supported by donations.

What it does well:

• Emotion vocabulary. This is its standout feature. You pick a quadrant on its color-coded grid, the Mood Meter, then choose from a large set of specific emotion words.
• Strategies. Short video exercises grouped into categories like reframing thoughts, movement, mindfulness, and connecting with others.
• Health context. On iPhone, it can pull sleep and exercise data from Apple Health to help you spot patterns.
• Sharing. You can choose to share check-ins with trusted friends.

Things to consider: It focuses on emotions in the moment, not detailed tracking of symptoms or medications. Its App Store listing says data stays on your device by default, with optional anonymized sharing for research. The app mentions exporting your data to a file. Look for the export option in the app's settings before you rely on it. Available on iOS and Android.

Best for: anyone who wants to build emotional vocabulary and get practical coping tools, at no cost.

Bearable

Bearable is a health and symptom tracker first, with mood as one part of a bigger picture. Its developer positions it for people managing chronic conditions and anyone curious about what affects how they feel.

What it does well:

• Breadth of tracking. Symptoms, mood, sleep, medications, energy, activity, food and hydration, menstrual cycle, and custom factors.
• Correlations. Reports that look at how things like caffeine, alcohol, or bedtime relate to sleep, anxiety, pain, or mood.
• Integrations. It can pull in data from Apple Health and from health platforms on Android, so sleep and activity don't all have to be entered by hand.
• Privacy and control. The developer says your data is encrypted, won't be sold, and can be exported or deleted from within the app.

Things to consider: With so much to track, setup and full check-ins take longer than in a mood-only app. There's a free tier and a paid subscription that unlocks more reports and features. Check the current plan on the developer's site. Available on iOS and Android.

Best for: people who want to connect mood with physical symptoms, medications, and health habits.

EmoAtlas

EmoAtlas is our app, and it's the newest of the four. It focuses on the link between emotions, everyday factors, and the body.

What it does well:

• Fast check-ins. Mood on a five-point scale, energy, and a few feelings (joy, calm, gratitude, anxiety, sadness, anger, tiredness). A check-in takes a few seconds.
• Context for feelings. For anxiety, you can note what it's about: work, money, health, relationships, the future, or no clear reason. For joy, what brought it.
• Factors. Tags like sleep, work, family, exercise, coffee, alcohol, and late screen time.
• Body map. Mark where you feel it (head, neck, shoulders, chest, stomach, back, arms, legs) and how: tension, heaviness, trembling, warmth, or pain. The Where tension lives view shows which spots come up most.
• Pattern insights. What moves your mood compares days with and without a tag. For example, "+1.2" means your mood averaged 1.2 points higher on days with that tag.
• Privacy. Entries are stored on your device. If you sign in, they sync, and note text is encrypted on your device, so the server can't read it. CSV export is always available.

Things to consider: EmoAtlas is new, so it hasn't had years of refinement like Daylio. It runs on the web and iOS; no Google Play app yet. Its list of core feelings is intentionally short, so if you want a large emotion vocabulary, How We Feel goes much deeper. It doesn't track medications or detailed symptoms the way Bearable does. And like the others, it doesn't diagnose anything or replace a therapist.

Best for: quick check-ins with body awareness and simple insights about what affects your mood.

Also worth a look

Apple Health: State of Mind. Since iOS 17, the Health app lets you log a momentary emotion or your mood for the day on a scale from very unpleasant to very pleasant, then add descriptive words and what it's related to. It's free and already on your iPhone, which removes the "one more app" problem. It's intentionally minimal: good for a quick log, thin on analysis of what drives your mood.

Finch. A self-care app where you look after a small pet bird by completing goals and reflections. Mood check-ins are part of it, and for many people the game layer is exactly what keeps the habit alive. If you mostly want clean mood data and patterns, the extra layer can feel like noise.

eMoods. Originally built for people with bipolar disorder: you track depressed, elevated, and irritable mood, anxiety, sleep, and medications daily, and can produce a summary to share with your clinician. If a doctor asked you to track mood episodes, it's a focused option; for general emotional awareness, it's narrower than the others.

Privacy and data export: check before you commit

A mood tracker can end up holding years of your most personal notes. Before you get invested, check:

1. Where is data stored? On your device only, in your own cloud backup, or on the company's servers?
2. Is it encrypted, and by whom? "Encrypted in transit" isn't the same as "the company can't read your notes."
3. Can you export everything? Look for CSV or a similar open format, not just a PDF report. Try exporting once early on, so you know it works.
4. Can you delete your data? Check whether deletion is available from inside the app.
5. Is data shared or sold? Read the privacy policy and the App Store privacy label. Pay attention to research sharing and whether it's opt-in.
6. What happens if you stop paying? With freemium apps, find out whether your history stays accessible on the free tier.

A quick comparison based on what each developer states at the time of writing:

Which mood tracker app fits you

The quick picks at the top sum it up. Not sure? Try one for two weeks. If the insights don't tell you anything new, export and switch.

Our guide to keeping a mood journal covers what to write, and if you prefer paper, try a printable mood chart. For help naming feelings more precisely, see emotional awareness.

Frequently asked questions