The best journaling apps get stuff off your mind

I did something I didn't expect I'd ever do this year: I asked an AI for advice. Asking it for recommended places to visit on a trip is one thing, but this time I wanted to get some stuff off my chest, turned on voice mode, and just ranted for a bit. I'd avoided the idea for a while, with a nagging concern that outsourcing our thinking to AI is concerning enough, outsourcing emotional support is a step too far, and yet.

Surprise surprise, it worked out well. I still wouldn't recommend using AI as a therapist, with the dangers of it reinforcing negative thinking (with similar dangers to almost any online pursuit of advice, where a slightly negative YouTube query can send you spiraling into every more dark content). In my case, though, it mostly recommended hearing everyone out and making sure they knew they were heard even if everyone didn't agree, and so on. Nothing at all groundbreaking, but the simple process of talking out what was weighing on me itself felt good.

The month prior to that incident I'd spent my time testing journaling apps for Wirecutter. There were apps that were little more than digitized versions of paper journals. Do-it-all apps that essentially let you build a digital scrapbook documenting your lived experience. And, as is the case for every software category in 2025, AI-powered journaling apps promising to help you dig more into your thoughts.

Typically they'd start with a question about your day, either a prompt from a library or a generic question to get you to start typing. Then you'll ask for a followup, and the AI will digest what you wrote and ask a question about how that made your feel or what you'll do next or some other question that will guide you to keep typing. And ... it worked. It felt good. Not, again, that any specific insights came out of the extended prompts, but it made me think more about what had happened and approach my day more thoughtfully.

Zoom out, and it's the same as the classic improv idea of building on what another had said with "Yes, and," something that doesn't require an app, let alone AI. Yet the AI-powered journaling apps did fill an interesting spot in helping one be more mindful about their day and log more detailed journal entries that help you remember the day better just by having written it down.

The Tl;dr is that Day One packs an impressive amount of features into a journaling app, Apple Journal is a great free option, and Rosebud was my favorite implementation of journaling with AI. But that's the overview—go read the full piece for more details on which journaling app you should use to start logging your new year.

→ Continue reading on Wirecutter: The Best Journaling Apps

Continue reading at https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-journaling-apps/

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