22 Self Care Apps You Can’t Live Without

Do you wake up every morning feeling like you could do better? Be happier? Enjoy life more?

The good news is, you probably can.

Self care apps are gaining serious momentum in the technology landscape as more and more people look to improve their quality of live.

When we think of self care we usually jump to indulgent options, like a spa day or fancy dessert. But self care goes beyond new purchases or experiences.

We’ve even compiled 24 of our favorite self care ideas, all for under $20.

Self care can be about mental health, overall wellness, and just taking time for yourself.

Stressful careers or families make it all too easy to give most of your time away. A big part of self care is simply giving attention to yourself.

It can be difficult to focus on our health and wellbeing, but the great news is that technology is starting to close the gap.

Cool new self care apps are popping up all the time. 

You use apps for just about everything else in life, so why not to help yourself live a bigger, better life too?

We’ve compiled our favorite self care apps below so you can find an option that helps you give yourself the love you deserve.

P.S. Self care doesn’t have to be expensive. Try one of these 37 totally free self care ideas too.

Best Self Care Apps

Meditation & Mindfulness Self Care Apps

Headspace

The Headspace self care app helps you bring calm, wellness, and balance into your life  with a few minutes a day. You learn the fundamental techniques of meditation and mindfulness, and the basic course is totally free.

Access a variety of options to find what works for you. Complete daily sessions for general wellness, or tap into the SOS session program for help working through particular moments of panic or anxiety.

You can expect the Headspace self care app to help you meditate, breathe better, and live more mindfully. You can even add friends to help stay motivated as a group.

Calm

The Calm self care app is one of the highest rated options for sleep, meditation and relaxation. The app offers guided meditations, sleep stories, breathing programs, stretching exercises and relaxing music that help with better sleep, lower stress, and less anxiety.

This self care app has options for beginners as well as intermediate and advanced levels. You can also fit a program that works with your schedule. The sessions are offered in a variety of lengths ranging anywhere from 3 to 25 minutes.

They have one-time sessions covering specific life topics you may be struggling with, and they have longer programs you can follow as well. Plus, they have a dedicated program for kids too.

Breathing Zone

The Breathing Zone self care app helps with stress and anxiety by offering breathing solutions. The app teaches you better breathing exercises and tricks for mindful breathing. As you slow your breathing along with the exercises, you should experience less stress.

This cool self care app also takes healthy breathing a step further to analyze your regular breathing patterns and suggest opportunities for improvement. Learn everything you need to know about therapeutic breathing to set yourself up for calmer, less stressful days.

Colorfy

Colorfy is the coloring app that takes your mind to a relaxed place. Have you seen the massive trend of adult coloring books? With this self care app you can take advantage of all the benefits without having to carry a coloring book and pencils around.

Sleeping Help Self Care Apps

Relax Melodies

The Relax Melodies self care app helps you reach higher levels of relaxation with sound. Choose the sounds and melodies that you like, and then mix them together for the ultimate personalized music track.

You can use Relax Melodies to help with falling asleep, or to help with meditation and mindfulness. Expect to see better sleep, deeper sleep, and less stress and anxiety.

Choose from over 52 free sounds to create unlimited personalized options, or use a popular “community melody” created by someone else.

Pzizz

The Pzizz self care app plays patented “dreamscapes” to help you sleep. Their unique mix of music, voiceovers and sound effects quiet your mind and help you fall asleep fast. They are said to help you sleep longer too.

Pzizz is self care app that is clinically validated. It’s simple, full of variety, and you’ll get sleep you need. There are even models for focus sessions, and naps!

Sleep Cycle

The Sleep Cycle app helps you sleep better. Is there a more important for a self care than feeling well rested? Sleep is the daily medicine your body can’t live without. This handy self care app will help you get more, and better sleep.

The app gives you sleep analysis with patented sound technology, detailed sleep statistics and graphs, unique alarm melodies, and customizable wake up windows depending on your sleep patterns. It’s also fully integrated with Apple Health and has Apple Watch integration.

Shleep

Sick of feeling tired every morning? Shleep is the world’s first sleep coaching apps brought to you by scientists. They claim to help your sleep in less than 5 minutes per day, and cover a ton of topics like relaxation, technology and the snooze button.

This self care app believes a healthy night of sleep is the key to self care.

Mental Wellness Self Care Apps

Shine

The Shine self care app helps you stay positive and motivated. Get daily motivational texts that set you up for a great day ahead. Use the check-in feature to log daily gratitudes, and listed to meditations and affirmations to show yourself self care and compassion.

Shine is an upbeat self care app that makes wellness a constant focus in your life. You can work on setting goals, managing frustrations, reducing stress, staying motivated, creating better habits and improving your overall wellbeing.

Grateful

The Grateful self care app helps bring more positivity into your life by encouraging you to appreciate what you have. This app provides daily prompts to log positive memories and appreciations. You’ll get a daily questions to answer that makes it simple, and fun, to record your gratitude.

Even more fun, you can easily browse your past entries. For example, you could look back and see everything that made you smile this year, or which days were your best. As you train your mind to see the good, you’ll grow into a more positive life outlook. You can create your own daily prompts, or use ones from the app. And you can even export your entries into a PDF or CSV format.

My Possible Self

The My Possible Self self care app gives you the mental health boost you need. It’s supposed to help reduce symptoms of low mood, anxiety and stress. You can access several modules for free, and get even more for an upgraded subscription. 

The app allows you to tap into mood insights with daily tracking. You can even see which activities, places or people that influence your mood the most. Learning modules include topics like Managing Fear, Anxiety, Stress Overload, and Building Happiness and Wellbeing.

Gratitude Journal

The Gratitude Journal app makes it easy to be thankful every single day. The easy to navigate self care app has a quick journaling function for entering a few gratitude thoughts as often as you want. You can even share them. Much like a social media, you can tag friends or locations, and even share your thoughts. You can also incorporate photos to amp up your memories.

In addition to your own gratitude musings, you’ll get inspirational quotes and advice, and reminders when you need them

Anxiety Helper

The Anxiety Helper app is a digital mental health toolkit you can keep on your phone. Learn, find resources, and get access to coping skills and tools.

Suffer from anxiety or anxiety attacks? Use the panic attack guidance guide to help you through each attack, or use the panic alert option to guide someone else helping you through the episode.

A lot of apps shy away from dealing with common mental health issues, but this self care app dives right in with helpful resources!

Sanvello

Sanvello (formerly Pacifica) is the on-demand help you need for stress, anxiety, and depression. This self care app gives you all the mental health care love you need, right from your phone. Get access to daily mood tracking, guided journeys, coping tools, assessments, and a supportive community.

SuperBetter

The SuperBetter self care app is all about resilience. This app helps you stay strong, motivated, and optimistic while tackling challenges like anxiety, depression, stress, chronic pain, and concussion recovery, among others.

The technology boasts proven results with just minutes a day. You can adopt new habits, improve skills, strengthen relationships, complete projects, or pursue life goals, all while improving your mental health.

Physical Health Self Care Apps

Lumosity

The Lumosity self care app helps keep your mind focused. Consider it a workout for your brain. The app uses what they call a brain training program to work on critical thinking, memory, and problem-solving skills. You can even get a baseline score to see where your brain compares to other people your age, and then see how it improves as you play.

We don’t always think of our brain when we think of self care apps, but it’s important to keep the part of our body that fuels everything we do healthy and strong too!

Acupressure

The Acupressure self care app helps you relax and relieve pressure, literally. The app uses pressure point guides to help users release tension for better spiritual and physical comfort. Self massage points are also popular for relieving anxiety and better sleep.

Acupressure is an ancient healing art which uses specific spots on your body to release muscle tension and promote circulation for natural healing. There are literally tons of stress and health concerns you can use acupressure for.

Mealime

Nutrition is one of the most important aspects of taking care of your physical body. When you body is well nourished, you feel better physically and mentally. The Mealime app uses your dietary preferences to help you pick amazing recipes and create a grocery list in minutes. 

Give yourself some self care love by meal planning and keeping your nutrition on point.

Is weight loss your ultimate self care goal? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Weight Loss Apps & 15 Free Weight Loss Apps That Work.

Productivity Self Care Apps

ToDon’t

This self care app is a little unconventional. While most apps are busy telling you what TO DO, the ToDon’t app is all about reminding you what you shouldn’t. 

This team of creators believes the key to productivity and happiness is all about effectively avoiding the things you shouldn’t be doing. The cheery app makes it easy to create and follow daily lists of things to avoid. Think procrastinating on social media, texting with an ex, or eating an unhealthy craving. This unique take on self care might be exactly what you need.

Offtime

Offtime is the self care app you need to truly unplug. This smart app lets you control connectivity so you can digital detox from life and focus on the things that matter. Whether it’s getting work done or spending time with loved one, this app gives you the digital-free headspace you need.

How exactly does it work? You can block calls, texts, and notifications (while keeping certain VIP contacts unblocked), send out custom auto replies, restrict access to internet and apps, and more!

Moment

Moment is another self care app helping you get that digital detox. Break addiction to technology and tweak habits to drastically cut down on screen time. This app not only helps you avoid activities that are dangerous for mental health, like too much social media time, it shows you how to get valuable time back in your day!

Imagine what you could do with an extra hour every single day. What about two?

Habitica

If you’ve got major goals and no accountability, Habitica is the self care app for you. Habitica makes your life a game so you can stay motivated and have fun while working towards your goals. You can input habits, daily goals, to-do lists and then check off tasks to level up and earn custom rewards you create yourself. 

What’s more motivating than playing the game of your own life?

Self care doesn’t have to be about extravagant purchases or lavish spa days. Self care apps can push you one step towards a happier and more fulfilled life, and a lot of them are FREE.

Stop wasting days where you aren’t reaching your full potential. Stop living days where you’re filled with stress and anxiety even though you know your life is good.

Use the self care apps above to bring a little more happy and wellness into your life.