It is true that taking breaks from technology periodically can be extremely beneficial. It is also true that a few phone apps can be wonderful tools to support your well-being. Without further ado, here are my 8 favorite well-being phone apps, which have all done wonders for my well-being. None of the links below are affiliate ones, and I’ve not been asked to recommend any of these apps.
1. My Water
While the ‘drink 8 glasses of water a day’ rule is a myth, it is important to stay hydrated. Having a water app in this list of well-being phone apps is probably no surprise.
The MyWater app helped me train myself to practice good hydration habits. Using this app, I trained myself effortlessly to drink the water I needed, so now I no longer need the app. It is a terrific tool if you want to maintain a good level of hydration but forget to drink enough, or if you aren’t sure if you’re getting enough hydration.
The app will calculate how much water to recommend you drink per day. You can adjust that amount up or down depending on how you feel. In the app, you can set up reminders to drink water and select the sound you want to hear for the reminders. If you’re not a fan of drinking water straight, you can select other beverages in the app, and it will calculate the percentage of water and add that to your total daily intake. There used to be a free version, but now this is a low-cost paid app. It’s well worth it to train you into a lasting hydration habit.
2. Thrive Market
The next obvious choice for a list of well-being phone apps would be one that supports great foods. I’ve been a member of Thrive Market for several years and love it. It’s like an online grocery store where I can get shelf-stable and frozen foods I enjoy. The cost savings over items found in local stores is considerable for me. Living in a rural area, it can be hard to find some food items I enjoy at reasonable prices locally. Thrive Market ships the items I order quickly and packs them very well.
The Thrive Market app makes ordering items easy, and it’s simple to find foods that meet my needs. With the Thrive Market app, I can order healthy food items I want, save a bunch of money, and just wait for the package to arrive on my doorstep. I use the app like a grocery list until I’m ready to place an order, slowly adding items as I think of them. I can also try out free products often by taking advantage of the free gifts offered with my orders. I’ve found new foods to love that way.
If you don’t have local access to a wide variety of healthy foods at reasonable prices, I recommend checking out Thrive Market and its phone app. You won’t be sorry.
3. Calm
And now for the last app type that’s obvious in a list of well-being phone apps. You probably guessed that there would be a meditation app on my list, and you were right! Calm is my favorite meditation app. I just have the free app version, and it suits me fine. If you want more meditation choices, there’s a premium version available. I’m a big fan of the body scan meditations. In these, you bring your awareness to each body part and pay attention to how it feels. Doing a meditation on this app is a wonderful way to settle down at the end of the day.
4. Osho Zen Tarot
The rest of this list will probably surprise you, starting with the Osho Zen Tarot app. This may sound like an odd choice in a list of well-being phone apps, but it’s become a part of my daily practice. I draw inspiration from the virtual card it sends me each day. Standard tarot decks tend to be used to try to understand the past or predict the future, but this tarot deck is all about bringing your awareness to the present moment.
The virtual card selected for me each day may be randomly sent, but it always seems to be just what I need to hear and reflect on. The card artwork is beautiful, and the text is thought-provoking and poetic. There is a physical card deck available, but I find the phone app version to be really convenient to use. It requires a one-time purchase, but I have found it to be well worth it.
5. Flow Free
The Flow Free app is a game I play on my phone each day. A game in a list of well-being phone apps? Yes indeed. In this game, you connect two dots of the same color without crossing paths between other colored dots. I do the daily puzzle set that refreshes each day. The puzzles are relaxing and satisfying. I love the water sounds as I connect each pair of dots.
The game is fun for me without being addicting. It’s no problem for me to stop playing after solving the day’s puzzles. Playing this game is a fun daily reminder for me that in life, sometimes the best path, the path of least resistance, is quite circuitous indeed.
6. Rain Rain
The Rain Rain app runs on my phone all night long, every night on my dresser. I set it to play the sound of forest rain, which I find tremendously relaxing. I had lived in an urban area my whole life until I married and moved to a farm in Salem, Indiana. Just before moving here, I lived just a block from an expressway and a major city street. When my now husband visited me, he would ask, “How can you sleep here? It’s so noisy!” And when I moved to the farm, I would ask him, “How can you sleep here? It’s way too quiet!”
For the first couple years of living on the farm, I would turn on the fan on our thermostat so it would run continuously and give me some background noise for sleeping. My husband kept trying to sneak and turn the fan off, to save electricity. When I’d go to bed, I’d say, “you turned the fan off, didn’t you?” and get up and turn it back on.
For me to sleep well, I need to have a continuous relaxing sound playing. It gives me my choice of background noise while screening out the random noises that happen in the night. The Rain Rain app lets me choose from a wide variety of background sounds, natural and otherwise.
I am fine with the variety of sounds to choose from on the free version. If you like more choices, there’s a premium version available that offers many more sounds. If you prefer not to play the sound all night long, it’s possible to set a sleep timer so it will play for a while and then shut off. This app is a terrific go-to when traveling as well, to screen out random unfamiliar sounds.
7. Merlin Bird ID
The Merlin Bird ID phone app from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is my absolute favorite on this list of well-being phone apps! Why do I have a bird identification app in here? Well, I know, and many studies back me up on this, that time spent in nature greatly enhances well-being. Connecting with the natural world is a fantastic way to get grounded, release anxiety, and improve mood.
This app will identify birds by their visual appearance and by their sounds. I find it fascinating how many birds I can hear, even just around my home, that I never realized were nearby before.
When I first get up in the morning and take our dogs out, I love to connect with nature standing on the porch. I look out over the yard at all the plant life and the sky, and listen to all the sounds of nature, especially the birdsong. It’s fun for me to get my Merlin Bird ID app out and engage the Sound ID function. I let it record birdsong for up to a minute and watch the screen to see how many different birds I can capture. The most I can recall capturing in just a minute is eleven, but most days I record eight or more different birds.
In the app I can learn more about bird habits and behavior and listen to sounds they make. I can find out whether they’re probably living in the area or just passing through. This app is so much fun, and it’s free to use. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.
8. PictureThis
My final choice for my list of well-being phone apps is another one that’s tremendously helpful to me in connecting to the natural world around me. The PictureThis app requires a purchase to be useful, but it’s worth it. I can take a photo of any plant with my phone, and the app will identify it for me. Some people use this app to diagnose and correct problems with houseplants, but I use it to connect with the outdoor plant world.
Before I married and moved to a rural area, I could identify certain basic types of trees, such as pine trees, oak trees, and maple trees – those typically found in residential areas where I grew up – but beyond those, I had no idea. With my husband’s help I learned to identify sycamores and beech trees. With the app’s help, I’ve identified countless types of trees and plants. Doing so has enhanced the wonder of nature for me and deepened my connection with it. Right in front of my office porch, I have a few varieties of oak trees, but also beech, maple, hickory, and hackberry trees, among others.
From the mindful hydration reminders of My Water to the serene soundscape of Rain Rain, these 8 well-being phone apps can be great tools to support and enhance your well-being. If there’s an app you love that you hoped to see on this list, let me know in the comments below.
If, like me, you love nature and want to release anxiety and get rooted in calm in under 10 minutes, I invite you to check out my free Uncover Your Unshakable Calm Meditation. With nature’s help, you can tap into your inner calm and groundedness, so no storms can shake you. 🌿🧘♀️