It’s time once again to pick a New Years’ resolution. Whether you want to get healthy or learn something new, you’ll need help to avoid joining the 91% of people who give up on their goals. Luckily these apps can help you stay on track with your New Year’s resolutions.
Here, we highlight our top picks for apps to help you be among the 9% of people who keep their New Year’s resolutions.
Best for Tracking Your Good and Bad Habits: Strides
Whether you want to make a new habit or break an old one, it’s important to keep track of your progress. After all, how else will you know when you reach your goal? Sure, you can use a physical notebook for tracking, but we prefer using Strides for iOS, which has both a free and a paid version ($29.99 annually or $4.99 per month).
The beauty of this app is its flexibility. Strides allows you to track good habits, bad habits, and even SMART goals using more than 150 templates. It also offers the ability to create your own goal tracker. You can set reminders to track your progress and check out progress reports and charts to keep you motivated. There’s even a place in the app to take extra notes whenever you need to provide more context about how you’re doing. It’s no wonder the app has been named “the most comprehensive, user-friendly, beautifully designed goal-tracking app available.”
Best for Tracking Calories and Nutrition: My Fitness Pal
Maybe you want to lose weight. Or perhaps you just want to eat healthier to fuel your body and mind with more nutritious foods. Either way, a meal-tracking app can help you do it, and our personal favorite is My Fitness Pal for Android and iOS.
My Fitness Pal offers two versions of its app. The free version offers nutrition tracking, which allows you to log your meals using the app’s extensive database of more than 14 million foods. If you’re looking for more features to help you achieve your goals, the paid version is for you. For just $79.99 annually or $19.99 a month, you can also track your macros (protein, carbohydrates, and fats), access guided fitness and nutrition plans, get meal inspiration from recipes, and see your progress over time.
Best for Getting You Moving: Nike Training Club
If this is the year you want to exercise more, you don’t have to join a gym. You can get your body moving from the comfort of your home with a fitness app. There are a lot of options out there, but we like Nike Training Club for Android and iOS.
Available for the irresistible price of free, this app will help you keep your New Year’s resolutions by offering access to live and on-demand workouts. The app offers plenty of variety in terms of exercise styles, which is perfect if you like to mix up your routine or are still trying to decide what works for you. You can find workouts for HIIT, yoga, cardio, and strength training. To find exactly what you need, you can use the app to search by muscle group, workout, duration, and equipment.
Best for Learning an Instrument: Yousician
Have you told yourself that this is the year you’re finally going to learn a new instrument? You don’t necessarily need to hire a teacher to make it happen. Yousician for Android and iOS can help you keep your New Year’s resolution to master a new instrument.
Yousician doesn’t just focus on one instrument. The app allows you to learn guitar, piano, bass, ukulele, and singing. You can focus on all or just one of these options. Thanks to a sound detection feature, Yousician can accurately evaluate your skills and point out areas where you can improve. This provides a truly customized experience. The app comes with plenty of songs and fun challenges so that you never get bored as you continue to learn and grow as a musician. There are several membership options, which start at $7.49 per month.
Best for Picking Up a New Language: Duolingo
Maybe taking up a new musical instrument isn’t on your radar. Instead, you might want to learn a new language. Many people think they need to sign up for a class to pick up a language like French or Spanish, but apps like Duolingo for Android and iOS can also provide a powerful learning experience.
It might sound cheesy but Duolingo makes it fun to learn a new language. You can choose from more than 40 languages when you get started with the app. Bite-sized lessons that focus on vocabulary and grammar help you learn speaking, reading, listening, and writing skills. It makes sense that Duolingo is the world’s most-downloaded education app.
While the app is free to use, there are occasional ads. To enjoy an ad-free experience and extras like the ability to review your mistakes, you can subscribe to Super Duolingo by paying a monthly or annual fee.
Best for Simplifying the Decluttering Process: Toss
If your New Year’s resolution is to clean and organize your home so that you don’t have to do it in the spring, you might feel a little overwhelmed. However, a helpful app like Toss for Android and iOS can help you stay on track with cleaning and decluttering.
Toss is a free app that makes decluttering feel more manageable and rewarding. Every day, the app provides a single task for you to complete. It could be cleaning out the refrigerator or tackling the linen closet. The goal is to get rid of at least one item, but you can always donate, recycle, or throw out more than that. Best of all, the app keeps a running total of everything you’ve removed from your home, which is so satisfying.
Best for Helping With Budgeting: Mint
In the past, you might have cringed when you checked your bank statement. However, you can make 2023 be the year you put an end to the cycle of spending and shaming. It’s all thanks to a free budgeting app called Mint for Android and iOS.
As the most downloaded personal finance and free budgeting app, Mint offers several features that can help you monitor and analyze your personal finances. You can create customizable budgets, monitor your subscriptions, pay your monthly bills, and track multiple credit cards. Thanks to personalized insights, you can work to get rid of your debt and grow your savings and net worth. Mint works by integrating with your online bank accounts and keeps your data secure using features like multi-factor authentication and software encryption.