The 10 Best Apps to Improve Your Life and Well-Being

Taking care of yourself should be easy, but for some people, it’s a practice that often gets left behind mounds of work, errands, and chores. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to help improve your life, and it only requires a few swipes on your smartphone to gain access to top-notch motivational tools and assets. Mobile apps offer a variety of ways to improve your lifestyle through organization and skill-building resources.

Self-improvement is a personal journey, but it’s nearly impossible without help from an external source. Using an app for personal development can benefit your mental and physical health, including learning new skills, reading more books, and even drinking more water. There is something that everyone can improve about themselves.

Are you thinking about taking the plunge toward creating a better you? Start on your wellness journey by jumping into this article and learning about the best self-growth apps to download.

Key points:

• Personal development apps allow smartphone users to engage in self-growth exercises designed to help them be more mindful, knowledgeable, and healthier. They can also be fantastic options for busy people who need to take their self-improvement on the go.

• Apps can be powerful tools in helping to motivate you along the path to better mental and physical health. Some of the best personal growth apps include Headway, Masterclass, and Readly.

• Book summaries are an effective solution for individuals who want to prioritize productivity and self-care even with a busy schedule. Use Headway as part of your self-development journey by listening to summaries of leading self-help books.

10 best apps for self-improvement

During your self-improvement journey, you may need some help and support along the way. Here are some of the best smartphone apps designed to help you lead healthier and more fulfilling lives.

1. Headway: to read more books 

Reading more books is a remarkable way to gain knowledge on nearly any topic imaginable. However, busy lifestyles can get in the way of reading full-length books. Luckily, the Headway app is a fantastic time-saving solution for aspiring readers with a collection of over 1,500 text and audio summaries of the world’s leading non-fiction books.

Headway is a bite-sized learning app for iOS and Android users to use as part of their development journey. Listening to book summaries allows you to gain key insights from any book in less than half the usual time. Readers can choose their summaries from a library of books, track their reading progress, and participate in unique challenges to collect fun achievements.

Replace social media doomscrolling and discover a world of self-help resources and motivational tools with Headway’s fun learning platform. Download the Headway app from Google Play or App Store to gain exclusive access to special titles and personalized recommendations delivered straight to your bookshelf.

2. Intellect: to practice self-care

Self-care may be a personal practice, but there are ways to improve your current methods to challenge your thought patterns and give yourself the best possible treatment. For instance, Intellect is a counseling app that offers solutions to many mental health issues like burnout, emotional management, and anxiety, as well as features that align with mood tracking, particularly through its focus on mental health and self-care.

On the app, you can participate in Learning Paths, which are four-week programs dealing with specific topics such as productivity and healthy communication. These programs are packed with written, visual, and audio content that provide valuable tips to help you manage your mental health.

Intellect is owned by a mental health care company that uses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to promote positive self-care strategies. Once the app has been downloaded, users are asked to complete a unique personality test designed to help them understand themselves and determine their needs. After a 7-day free trial, you can purchase a subscription that grants you access to additional features on the app.

3. Babbel: to learn a new language

Whether you’re planning on visiting a new country or would like to try something new, Babbel offers the perfect way to learn a new language without ever leaving the comfort of your own home. Users of this app have access to an extensive curriculum specially curated to help them learn languages quickly and efficiently. Babbel is a great resource for beginners looking to learn the fundamentals of a language to build upon later in more advanced settings.

With a Babbel app subscription, you can gain unlimited access to hundreds of expertly-crafted lessons and filter according to your personal needs and the challenges of your daily life. Aside from offering 14 languages to choose from, Babbel designs interactive language courses based on skill level and time commitment to ensure its users can fit lessons into their schedules. The courses also teach applicable spoken and written language tips, including grammar, real-life phrases, and sentence structure.

4. MyFitnessPal: to work out and eat healthier

MyFitnessPal offers special tools to help you stay on course with your fitness and nutrition journey. This app not only helps in tracking calories intake but also allows users to record their workout activities. This feature makes it a comprehensive tool for managing both diet and exercise as part of a fitness journey.

The app allows users to track their meals, snacks, and exercise activities and then visualize their progress and trends over time using graphs or charts. Despite its focus on viewing progress and goal maintenance, MyFitnessPal is more than just a fitness app that helps you maintain your diet and exercise. It also lets you track your eating by listing nutrition information for every meal you input. This way, you’ll be able to become more mindful of your eating habits and become more inclined to eat healthier food.

5. Headspace: to become calmer

If you struggle with anxiety or find it hard to relax, a mental health app like Headspace may help. Headspace is specifically designed as a meditation app that offers a variety of interesting audio tracks and guided meditations and daily affirmations ("I Am") to bring your mind into a calmer and more focused state. Each meditation is only ten minutes long, a feature perfect for people who need to take their self-development on the go.

Headspace provides various stress-reducing resources like podcasts, sleep music, soundscapes, and bedtime stories. It is available on both Android and iOS devices, making it easily accessible for Apple users looking to improve their mental health. You can start your days with mindfulness classes as part of an easy-to-learn course. Once you complete the beginner’s course, you can upgrade to a paid membership or continue using free starter classes.

6. MasterClass: to learn new skills

Learning new skills can be a valuable part of your self-development journey. Perhaps you’d like to start with a new hobby or even brush up on skills to boost your professional portfolio. Skillshare offers thousands of virtual classes on hundreds of topics available to watch at your own pace. Many of these classes are free, but bonus classes and additional features require a paid subscription plan to access them. 

MasterClass partners with various celebrities and influential people to offer expert-led courses. Engaging with 'MasterClass' can be akin to attending a series of personal TED Talks, where each lesson is designed to inspire and educate, helping users to grow and reach their personal and professional goals. From a writing course taught by James Patterson to a cooking class by Gordon Ramsay, you’ll learn tips from the world’s best performers, chefs, producers, and much more. With a monthly subscription, Skillshare also allows you to download classes to watch them offline at your convenience.

7. Readly Magazines & Newspapers: to be more informed

The news is full of exciting stories and headlines that keep us informed on happenings worldwide, but sometimes it can be difficult to keep up with various media outlets. Luckily, the Readly app offers an innovative way to stay informed by obtaining all your news from one unique source. Users of the app can gain unlimited access to 6,000 magazines and newspapers specially optimized for digital reading.

For a low monthly fee, Readly provides coverage of the world’s current events broadcast across various platforms like Cosmopolitan, National Geographic, and Reader’s Digest. The app also has a family-sharing feature that allows up to five profiles, making it easier to share interesting news stories. Without making you pay for multiple magazine subscriptions, Readly helps you increase your knowledge and personal awareness by staying up to date on the latest news.

8. My Water: to drink more water

Let’s face it — most people aren’t drinking as much water as they should. My Water is an app specially designed to help you prioritize your hydration by sending you daily notifications to remind you to drink at certain times of the day. If you aren’t huge on drinking water on its own, you can add other beverages like tea and juice to your daily fluid intake.

My Water provides insights into the amount of water you should drink each day based on gender, weight, and activity level. Once you use the app, you’ll receive fun achievements and compete with friends to help motivate you along your water journey. The app also offers a three-day free trial before upgrading to a paid full version that removes ads and unlocks additional features.

9. HabitBull: to build good habits

Nearly everyone can admit they have at least one bad habit they wish they could eliminate. HabitBull is designed especially for people struggling to break repetitive behaviors. With the help of this app, you’ll be able to create better habits and organize them into a daily or weekly calendar. Whether you’re trying to find the motivation to quit an unhealthy practice or need a push to clean your house, this app can provide you with the tools and resources.

A great feature of the HabitBull app is its cross-platform compatibility, allowing you to check your progress on your smartphone and computer. It also lets you organize your daily and weekly habits and keep track of your stats with colorful themes to help inspire you. Another feature of HabitBull is the discussion forums that allow you to share motivational tips and engage with like-minded people.

10. Sleep Monitor: to sleep better

A lack of proper sleep can have many negative impacts on your health — including poor cognition, an inability to focus, and excessive drowsiness. The Sleep Monitor app allows you to focus on getting a better night’s sleep by tracking your sleeping patterns, recording sleep talks and snoring, and giving you a detailed analysis of your sleep quality. Sleep Monitor also shows you the duration of your sleep, how much time you spent awake, and whether you slept lightly or deeply.

Many people suffer from sleeping problems caused by stress, electronic devices, and poor lifestyle habits. In this case, Sleep Monitor offers a science-backed approach to supporting your sleep cycles with soothing sleep sounds and gentle wake-up alarms. With this app, you can engage in a 21-day better sleep challenge designed to help you beat insomnia, develop better sleeping cycles and change your life for the better.

Get the best self-improvement app with Headway

Reading is known for making you smarter and improving cognition skills, but not everyone has the time for an entire book. The Headway app offers an innovative way to help you crush your self-improvement goals with key insights from bestselling non-fiction books through concise 15-minute summaries.

Coupled with interactive challenges and features like progress trackers and personalized recommendations, Headway allows aspiring readers to indulge in their favorite titles while on the go. The app also creates a customized growth plan based on your personal goals, featuring recommended book summaries to help build skills and fuel success. If you want to remain consistent with your productivity and learning without sacrificing your busy schedule, listen to Headway’s book summaries while on the go. 

Download the Headway app to gain exclusive access to a library of over 1,500 book summaries on leading self-improvement topics.