Best Goal-Setting Apps

Achieve your goals and start to form good habits with these apps

Overview

Goal setting involves establishing a plan and creating steps to help you achieve what once was just a dream. Two vital parts of achieving your goals are motivation and habit building. Thankfully there are some apps that will help you create some healthy new habits that will move your life in the right direction to help you achieve your goals. We compare the best ones in this AppGuide.

Essential Apps

  • Free

    Way of Life - The Ultimate Habit Maker & Breaker

    by Lars p Arendt

    Way of Life is the ultimate habit-building app. You get to try the app out for free. For $3.99 you can unlock it to add an unlimited number of items (up from a limit of three). Simply add items to your “journal” and every day the app will ask you “yes” or “no”. Local notifications are used to remind you. Some items like “late night snacks” are bad habits and for those it is better to mark no. You can also set up personalized entries that you mark whether yes or no is good. By creating this journal you can really focus in on what you need to work on. The trend tab allows you to see a graph of how you are doing. The setup guide is very helpful in getting up and running. Way of Life is an essential app for anyone struggling getting on the right track.

  • Free

    Everest – Live Your Dreams & Achieve Personal Goals

    by Everest

    To say that Everest is an outstanding app is just an understatement. This app is phenomenal. The things it does, it does exceptionally well. When you first launch this app there is a beautiful tutorial that is actually quite inspirational. From there an array of goals are presented to you accompanied with amazing photos from which you can choose to begin your journey. To use this app you need to create an account using either your email address or your Facebook account. You can add steps to each goal and even declare why it is important to you. Choose to follow your friends or complete strangers and track their progress. There is even a challenge tab in which there are several categories with worthwhile goals. Best of all? It's free!

  • $1.99

    Habit List

    by Scott Dunlap & Gerard Gualberto

    Habit List is a great app if you're looking for something that does a little bit of everything and looks good while doing it. It utilizes the powerful "streaking" method so that you can stay motivated to reach that goal. Scheduling is flexible, allowing you to choose between specific days, non-specific days, and intervals. This app also includes reminders, graphs, font options, passcode locks, and more!

Notable Apps

  • $1.99

    Streaks - Motivational Calendar

    by Fanzter, Inc.

    Streaks is a nice alternative to Way of Life. For $1.99 you get a goal tracking calendar. The objective is to go on long streaks to build up a habit. You can set up multiple calendars to track multiple goals. Simply tap a day to mark that you did your task this day. Sticky notes on the bottom will showcase your current streak and your longest streak. You can add comments to the days too. Streaks is half the cost of the essential app with its in-app upgrade. If price is a concern for you, this is a good option.

  • Free

    CheckMark Goals

    by Jairo Rodriguez

    Checkmark Goals is a very simple app that helps you achieve your dreams. The esthetics of this app are actually quite elegant and there are no annoying ads to be found. Just jot down your goals, check them off, and keep track of your goals.

  • Free

    Goals.io - Slide to Achieve

    by Amberate

    Goals.io is a neat app that takes goal setting to the next level. The interface is clean and crisp. It utilizes a swiping action to add progression to a goal or forfeit it. Goals can be created to be a one-time event; or, you can create daily, weekly, monthly, or progressive goals.

  • $6.99

    The Habit Factor® (Daily Habits & Goals Tracker / Productivity)

    by Equilibrium Enterprises, Inc

    Habit Factor is one of the pricier options at $6.99. There is a free version available if you want to try it out. You do get some cool functionality in this app. The Streaks app functionality is included in this app. You can track goals as well as habits. Just like Way of Life, you can analyze your results. There are also inspirational quotes included in this app. However, we feel that $6.99 is too much and the experience of Way of Life is a better one at $3.99.

Decent Apps

  • Free

    43Things.com

    by The Robot Co-op Inc.

    As a goal tracker, the 43 Things app serves its purpose. The app looks great, but it still isn't optimized for the iPhone 5 so the black bars along the top and bottom can be irritating. When you input a goal, you can check it off or write an entry about it and state your progress in the form of percentages. You can view your completed goals and entries in different tabs. This does require a 43Things.com account, but lacks all of the cool features from the site such as cheering others on or posting goals to a blog.

  • Free

    Don't Break The Chain!

    by ROUGE41

    This app is the most basic and stripped down a motivational app can be. The interface is a calendar in month view. The idea behind this is to put an "X" on the day that you've done what you need to work towards your goal and to continue adding an "X" everyday thereafter. Once you break the chain, you have to start all over. This is an ideal app for building habits. Unfortunately, this app hasn't been optimized for the iPhone 5 yet and does contain ads.

Other Versions of Apps Mentioned Above

Other Apps