Disclosure: I only recommend apps I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.
I have a love-hate relationship with technology. On the one hand, technology is super helpful in that we have easy access to information, communication with others, and entertainment. On the other hand, smartphone addiction is real, and if you have an unhealthy relationship with technology it can negatively affect your mental health.
Like any other potential vice or relationship, the important part of having a healthy relationship with technology is setting boundaries and being intentional with how you use technology. One benefit is the multitude of apps available literally at your fingertips that can help you cope with mental health struggles, including anxiety, depression, and stress.
So, I have done some research and compiled a list of the 7 best apps for anxiety. These apps are the ones that are the most engaging, have the most resources, are the most effective, and are either completely free or have enough free components that you can still get massive benefits from it.
Let’s get to the best apps for anxiety… (They are in no particular order.)
The 7 Best Apps For Anxiety
Mindfulness.com
Mindfulness.com is the #1 app for mindful living and a great app to promote calm, presence, and relaxation. I love that it offers guided daily exercises, quick mindfulness exercises and tips, and other breathwork and calming practices to help you calm your mind and let go of anxiety.
Mindfulness.com includes:
- New meditations 365 days a year
- 2000+ Meditations
- Courses
- Sleep Content
- Mindful Exercises
- Music Library
- Talks
- Challenges
- Retreats
Insight Timer
Insight timer is an excellent app for meditation and sleep. It is one of my favorites when it comes to meditation apps.
Insight timer includes:
- Guided meditations
- Podcasts/talks
- Customizable meditation timer
- Course library
- Meditation community
- Bookmark your favorite meditations and talks
- An entire section of sleep music, soundscapes, stories, and meditations
- Calming music selections
- Tracking your meditation milestones and activity
Meditation and mindfulness are very effective tools for coping with stress and anxiety, and the options available with Insight timer are numerous.
Sanvello
Sanvello is the #1 app for stress, anxiety, and depression. Sanvello is a beautifully designed app that includes many features.
Sanvello’s features include:
- Daily mood and emotion tracking
- Guided meditations for relaxation, mindfulness, specific stressful situations, calming down, inner strength, and more!
- Weekly Spotify playlists for certain moods/goals
- Health tracking including sleep, exercise, meditation, water intake, and many other habits
- A Hope Board where you can add individualized quotes, pictures, and more to promote optimism and hopefulness
- Thought journaling, analysis, and discovery based on CBT
- Mental health goal setting and tracking
- Guided journeys to help you feel better, cultivate mindfulness, take control, and more
- Happify daily with inspiring and calming videos
- An online community and forum
- Emergency resources
This app has a multitude of resources to help you feel supported, challenged, and motivated to improve. I highly recommend it.
Happify
Happify is a science-backed app that provides evidence-based interventions in the fields of positive psychology, mindfulness, and cognitive behavioral therapy. The app includes small exercises to improve your mood and overall happiness.
Happify’s features include:
- Personalized strengths assessment
- Guided meditations
- Breathing tool to reduce anxiety
- Gratitude exercises including savoring, giving kindness, and empathy
- Negative knockout to challenge negative thinking
- Guided tracks on health & well-being, relationships, mindfulness & meditation, family & kids, personal growth, and more
- An online community
This app has many tools to help you cultivate more positivity, knock out negative thinking and worries, and improve overall happiness.
Free Masterclass
Rootd
Rootd is an app for panic attack and anxiety relief. This app is best for in the moment relief from panic and anxiety to help you calm down and acknowledge that the feelings of panic and anxiety won’t last forever. It also has educational tools to help you understand more about anxiety and panic and how to cope with them.
Rootd’s features include:
- Rootr (red button) instant panic attack relief
- Understanding lessons about anxiety, physical & mental effects, causes, and more
- Breathr tool to help you practice deep breathing and calm down
- Visualizr tool with a guided body scan (more features with paid version)
- Space to save emergency contact information
- Short and long-term lessons (paid version only)
- Stats with information regarding panic attacks conquered and more
I would recommend this app specifically if you suffer from panic attacks because it offers the best in the moment prompts and tips to help you get through it.
MindShift CBT
MindShift CBT is a free anxiety app created by Anxiety Canada. This app uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques to help you become more mindful, track your mood, and learn more about different types of anxiety and how to develop more effective ways of thinking.
MindShift CBT’s features include:
- Tools and education for worry, panic, perfectionism, social anxiety, and phobias
- Quick and easy tools to help you take a breath, ground yourself, shift your thinking, and take steps to cope
- A thought journal to transform your worries into balanced and helpful thoughts
- Coping cards with helpful statements to help you ease your anxiety in the moment
- Breathing and guided meditations for different situations (e.g., test anxiety, social anxiety, public speaking)
- Take action by facing your fears, getting out of your comfort zone, and creating healthy habits
- Mood and symptom tracking for anxiety
- Goal setting to help you set and accomplish important life goals and keep anxiety in check
- The option to share you data with a friend, family member, or therapist
- Crisis contact information
This is an excellent completely free app with a section for quick relief tips, in addition to longer term tools for overcoming your fears and anxiety. There is plenty of education and challenges to keep you motivated and help you cope better.
Wysa
Wysa is an artifical intelligence (AI) app that can help you get “unstuck.” Wysa includes a chat feature that is completely confidential, along with mood check-ins, assessments, meditations, exercises, and other tools to help you cope with anxiety, stress, and depression.
Wysa’s features include:
- A chat bot that you can talk to freely and confidentially
- Assessments to see how you're doing and feeling
- Various tools based on CBT to help you organize and challenge your thoughts, think more positively, become more calm, and more
- In the moment support with kindness and immediate feedback
- A journal that logs the progress made and tools utilized
- Different topics of focus including: managing worries, relaxing, working out, overwhelm, feeling low, sleep, building confidence, and more
- Access to one-on-one coaching (paid feature)
- Crisis resources and helplines
This is a great app to give you the feeling of one-on-one support. I’ll admit that I was initially skeptical with the idea of a chat bot, but once I started using it I found that it was extremely helpful, realistic, and supportive and has tons of useful features and tools.
I reviewed a lot of different apps and the ones I listed were the most user friendly, helpful, engaging, and what I believe to be the best apps for anxiety. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other apps out there that you might find more helpful. Ultimately, choose the app that speaks to you and your needs.
I hope these suggestions were helpful! Let me know if you have any additional app suggestions in the comments below.
2 Comments
Thanks for the great post, Tati! I agree that there’s a fine line between healthy and harmful tech use, and hopefully these mental health apps make technology work for us, not against us. I’d love if you’d try one more that just recently launched. LIFE Intelligence is a complete self, career, and relationship development app. Beyond mental health, we also discuss healthy relationships, decisions, goal-setting, time management, and leadership. We are a free download with many free forever features, from cognitive behavioral therapy to emotional management coping and communication skills. You can find us at https://www.lifeintelligence.io/ or download on the app store at https://apps.apple.com/app/id1518619206.
Stay well!
Thank you Jasmine! That sounds like a great, comprehensive app, I will definitely check it out!