The Best Apps for Tracking Any New Year’s Resolution

The specific New Year’s resolutions you make depend on your unique goals, which means you need a way to track your progress that’s just as unique. If your resolution is to cut down on social media use, and your friend’s is to run a faster mile, you’ll measure success differently. Even if you vow that 2026 will be the year you spend less time on your phone (which I vow every year), take advantage of mobile technology and these apps to stay on track.

I love all the best progress tracking apps in general , but when it comes to goals, by nature they’re something time-bound and specific, so you’ll want to try apps that are more specific to what you’re doing.

What are the most common New Year’s resolutions?

According to Statista , among people who have already made one or more New Year’s resolutions for 2026, the most common are:

• Exercise more (48%)

• To save more money (46%)

• To eat healthier (45%)

• Spend more time with family/friends (42%)

• To lose weight (31%)

• To improve work efficiency (24%)

• Do more to protect the environment (24%)

• To reduce stress at work (22%)

I found this year’s list interesting compared to last year’s, where “save more money” led the way with a measly 21%. It was followed by “eat healthier,” “exercise more,” “lose weight,” “spend time with family/friends,” “quit smoking,” and “spend less on household expenses.” Obviously, health and fitness still rank highly, but it’s notable that this year’s least popular resolution—reducing stress at work—even surpassed last year’s most popular. It seems, at least according to this source, 2026 is the year for resolution-making. I just finished a year where I successfully kept all my resolutions for the first time in my life, and I’m looking forward to repeating my success. In addition to a few personal tips , here are some apps I think you should use.

The best apps for tracking workout frequency are Strong and Peloton.

If you want to exercise more, this will help you track your progress with every gym session (or home workout, or whatever). For that, try Strong —an app that lets you enter your exercises and creates graphs showing your gradual improvement in weight, number of sets, body fat percentage, and more. I’ve previously recommended this app exclusively, and it’s excellent in its own right, as it includes instructions for performing various exercises, which is handy if you’re new to fitness and shy about trying new moves in front of others, which can put you off going to the gym. The free version saves unlimited workouts, but you can only add three custom programs. Everything else costs $4.99 per month or $29.99 per year. Read the full review here .

This year, I decided to recommend something different: the Peloton app, which I reviewed here (but you can also read more about it here , here , and here …). I can confidently say that 2025 has been the year of Peloton for me, because I’ve become so passionate about cycling , enjoying the brand’s other group classes , and even tracking my non-Peloton workouts through the app that I now have a 290-day workout streak in the app. And that’s important, especially when it comes to New Year’s resolutions, because the app not only shows you that all-important daily (or weekly, or monthly) streak, but also offers so much variety that you’ll keep coming back for more.

Best app for healthy eating and/or weight loss: Lifesum

I used to recommend MyFitnessPal , which I used fairly regularly from my sophomore year of college until my 30s, but this year I discovered (and reviewed ) Lifesum , which has been a game-changer for me. With brighter colors, a simple interface, and updated “vital metrics,” it’s an overall more positive experience than MFP—plus, you don’t have to pay an upgrade to access nutrient tracking. All of this is available with a regular subscription, which costs $99.99 annually, $29.99 every three months, or $7.49 monthly. It has a helpful set of widgets you can place anywhere on your phone to remind you to stick to your plan, and it never feels shameful, which I think is crucial for actually following a healthy eating plan. It even suggests meals and foods you should consider based on how often you eat them (or rather, don’t eat them) and what nutrients you might be lacking.

What I love most is that it’s so easy to use that I never skip it, even on the laziest days. Instead of manually entering every ingredient into the tracker, I can describe or even take a photo of my food, and let the artificial intelligence calculate the approximate calories and grams of protein in it. It’s not perfect, of course, but I appreciate that; when I got too caught up in tracking every bite and every gram, I got too caught up and lost all motivation, causing my passion to vacillate between obsession and complete indifference. Lifesum makes tracking a less stressful and more positive process that’s actually worth following.

The best app for spending more time with family and friends: Cozi.

If you want to spend more time with your loved ones, try Cozi —a simple organizer that visually displays your entire family’s schedule. You can see not only everyone’s free time but also how much time you spend (or don’t spend) with the people you use the app with—this can motivate you to schedule more time together. Plus, it’s free, which is a plus. Use the savings to pay for a nice evening with those you’ve decided to spend more time with.

I’ve already mentioned this app as a meal planner, and I think it’s perfect for that purpose too. Use it to consolidate a number of your New Year’s resolutions, from improving your diet to spending more time with loved ones. While you’re at it , remember how important it is to consistently follow through on your resolutions and habits for long-term success.

Best Productivity App: Flora

I’d usually recommend FocusPomo as the best productivity app, but I also love Flora —and it does double duty: helping the environment and improving your productivity at the same time, making it the perfect match for two of the most popular New Year’s resolutions for 2026.

As I explained in my review earlier this year, Flora is a focus timer that locks your phone while you work. If you don’t touch your device and instead fully immerse yourself in your work , you grow a virtual tree that appears in your virtual forest. This is where the app’s value can be seen if you’re trying to track your progress: you can see all the trees you’ve “grown,” helping you visualize your progress. There’s also the option to bet real money on your ability to complete focus sessions, which works well for some people. (Personally, I’m a big proponent of imposing penalties on yourself for failing to keep promises, and while I don’t usually bet, I understand the appeal of financial betting.)

I wonder what the app spends this money on? Great question! It goes toward funding the planting of real trees around the world. Your bets or subscription fees (if you choose to pay between $2 and $12 per month, though the free version works just fine) go toward improving the environment, which benefits everyone.

Best Time-Saving App for Social Media: Steppin

Here’s another example where I previously recommended a different app (in this case, One Sec ), but now highly recommend another one I’m already familiar with. To spend less time on social media (or any distracting apps), try Steppin , which I’ve been testing and using for about a year. Like other app blocking apps, it blocks apps you’ve added to your blocklist. Unlike them, you can earn time to access your blocklist simply by walking around the city. You can customize the settings so that a certain number of steps unlocks a certain number of minutes. I currently have 25 steps set to unlock a minute, which usually leaves me with about 19 hours by the time I reset my time at the end of the week. Since using Steppin, I’ve found that not only am I more willing to walk than I would normally take an Uber or bus, but I’m also less interested in the apps I’ve blocked overall. I just got used to not having unlimited access to them, and I discovered I didn’t need them as much as I thought. Who would have thought?

Steppin also uses “streaks” to help you track your progress over time, and it also displays a daily graph of your walking time versus the time spent in blocked apps. Both of these visual elements are helpful for tracking your progress. You can break your streak by resetting your settings or unblocking Steppin if you don’t have any accumulated minutes.

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