Picking an ADHD Journal App
three things to check before the feature list
Most journal apps assume you already journal. They expect you to open them on your own, answer a prompt, and treat a broken streak as a reason to try harder. If the usual apps never stuck, that’s most of why.
Three things are worth checking before you look at any feature list. Little Memory is built around them, and it’s the app this site is about, so it’s the example here.
Your memories come back
Write one line tonight and that’s your journaling for the day. Seven days on it turns up again, and after that it keeps turning up.
- a week later
- a month
- three months
- six months
- a year
- every year after
little memory
now
Exactly 1 year ago
Finally fixed the wobbly chair. Took four minutes.
Have it come to you at an hour you pick, or leave notifications off and find them waiting the next time you open the app.
Does it remind you, or wait for you?
An app that waits to be opened is one more thing to keep in your head at 10pm. Look for one that reaches out first.
Little Memory sends a quiet reminder in the evening, at an hour you pick. You answer it with a line about your day, and that’s the entry. You never have to remember the app on your own.
What happens after a week away?
Open most journal apps after a week off and you get empty dates, a broken streak, and a note about getting back on track. A lot of people quit right there.
Little Memory has no empty dates and no streak. Miss four days, write on the fifth, and the fifth is just an entry. Yesterday stays open all through today, so last night is usually still reachable in the morning. There’s a whole page on the day you miss.
How much does it ask for?
Some apps want a mood, a few prompts, and a paragraph. That’s fine on a good day. On a hard one it’s why the app stays closed.
An entry in Little Memory is one sentence about something that happened. Locked myself out again. Fixed the wobbly chair. About fifteen seconds. No prompts and no format. When a sentence is too much, a photo counts as the entry.
A short entry is still a real entry, and a year of them is a lot of days to have kept.
What you get back
Little Memory brings your own lines back to you: a week later, a month later, a year later. A sentence you barely remember writing turns up about a day you’d forgotten. Everything is searchable too, so the name of that restaurant or the day the car got fixed is there when you want it.
Little Memory has been at this since 2011. Over 30,000 people have kept more than 1,000,000 little memories here, most of them in journals with gaps all through. It’s a journal for people who have a hard time keeping a journal.
Smaller things worth checking
These matter in any journal app. Little Memory does all of them.
- Writing is instant. Open it and type. No notebook to choose, no template first.
- It’s private by default. No social login, and nothing is shared unless you share it.
- You can take your words with you. Nightly backups to Dropbox, and a full export any time.
- Nothing scolds you. Miss a day and nothing is lost, and nothing nags.
If it’s the practice more than the app, start with journaling with ADHD. If mornings are the harder end of the day, our other app, Ready Time, tells you when to start each step of getting out the door. Or look around.
