Apps for Keeping New Year’s Resolutions

IT’S that special time of year again — a new year — where resolutions to celebrate the arrival of 2016 will be coming thick and fast. To prevent those promises from promptly being forgotten, many smartphone apps can help people stick to their new year’s goals of saving money, getting fit, losing weight and more.

One such app is a goal-tracking program called Strides, which is ideal for monitoring the progress in keeping to your resolutions. This elegantly designed app is flexible enough to help track multiple goals and it has built-in templates to help you meditate, save money, keep a journal and so on.

Whether you use a template or construct a goal by yourself, the app works the same way: You type in the goal’s name, enter data about your target (like a dollar value to save, or target weight to achieve), select a meaningful time scale, then set up regular alerts and reminders. The app will remind you when it’s time to act on one of your goals or log your progress.

Strides shows all of the goals on a dashboard with an at-a-glance indicator. To log your progress, tap the goal’s checkmark in the dashboard. Selecting the goal’s name takes you to a page that shows your historical progress, as well as statistics like the number of days you have kept up with your resolution and your percentage success rate so far. The app is free and is iOS only.

A similar Android equivalent is Goal Tracker by Mobillion. This app, with a minimalist style and an easy-to-use interface, also has the flexibility to track your progress on multiple resolutions. It is also free.

Coach.me is another goal-tracking and habit-forming app that’s free for both iOSand Android. The app has a social networking aspect that lets people share their progress toward goals with a community and earn praise, as well as being able to ask other users for advice. You can also use the app to find and hire a real-life coach to keep you motivated.

The app is popular, with a clean look, useful statistical feedback and built-in templates for different goals. Its makers have added an Apple Watch extension so you can get reminders or see progress on your wrist for convenience. I use this app on iOS, as Android app-store reviewers have criticized the app for being slow and not working well.

Learning a new language is a common new year’s resolution, and my favorite app for this task is Duolingo. This app can help people learn Spanish, French, Portuguese and a handful of other major languages. Its interface is cheerful. The app has motivational goals that help students progress through its levels. It’s free for iOS,Windows and Android users, but offers fewer languages on Android.

Tracking your finances is another common aim when a new year arrives, and the Level Money app may be useful. The app helps in calculating how much you can sensibly spend each day, tracks how you spent money in previous months, and predicts your bank balance and spending for the month ahead. It can connect directly with a number of banks to automatically pull in information on your balance. Level Money is free on iOS and Android.

If you’re planning on getting into shape next year, try the Human app. This free iOS appruns mainly in the background on your phone, automatically tracking and logging your exercise activity and prompting you to get up and do some mild activity if you’re behind your usual schedule. It has great graphics and is easy to use. Though the app is iOS-only, its makers say an Android edition is coming soon.

Lastly, keeping a gratitude journal is both a great new year resolution and a useful way to keep your spirits up during any dark winter days. The Bliss Gratitude Journal app is a free and user-friendly Android appfor this purpose. On iOS, there’s a $5 app called Day One that works either as a general journal app or as a gratitude journal.

Quick Call

Post is a new app from Adobe that, according to its makers, can help quickly combine photos and text to “create stunning graphics.” The app has many templates and fonts so people can really personalize their images. If you’re the type of person who likes annotating images with text and sharing them on Instagram, this is the app for you. Post is free on iOS.