The Best Dream Journaling Apps in 2026

If you want to start a dream journal, you just need a pen and a journal. That's how many people still do it today. Or, you can use your default Notes app on your phone.

But what if you want to track the people, emotions, places in your dreams, to see which ones keep coming back? What if you want to dictate or draw your dream? What if you want to search and see all your dreams with your sister, for instance?

For that, you may want to use one of the many apps developed for dream journaling in the last 15 years. But which one? There are hundreds of dream journaling apps on the stores. It would take ages to test enough to find the right one.

Well, we did that for you. We analyzed 1,533 store reviews across 29 apps, tested the 22 most promising, and selected the best 6 dream journaling apps that are worth your time in 2026.

TL;DR#

• Apps come and go. 5 of the 22 apps we tested have shipped nothing since 2024, and have complaints from users losing data. Make sure you trust who you're giving your data to.
• Temenos has no data export feature. If you write your dreams in that app, you're locked in.
• Lucidity, Elsewhere, and Oniri have reactive support replying to all reviews. Temenos doesn't reply to any reviews, and the others sometimes do.
• In many cases the price we saw at checkout is different from the one advertised. The prices we list in this article are the real prices we were charged at checkout.

Dream journaling apps compared#

Do you like data? We do. Here's a complete table of all the features and properties of those apps, compared. (If you're on a small screen, scroll the table horizontally to see all apps.)

What the research says about dream journaling#

You dream several times a night, every night. The problem is that a dream is gone within a few minutes of waking, faster than almost anything else you experience.

Recall trains fast, though. In 1992 the psychiatrist Gordon Halliday simply encouraged people who never remembered their dreams to try, and recall roughly doubled against a control group.^[1] Cristina Marzano's team later found that the brain rhythms just before waking predict whether a dream comes back at all, in the same pattern that predicts ordinary memory encoding.^[2] Recall is a memory problem, not a dreaming problem. (Stranger still, collecting dream reports seems to interact with overnight consolidation rather than just document it, though that rests on a single 2019 study.^[3])

Which tells you what to look for. If the window is minutes and the mechanism is memory, what counts is how little the app asks of you inside it. Voice capture, dark mode, auto-tagging: everything that makes it easier to log a dream quickly when you wake up in the middle of the night.

And the payoff is what the app becomes over time. A hundred dreams in, you have a valuable dataset about yourself, one that can help you find patterns, analyze your data, and connect the dots. Which is also when losing it starts to hurt, and why privacy, app maintenance to keep it running, and export features matter very much.

How we tested#

We first searched for dream journaling apps on both the App Store and the Google Play Store, and looked at which apps were mentioned online, in forums and discussions. We selected 29 apps and analyzed 1,533 reviews from both stores, to see what people like, dislike, and complain about. A selection is quoted in the listings below, with the good and the bad summed up for each app.

We then installed, purchased, and tested the 22 most promising apps in the lot. That's where we find out, for instance, when one app advertises $39.99 a year and asks for $79.99 when you actually try to buy it. Then we tried and used all features, from the essentials to each app's unusual trick.

In the end, we selected the 6 apps below, based on overall experience, price, features, and availability. For those we outline what users say, what worked in our tests and what didn't, all features, price, pros and cons, and our verdict.

The best dream journaling apps in 2026#

Here are the 6 apps we consider the best dream journaling apps in 2026, ranked by how enjoyable they make the process of dream journaling, and how complete their set of features is.

1. Oniri (iOS & Android)#

Features#

• Tag emotions, people, characters, places, objects, themes, actions
• Local voice transcription
• Canvas to draw your dreams
• AI interpretation that asks you follow-up questions first
• Reality-check reminders, guided MILD, WBTB, WILD and SSILD
• Export to PDF, TXT or CSV

Pros#

Cons#

Our verdict#

What Oniri does very well is to treat a dream as structured data rather than a paragraph: symbols, the people in it, the places, the emotions, a sketch if you'd rather draw the thing than describe it. All that data is then used to make advanced analysis to find patterns, like what emotions appear with what person, which symbols often appear together, who comes back frequently in your nightmares, etc. And you can just tap to add symbols, which makes it easy to use in the morning. "You can add elements to your dream without having to write them down, which is extremely helpful when you are tired, or your dream is slipping away," as one reviewer describes it.

The free tier is unusually wide for this category, and reviewers notice it more than any feature: unlimited entries, all the tagging, reality checks, widgets, export, no ads. Premium buys the AI interpretation, voice notes, more statistics and the guided lucid dreaming techniques.

The Android app lagged behind for a long time. Many reviewers complained about missing features and bugs. But the app was rebuilt from scratch, and recent reviews are much better. Users say that everything has been resolved, and that the Android version is now on par with iOS.

What people say about Oniri#

★★★★★4.6on the App Store · 3,738 ratings

Oniri FAQ#

Is Oniri free?+

The journal is free with no ads: unlimited written entries, symbols, people, places, emotions, reality-check reminders and export. Premium adds AI interpretation, voice notes, statistics and the guided lucid dreaming techniques, and has a free trial.

Can I get my dreams out of Oniri?+

Yes, and this is worth checking before you commit to any journal. Oniri exports to PDF, TXT and CSV, and can import TXT and CSV if you are moving over from another app. We tested the PDF export in several languages during this review and it kept the text intact in all of them.

Does Oniri work on Android?+

Yes, and since the 2026 rebuild it's the same app you get on iPhone. The Android version really was the weak one for years: reviewers describe an entry box that swallowed what they typed and edits that overwrote a whole dream. Those bugs went with the old app, but the Google Play average rating hasn't caught up yet.

What happens to my dreams if I log out of Oniri?+

They stay in your account and come back when you sign in again. That's worth saying plainly, because dreams lost after a logout is the sharpest complaint in Oniri's older reviews. App support is responsive, replying to reviews usually the same day, and points you to support@oniri.io if anything goes wrong.

2. Elsewhere (iOS & Android)#

Features#

• Automatic tagging of characters, settings and symbols
• Generated dream art on every entry
• Scan a handwritten journal page into an entry
• Colours, dream types and collections to sort entries
• A map of where your dreams happened
• Insights on what recurs across your journal
• iPhone, Android and a web app

Pros#

Cons#

Our verdict#

Elsewhere is the youngest app on this list, released in 2023. Where Oniri has extensive dream tagging and journaling features, Elsewhere has a very simple process: enter your dream, and it gets tagged automatically, an image generated with AI, and an interpretation. You can also choose the style for the generated image.

The pricing is fiddly. A real free tier, then two annual plans at $49.99 and $99.99 that differ by how much AI you are allowed: the cheaper one comes with roughly 35 image generations and 50 interpretations, and credit packs top you up beyond that.

Elsewhere is really built around the community. You have features to share your dreams publicly, with friends, or in a dream group. You can also see all public dreams on a world map. If you want to share dreams, it's the best option.

What people say about Elsewhere#

★★★★★4.9on the App Store · 106 ratings

Elsewhere FAQ#

Is Elsewhere dream journal free?+

Yes. Journaling, automatic tagging and a basic interpretation cost nothing. The paid plans are $49.99 or $99.99 a year and differ by how much AI you get: the cheaper one includes about 35 image generations and 50 interpretations. There is no free trial of the paid tier.

Who writes the dream symbol entries in Elsewhere?+

The symbol dictionary is credited to David Fontana, author of The Secret Language of Dreams, with thematic insights by the dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley. Both stores name them in the listing.

Can you lock Elsewhere with Face ID or a PIN?+

Yes, we found this option in our test, but it's a bit buried in submenus and hard to find. It looks like it was added recently, because some reviews complain that this is not possible.

3. Lucidity (iOS & Android)#

Features#

• Emotions, people, places, objects and themes per entry, with an emotion graph
• Markers for sleep paralysis, mood on waking, dream colour and drawings
• Seven-day course, a lesson each morning and evening
• Guided practice timers for SSILD, WBTB, MILD and WILD
• AI analysis and auto-tagging on Pro

Pros#

Cons#

Our verdict#

Lucidity comes closest to Oniri's tagging depth. It tracks emotions, people, places, objects and themes, draws an emotion graph across your entries, and lets you mark the strange specifics: sleep paralysis, your mood on waking, the colour of the dream, a drawing. Journaling is free, what costs money is the interpretation layer, at $49.99 a year, and that is the weak part: short, fairly general readings next to what Elsewhere, Oniri or Temenos give you for a similar price.

Overall, the app has a good balance of features across dream journaling and lucid dreaming, but the AI features are limited, with a basic interpretation and no image generation. It's a consistent app, one of the oldest on Android, but it doesn't have anything that other apps don't have for a similar price.

What people say about Lucidity#

★★★★★4.7on the Google Play · 7,163 ratings

Lucidity FAQ#

Is Lucidity available on iPhone?+

Yes, since 2024. Lucidity by Christopher Benz started as an Android app and now has an iOS version too, though the App Store listing has only single-digit ratings so far. Be careful searching: an unrelated iOS app by another developer is also called Lucidity.

Is Lucidity free?+

Journaling is free and unlimited, including the emotion tracking and the graphs. The AI analysis, auto-tagging and the lucid dreaming assistant need Lucidity Pro, which is $12.99 a month or $49.99 a year with a 7-day trial. That paywall is the most common complaint in its reviews.

Does Lucidity keep your dreams private?+

Partly. The listing calls it "the only dream journal that is completely private: your dreams stay on your phone or in your personal cloud. We never access them." But the AI analysis is the paid headline feature, and the developer cites server costs when he defends the price, so a dream you send for interpretation is being read somewhere off your phone. Take the claim as "nobody here is browsing your journal" rather than "your text never leaves the device".

Is Lucidity safe for a long dream journal?+

Mostly, with one recent scare. In July 2026 two reviewers lost half-awake notes because the composer didn't auto-save, and the developer had it patched within days. That's the pattern with a one-person app: fixes arrive the same evening, and there's nobody else if he stops. Journaling and the CSV and TXT export are both free, so take a copy every few months and most of that risk goes away.

4. Temenos Dream (iOS & Android)#

Features#

• Tap words inside your own dream text to promote them into symbols
• Your personal association recorded before any collective meaning
• Voice capture with a Siri shortcut
• Auto-tagging alongside the manual symbol capture
• Generated dream art
• A community layer where dreams can be shared

Pros#

Cons#

Our verdict#

Temenos is also a young app, released in 2022. You write the dream, then tap words inside your own text to promote them into symbols, and it auto-tags the ones you miss. The process really follows Jungian analysis. You can enter your own interpretation and association for each symbol, and see the collective meaning, with Jung quoted by name. That order is the whole discipline of Jungian dream work.

According to reviewers, typing a long dream has been buggy on and off from 2024 into 2026, which is an awkward flaw in an app built for writing at length. And the AI refuses to interpret dreams involving violence, so if nightmares are what brought you to a dream journal, test that before the trial runs out. The interface is not the most enjoyable to use, since it mostly consists of a lot of text fields that can get a bit monotonous and overwhelming.

What people say about Temenos Dream#

★★★★★4.8on the App Store · 673 ratings

Temenos Dream FAQ#

Is Temenos Dream really Jungian?+

More than any other app here. It asks for your personal association with a symbol before it offers a collective meaning, which is the order Jung himself insisted on, and it quotes him with attribution inside the symbol pages. Two experienced dreamworkers in the reviews still found the AI output formulaic.

Does Temenos Dream own the dreams you write in it?+

A one-star review saying it does collected more thumbs up than anything else on its Play page. We read the terms to check, and didn't find what the reviews mentioned, so the terms might have been updated. We recommend reading the full terms if you plan on using the app, and asking the developer about privacy to confirm.

Can you export your dreams from Temenos Dream?+

No. We found no bulk export in any format, and the reviewers asking for one haven't been answered either. That's the biggest issue we have with the app. If you write dreams in that app, they're locked in.

How much does Temenos Dream cost?+

$8.99 a month or $59.99 a year, after a 7-day trial that wants a card up front. The free tier isn't a demo: you get the journal, the symbol capture and a few AI readings, which is enough to find out whether the association-first method suits you before you pay.

5. Dream Journal Ultimate (iOS & Android)#

Features#

• Notes and tags on every entry, plus the moon phase for that night
• Search across everything you have written
• Reality-check reminders you can log once you have done them
• Dream Wall, a forum-style feed for sharing dreams

Pros#

Cons#

Our verdict#

Dream Journal Ultimate is one of the oldest apps on the list, released in 2014. It's also the cheapest option, with a single $2.99 purchase unlocking all features. It's promising, but unfortunately, its features match what you would expect with such a low price. The journal is plain, with notes and tags rather than structured symbols, and two of the most important features don't work: the voice recording and the code to protect the app. The built-in dream dictionary is the generic kind, unconnected to anything you have written, which is exactly the sort of dictionary we would steer you away from. Reviewers also report a free-tier cap around 300 dreams that the listing's "no limits" copy does not mention.

On the good side, it has a Dream Wall where you can share your dreams, and it's the only app here that lets you log a reality check once you've done it.

Overall, it remains the best option if you're on a budget, but expect issues and a little bit more trouble than with other apps.

What people say about Dream Journal Ultimate#

★★★★★4.3on the Google Play · 1,103 ratings

Dream Journal Ultimate FAQ#

How much does Dream Journal Ultimate cost?+

One $2.99 purchase unlocks the AI interpretation, unlimited voice input and export to CSV and TXT. Everything else, including the journal, tags, moon phases and the Dream Wall, is free. It is the cheapest paid tier of any dream journal.

Is the free tier in Dream Journal Ultimate really unlimited?+

The listing says "Enter as many dreams as you would like for free, no limits". A reviewer who had been journaling in it for years hit a wall around the 300th dream and was told they had room for about ten more. We never got near that in testing, so we can't put a number on it, but if you write every night, treat "no limits" as marketing rather than a promise.

Are dreams in Dream Journal Ultimate private?+

By default yes, with two things to watch. Every entry carries a Public toggle that posts it to the Dream Wall, and the PIN lock has a two-minute grace window, so whoever opens the app right after you reads everything without the code. One reviewer found dreams shared that they hadn't meant to share, so check the toggle before you save.

Does voice recording work in Dream Journal Ultimate?+

It didn't for us. Every attempt came back "We didn't catch anything", on clean recordings in a quiet room, and it was the only feature that failed outright in our testing. Reviewers from earlier years praise the same thing, so something has broken along the way.

6. Dreams (iOS)#

Features#

• Sleep times, dream characteristics and how well you recalled each one
• Statistics across both your sleep and your dreams
• Drawing canvas
• Passcode or Touch ID lock, with iCloud sync
• Two-way Apple Health sync

Pros#

Cons#

Our verdict#

Dreams has never tried to be more than a journal. No AI, no readings, no voice recording. Just a simple journal interface. You can add sleep notes, dream notes, images and dream signs, and that's pretty much it. This app has been around for a long time, has a one-time purchase instead of a subscription, and has stuck to being a simple dream journal that is slightly better than a notes app.

The downside of this app is that the free version only includes a capped number of dreams. So if you're serious about dream journaling, you will have to pay. There's no unlimited free version. The paid version is cheaper than other apps, but it's pretty much mandatory.

What people say about Dreams#

★★★★★4.7on the App Store · 425 ratings

Dreams FAQ#

Is Dreams free?+

There is a free tier capped at a number of dreams, and $13.99 unlocks the app for good. That is the entire price list: no monthly plan, no AI credits, nothing that renews. Several one-star reviews are from people who hit the cap expecting the app to stay free.

Does Dreams interpret your dreams?+

No, and that is a deliberate choice rather than a missing feature. It records the dream, tracks the signs that recur across your entries and reports statistics on both, with no AI reading of any kind. If you want meaning alongside the record, that is what Oniri, Temenos Dream and Elsewhere are for.

Is the Dreams app available on Android?+

No. iPhone and iPad only, plus Apple Silicon Macs. It leans on Apple's own plumbing, iCloud for sync and Health for the sleep half, so an Android version would be a rewrite rather than a port. Spanish-speaking reviewers have been asking for one for years.

Where do your dreams live in the Dreams app?+

On your phone and in your own iCloud, with no developer server in the middle: the App Store listing declares no data collected at all. That's the strongest privacy position in this roundup, and it comes with the trade-off you'd expect, which is that nobody can recover anything for you. Export to PDF or XML now and then, and turn on the passcode or Touch ID lock.

What actually separates dream journaling apps#

Sometimes the apps all look the same at first glance. But here are five things to help you decide which app you should trust to put your data in.

1. Can you get your dreams back out?#

The export feature is the least glamorous feature in this category and yet the most important one. If the app is abandoned, or if you just want to switch to something else, you will need to be able to export your data. Oniri, Elsewhere and Lucidity let you export your journal for free. Dream Journal Ultimate and Dreams ask you to pay first. We could find no bulk export in Temenos.

2. What happens when your phone dies#

Rarely on the listing, and different in every app. Oniri, Elsewhere, Lucidity, Temenos and Dream Journal Ultimate all sync to an account for free, so you can access your data on a new phone. Dreams saves data in your own iCloud.

Most apps have reviews from users saying they lost their data. In most cases, the developer replies, and it's just a question of logging back into their account. Make sure you choose an app that is properly maintained to reduce risks and get support if you need it.

3. How deep the tagging goes#

If you just want to write text and that's it, any note app can do the job. What makes dream journaling apps useful is the tracking and tagging that sits underneath the text. Being able to search, filter and explore structured data to find patterns: how often does my mother appear, when did the falling dreams start, and so on.

That needs structure going in and a way to query it afterwards, and most apps are better at the first half. Oniri, Lucidity and Elsewhere have both, from different angles: Oniri tags in the most detail, Lucidity is the quickest to fill in, Elsewhere does it for you from the text. The other three stop at the writing. Temenos promotes words from your own dream into symbols, which is lovely for one dream at a time, but emotions and people are barely tracked across entries. Dream Journal Ultimate has notes and loose tags with nothing structured underneath. Dreams records signs, mood and how well you recalled the night, then only lets you search for a word rather than filter on any of it.

That gap matters more than it sounds. Search finds the dream you already remember; filtering finds the pattern you had no idea was there. If none of it appeals, the free apps will serve you better than the paid ones, and there is nothing wrong with paper either.

4. Is it enjoyable to use at 4am?#

Most of your logging happens in the dark, half-conscious, with about ninety seconds before the dream evaporates. You want an app that is enjoyable to use at night and that allows you to record your dream as quickly as possible.

Dark mode is the minimum. Voice capture helps more, and only three apps here do it properly: Oniri, Lucidity and Temenos. Dream Journal Ultimate has the button but it failed on every attempt during our tests. Elsewhere and Dreams don't offer voice at all.

After that it comes down to the tag picker, because tapping beats typing at that hour, and Oniri and Lucidity are the two built around it. If remembering more dreams is the goal, the app that gets a dream down in ten seconds beats the one with better statistics.

5. Whether anyone is still shipping#

5 of the 22 apps we tested have released nothing since 2024. A dream app that stops being maintained means that your data is at risk, and you'll get no support when you need it.

All 6 apps above are still maintained, which is a good part of why they're here. Dream Journal Ultimate has been updated steadily since 2014, Oniri since 2015, and Dreams since 2017. Lucidity is one developer working alone, but is reactive to reviews. Elsewhere and Temenos are the young ones, three and four years old, and both still ship.

Being alive is not quite the same as being reachable, though. Lucidity, Elsewhere and Oniri answer their reviews, often within hours; Temenos answers none of them. Look at the replies as well as the dates, then decide who you'd want on the other end of that email.

What about the other apps?#

There are so many dream journaling apps out there, the list could go on and on. Thankfully, some apps are easy to rule out, and that's why they haven't made it to this list.

DreamKeeper is free in the way almost nothing else here is: no ads, no subscription, no in-app purchases at all, and nothing you write ever leaves the phone. But the last update was November 2023, the design is from 2012, there is still no dark mode after a decade of people asking, and there are very limited tagging features. Once you're down to just writing text, you might as well use your default Notes app, better maintained and syncing your data better.

Dream Catcher is genuinely pleasant to use, until you find the paywall. Signing in with Google is a Pro feature, so on the free tier your dreams live on that one phone and nowhere else, and there is no export in any format to get them off it. Lose the phone, lose the journal. Its top-voted review is a "Final Warning" from someone who lost months of entries on a phone change.

DreamWell has beautiful lucid dreaming and meditation courses, but it's lacking many basic features for dream journaling. It has shipped nothing since November 2024 and its support address reportedly bounces, which makes it seem like the project is abandoned.

Dream Book charges $29.99 a month, the highest price here by a wide margin, and presents interpretations as coming from named human experts with headshots, star ratings and a running session timer. A detailed review found those experts replying in exactly seven minutes, every time, in an identical format and writing style. The developer denies it publicly. On top of the subscription sit pay-per-answer purchases and wallet top-ups running to $199.99. Whatever is happening there, it is not a dream journal.

Dreaming, by Sociaaal, gives fast interpretations that people like, then fails at the basic job: there is no account, no sync and no backup, so a new phone starts empty, and you cannot edit or delete an entry once written.

WorldWithin was built for lucid dreamers and carries a real journal underneath, with reality-check reminders, eight guides and a streak counter around it. Its last update was 8 July 2022. What makes it worth a warning rather than a shrug is that the $79.99 yearly membership is still advertised in the listing, and the terms and privacy links printed next to it point at worldwithin.app, a domain that no longer resolves to anything at all. Don't hand it a subscription, and don't hand it four years of dreams.

YoruX looks alive from the outside. The listing is up, the screenshots are lovely, and a $29.99 yearly subscription is still on sale for a journal with a community wall and AI images of your dreams. Nothing has shipped since 20 December 2023. The Terms of Service link printed in that same listing no longer reaches YoruX at all: the domain was sold on and now redirects to an online gambling page. 51 ratings averaging 3.4 make it the thinnest evidence base of anything we looked at, and it exists only on iPhone. A journal is a decade-long commitment if it works, and this one asks you to pay a company you can't find.

Which dream journaling app should you use?#

If you want the deepest journal and don't mind paying for extra features like interpretation and lucid dreaming techniques, that's Oniri. If you don't care about voice recording and deep tagging features, but would rather enjoy dream sharing features and Jungian interpretation, choose Elsewhere. If you want to spend three dollars and be done, go for Dream Journal Ultimate.

Ultimately, you should download a few to test and compare them yourself. Down the line, if you're going to journal your dreams seriously, this little step is a good time investment. And whichever you pick, export your dreams once a year.

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All the apps were given the same care during testing, including Oniri, which we develop ourselves. We applied the same testing methods, and analyzed the reviews from users the same way as other apps. All links are unaffiliated. No app paid to be featured on this list. Prices, ratings and versions were checked in August 2026.