Daylio alternative for habit tracking on iPhone
Daylio combines moods, activities and goals. miniHabits focuses on the habit log, without a mood journal.
Which job do you need?
Choose miniHabits only if you want to record actions rather than maintain a mood journal. It is not a replacement for Daylio’s diary, and it cannot import Daylio entries.
What Daylio already does
Daylio is more than mood tagging. Its official site describes goals, reminders, notes, photos, charts and mood–activity correlations. It also offers PDF and CSV exports. If your main question is how your days felt, those features belong to the job you are trying to do. Source: Daylio.
miniHabits does not include a mood journal, photo diary or mood correlations. A heatmap showing habit completion cannot answer the same questions.
miniHabits today
miniHabits is a paid iPhone habit tracker for iOS 17 and later. It has four tracking modes: checkbox, counter, timer and quantity. Schedules can be daily, selected weekdays or a number of times per week. Its heatmap shows 26 weeks.
Streak shields bank on satisfied days and are spent automatically on a missed day when available. A protected day stays visible in the history; it is not recorded as a completed habit. Break mode pauses judgement for all habits without spending shields.
Your device’s iCloud account is required for backup and sync. There is no free tier or free trial. After onboarding, a purchase or restore is required to enter the tracker. The two plans are an auto-renewing yearly subscription and a one-time lifetime purchase. EUR reference prices are 25 € per year and 34,99 € lifetime. Your App Store checkout shows the local price and currency.
miniHabits does not currently offer Android, web or Apple Watch apps, widgets, Live Activities, Apple Health integration, notification reminders, or CSV/JSON import and export. Switching means recreating habits manually, not transferring an existing history.
Choose the record you want to keep
“I read for twenty minutes” and “reading days felt better” are different observations. A miniHabits timer can record the first. It does not measure the second.
You could keep Daylio for reflection and use a separate tracker for actions. The cost is entering information in two places. If that extra work makes you stop logging, keeping one app is the more useful choice.
What happens to your history?
Do not delete Daylio after exporting and assume miniHabits can take over the file. It has no Daylio, CSV or JSON importer. Keep your diary and backups separately. Recreate only the habits you want to track from now on.
miniHabits fits a deliberate move toward a simpler action log. It is a poor choice if you would immediately miss diary entries, mood patterns or exportable records.
Sources and method
This comparison is written by the maker of miniHabits. Competitor details were checked against the official sources linked here on September 4, 2026. This is a documentation-based comparison, not a hands-on test. Features and offers can change; check the current store listing before paying.