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Mood tracker ideas: colour keys and what to track

A mood tracker is the quickest kind of journal: a colour for the day, maybe a line, and a month later you can see your own patterns.

Four mood keys to choose from

Six soft colours. Bright, warm, calm, dreamy, heavy and blank. Enough range for most days, few enough to choose in a second.
Weather. Sunny, partly cloudy, foggy, rainy, stormy. Easy to picture and gentle on hard days.
Energy only. High, steady, low. Useful if mood and energy feel like the same thing for you.
Three words. Pick one of three words you chose yourself, like light, okay, heavy.

Bright · energy, joyWarm · calm and goodCalm · even, quietDreamy · thoughtful, softHeavy · tired, hardBlank · nothing much

Quiet Journal's six colours.

What to track alongside mood

One line about the day. The thing you'd tell a friend about today.
Sleep. Roughly how you slept, in hours or one word.
Movement. Did you move today: walk, workout, nothing.
People. Who you spent time with.
Outside time. Whether you got daylight.
One good thing. Even a small one.

Pick one or two of these, not all six. A tracker that takes longer than a minute gets skipped.

Reading it without charts

Lay the month out as colour and the patterns show up on their own: Sundays that run heavy, a calm week after a holiday. Read the one-liners from those days and the reason is usually there. Quiet Journal does this for you every Sunday in a short letter, written on your iPhone from your own entries.

See also: year in pixels · journal prompts

One line a day, in colour

Quiet Journal asks for one colour and one line each evening. Every Sunday your iPhone writes you a short letter about your week, and nothing ever leaves your phone.

Download on the App Store

Free to start · No account · No ads

Questions

What should a mood tracker include?

A colour or word for the day, and ideally one line about what happened. Extra fields like sleep or movement help you spot patterns, but keep them optional.

How do I read a mood tracker?

Look at a whole week or month at once, not single days. Notice runs of similar colours and what the one-liners on those days have in common.

Is a mood tracker a medical tool?

No. It's a journal habit for noticing your own patterns. If you're struggling, talk to someone you trust or a professional.