If you could, you’d get your eight glasses of water a day, but—let’s be real—it doesn’t always happen. You get busy and distracted. Other beverages catch your eye and before you know it, the day is over and you got maybe half of the recommended glasses.
Oops.
It’s okay! If you’re struggling to reach your water intake goals, you’re far from alone. Having a reusable water bottle at your disposal is the first step towards more regular hydration. Of course, unless you have a smart bottle, it’s not going to tell you how much to drink and when to refill.
An app can.
In a world where there’s truly an app for just about anything, there are indeed many, many hydration apps. Through these apps, which are available for all your favorite devices, you can finally reach your water goals.
We combed through dozens of hydration apps to give you our 12 favorites. Not all of them are free, but you can expect to stay more hydrated no matter which app(s) you choose.
1. Drink Water Reminder
From Leap Fitness Group comes the highly-rated app called the Drink Water Reminder. The star feature is the water tracker. You tell the tracker the amount of water you plan to drink that day and let it do the rest. It will give you reminders asking you to drink. You choose the times you want to start and stop sipping.
If you’re already using programs like Samsung Health or Google Fit, Drink Water Reminder syncs up with them. It will even track your weight! You can use a prior Google account to log right in and get started, which makes using this app incredibly easy.
As you track your hydration with the app, with time, it will generate logs and graphs of your daily routine, including your water intake. You can also make a backup of your data to transfer it across devices.
Drink Water Reminder is free.
2. Aqualert
Another of our top picks is Aqualert. You can get this app on almost any device you use from both Google Play and the Apple App Store. With a simple yet appealing interface, you’ll want to use Aqualert regularly.
While it’s primarily a hydration tracker, Aqualert has plenty of other handy features that make it worth using. These include hydration notes, where you can encourage and motivate yourself to drink more. You can also add custom water servings for more accurate drinking.
The detailed indicator charts and graphs show your water consumption over weeks, months, and more. There’s even a sleep mode that keeps your phone notification-free while you snooze.
If you’re not sure how much water someone like yourself should be drinking, use Aqualert’s intake calculator. This lets you choose your activity levels, weight, and gender to determine if you need more or less than the recommended eight daily glasses.
Aqualert is free.
3. Water Time
The Mobile Creatures app Water Time features an adorable mascot, but there’s so much more to it than cutesiness. This water tracker and reminder app easily let you set up how much water you want to drink daily with its controls. For instance, there’s the capacity selector in ounces and other measurements. You simply tap to get it just right.
Each day, you get a progress bar that tells you how much more water you have to drink to achieve your goals. The progress bar is interactive, too! Also, like Aqualert, you can toggle the notifications so you don’t get them while you sleep.
One of our favorite features of Water Time is how it’s actually not all about water. Shocking, we know, but c’mon, you drink other beverages, too. You can select from coffee and tea, keeping track of how much you consume of these drinks since they do have water in them. How handy!
Water Time is free.
4. Plant Nanny
Are you someone who gets bored with simple apps? If so, then you have to give Plant Nanny a try. With more than a million downloads, this app has been featured in Business Insider and more.
If you remember Tamagotchi, Plant Nanny is sort of like that. You’re responsible for a sweet anthropomorphized plant and can even collect several plants the more you log into the app. It’s your job to keep the plants alive by logging your water consumption.
By pressing a button, Plant Nanny replenishes your plants with water-based on what you drank. If you still have a ways to go each day, then the app will let you know. Like the other apps thus far, you can of course track how much water you’ve drunk over the short-term and long-term.
Plant Nanny is available on Windows Phone, Google Play, and the Apple App Store. It’s free.
5. Hydro Coach
A newer app that has attracted a following of over two million people, Hydro Coach is another great choice for drinking more water. If you use Google Fit, Samsung Health, or Fitbit devices, you can sync Hydro Coach to them effortlessly.
You begin by inputting your local weather, lifestyle, weight, and age to get a personalized target. From there, the app will tell you how much water to drink. It even accommodates for breastfeeding and pregnant women.
Select from more than 80 types of cups, bottles, and other drinking vessels. Hydro Coach will count every beverage, even smoothies. Statistics and data go back over the years, and of course, you can track your hydration daily.
Hydro Coach is free.
6. iHydrate
Another highly-rated water app is iHydrate. As of this writing, there have been more than 200,000 downloads and over five billion drinks logged.
Like several of the other apps we’ve talked about, iHydrate pairs up with Jawbone, Fitbit, and Apple Watch so you can take your hydration with you anywhere. Since there’s water in drinks like tea and coffee (as we mentioned), iHydrate allows you to input tons of different beverages. We’re talking energy drinks, soda, juice, and milk…although we don’t recommend drinking soda too often.
Charts and graphs in amazing detail will tell you how close you are to achieving your daily goals as well as monthly and even yearly ones. You can set and change those goals yourself, increasing or lessening your daily water intake. Of course, iHydrate will help you get there with customized reminders.
iHydrate is available for $2.99.
7. Gulp
TheForty’s Gulp app is simple, but it boasts five stars on the Google Play Store, so we thought it was worth mentioning.
There are several functions and features to be had with Gulp. You can, as you’d expect, track your water consumption every day. It’s easy to record what you’re drinking as well as how much.
Gulp is free.
8. Waterlogged
We also quite like Waterlogged, which encourages you to “crush” your water goals. Unlike a lot of the other apps out there, which let you choose a beverage and container type, Waterlogged wants to see what you’re drinking. You can take a picture of your cup, mug, water bottle, or any other drinking vessel. Waterlogged takes it from there.
With regular reminders telling you to drink, you’ll never have to worry about falling off-track again. Graphs let you know how you’re progressing towards your goals, so if you need to make changes, you can.
You can also set up test reminders, choose from various app themes, and select motivators to get you drinking.
Waterlogged is free, but there’s a premium version available for $3.99. It includes Fitbit integration, a lifetime subscription, and extra reminders.
9. Water Call PRO
While you can always download the standard Water Call app, we recommend Water Call PRO because of its myriad of features. These include pro support, no ads, and up to 22 fun themes to choose from. You get both dark and light themes.
Once you install Water Call PRO, it will begin sending you notifications. You tap on these and then fill up your glass. As you drink, the app generates a hydration history to show you. If you need an extra push, Water Call PRO will even send you motivational messages.
There’s a do not disturb feature in case you need to sleep or do other important, quiet activities. Otherwise, you can expect regular notifications telling you to drink some water. You can select from a few units of measure for your reusable water bottle or other drinking vessels. The recommended water intake can also change depending on your temperature, activity levels, and weight.
Water Call PRO costs $1.99.
10. Paper Boat
Pione Studio developed and produced Paper Boat. On the surface, this doesn’t look like a hydration app, but it is. With a concept much like Plant Nanny, Paper Boat shows your daily water consumption with none other than a paper boat. The boat floats along the water, which grows depending on how many beverages you consume. There are little marks on the main interface telling you how much further you need to go with your daily drinking to reach your goal.
Besides its simple, pretty design, Paper Boat has a lot of other cool features. These include various units of measurement for your water as well as a calculator for your daily moisture requirements.
You can also choose your water bottle or cup size as well as reminder times and intervals. Paper Boat does track how much water you drink as well, as you’d expect.
Paper Boat is free.
11. Daily Water
Another highly-rated app (with five stars on the Google Play Store) is Grassapper LLC’s Daily Water. With their goal of inspiring you to drink more water with fun, Daily Water gives you awards and cheers you on as you get closer to your goal!
If that’s not your thing, you can always use their water reminders, the intake counter, and their hydration tracker to keep up your water consumption. All reminders and goals can be edited so they’re more in line with your lifestyle.
Daily Water has more features still, like weekly and monthly hydration charts, detailed stats per glass recorded, and various beverage measurements, such as ounces and milliliters.
Daily Water is free.
12. WaterMinder
Our final pick for hydration apps is WaterMinder from Funn Media. Although it’s no-frills, we chose WaterMinder because of its many, many features. There are the water measurements, which can go between UK and US measurements, such as milliliters and ounces.
You also get awards and unlock achievements in WaterMind simply by drinking and logging your water consumption. If you want to go back and see how much you’ve drunk on a certain day or month, you can with a graph and detailed history.
WaterMinder puts the power in your hands with customizable reminders. You can set the timing and frequency of those reminders so you never miss a glass. Other beverages besides water are supported, as are cups and vessels of all sizes. You can customize them with your own icons or color-code them.
WaterMinder is free.
Conclusion
If you’re on a mission to begin drinking eight glasses of water a day, you’ll love the apps we covered in this article. Through reminders, unique interfaces, trackers, and even fun game elements, drinking water has never been easier. No matter how you get your water, purely through a reusable bottle or even sometimes through coffee and tea, it all goes into your app. A healthier, happier you is possible. Now get out there, start downloading, and enjoy drinking water!