Health Diary by MedM

First Impression

I downloaded this app on a random Tuesday night after scrolling through Reddit threads about study habits. My psychology professor wanted us to track a personal habit for a month, and I chose sleep quality versus afternoon headaches. I figured most apps would be complicated or cost money. Opening Health Diary, I was surprised it wasn’t plastered with ads or begging for a subscription. The layout was plain, just a white screen with a big blue plus button. My first thought was, “Okay, this looks boring but maybe that’s good.” I set up a tracker for “headache intensity” and another for “hours slept” in about five minutes. It didn’t feel exciting, but it didn’t feel like a chore either, which was a win.

What It Does Well

This app is stupidly good at one thing: letting you see connections. About three weeks into my project, I was staring at the simple line graphs on a Sunday morning. I had a brutal headache logged on Friday, and right there on the timeline below it was my sleep entry from Thursday night: 4.5 hours. I scrolled back and saw the same thing happened the previous Tuesday after a late study session. That visual link, seeing the low sleep bar next to the high headache spike, was so obvious. I never would’ve connected the dots just writing in a notebook. The calendar view is my other favorite part. I can just tap on, say, last Wednesday the 15th, and instantly see my logged stress level, my caffeine count from that day, and a note I made about an exam. It makes reviewing data for my project paper incredibly easy.

Where It Falls Short

For a free app, it’s solid, but it’s not perfect. The biggest letdown is that it feels like an island. I have a Google Pixel 7 and I use Google Fit to passively track my steps. I wish Health Diary could just pull that data in automatically instead of me having to type “4500 steps” manually. It’s a hassle. Also, while the design is clean, it can feel a bit bare-bones. Setting up a custom reminder for my vitamins was confusing—I had to poke around in the settings menu for a good ten minutes before I found the right spot. It works once it’s set, but the initial setup isn’t as intuitive as the rest of the app.

Is It Worth the Price?

It’s free. Let me repeat that: completely, totally free with no sneaky “pro” features locked away. For a student counting every dollar, this is the biggest advantage. I’ve tried other trackers that let you log three entries before asking for $5 a month. Health Diary gives you all the core tracking, graphing, and even the ability to export your data as a PDF. I used that export feature to create a chart for my psychology project, and it looked professional. You are literally getting a powerful tool for the price of a download. You can’t beat that.

Developer & Support

I had one issue where my symptom timeline graph stopped updating. I emailed support through the app, not really expecting a reply. I got a response four days later from someone named Sam. They weren’t generic—they asked for a screenshot of my settings and explained it was a known glitch with a recent Android update. They told me a fix was coming in the next app update and suggested a temporary workaround that actually worked. It wasn’t instant, but they knew their stuff and solved my problem. That made me trust the app more.

Privacy & Safety

This was a major concern for me, since I’m logging health stuff. Their privacy policy is pretty clear: your data stays on your device. They don’t sell it. You can back it up to your own Google Drive, which is what I did. The app doesn’t even ask for crazy permissions, just basic notification access for reminders. It feels more like a private digital notebook than a cloud service mining my info. For sensitive personal data, that local-first approach is exactly what I wanted.