This AI-Powered Journaling App Helped Me Feel Better In Minutes

Do you miss your therapist the second your session ends? Do you wish you could talk longer or reach out during the week to share your every thought and feeling? Then you might appreciate this interactive journaling app that uses a therapist-backed, AI-powered chat to keep the convo going.

Instead of holding everything in until your next sesh, you can simply open the Rosebud app whenever you need to vent, work through anxiety, set goals, or process tough feelings. I’ve been using it for the past two weeks and it never fails to help me feel a little more centered.

With hundreds of five-star reviews in the app store, Rosebud is quickly becoming a go-to for many people who want to supplement their in-person therapy — or for those who want to treat themselves to an easy, breezy, but entirely helpful journaling experience. As you type in entries and answer daily prompts, the app learns more about your thought patterns and goals, and then it responds to you with personalized Qs that help you calm down, recenter, or get to know yourself better.

It’s so much easier than journaling with a notebook and pen, and I’ve also found it to be extremely validating when I’m going through it and need somewhere to vent ASAP. Here’s what it was like to use the Rosebud journal and what to know about the app.

Fast Facts

• Price: Free to download, Rosebud Premium for $4.99/month
• Best for: Journaling, working through problems, venting
• My rating: 4/5
• What I like: Easy to use app, helpful chat, feels nice to vent
• What I don't like: Limits what you can do with the free version

What To Know About Rosebud

Rosebud is an AI-powered self-care app that uses a therapist-designed journal and habit tracker to help you dig deeper into your thoughts and feelings. It offers the option to type or voice journal to fill in your diary entries. As you chat, the app also learns more about you and your needs — similar to your most beloved counselor.

As you log journal entries, answer prompts, set goals, and reflect on your day, Rosebud gives you feedback and insight so you can learn more about your go-to beliefs and thought patterns — perfect for dissecting why you always fall into the same mental traps. It’s useful for navigating anxiety and stress, grief, anger, overthinking, overwhelm, and depression, or for clarity on a big decision.

The app has five tabs across the bottom. The Today tab is where you reflect, set intentions, and check off daily goals as you complete them. The Explore tab offers guided journals, personalized prompts, and workbooks from real therapists, and the plus sign in the middle lets you quickly create a blank journal entry to write down whatever your heart desires.

Then there’s the Insights tab where you’ll find AI-generated personal reports, your analyzed journal entries, and a graph with your moods and weekly “wins,” aka themes you unpacked or habits uncovered. And the History section lets you peek at past entries so you can appreciate how far you’ve come. The app is free, but the premium version offers unlimited personalized prompts, prompt bookmarking, voice journaling, unlimited entry history, and more.

Trying It Out

If you’re a fan of self-care or #WellnessTok, than you likely already know about the many benefits of journaling. Jotting your thoughts is a good way to reduce stress, increase gratitude, and work through your problems, especially when you’re stressed, but I love that this app adds a dash of therapy into the mix, too.

I found myself waxing poetic within five minutes of downloading Rosebud. I went straight to the morning reflection section where I quickly analyzed how I felt and what I hoped to get out of my day. It’s been so easy to start a fresh journal entry whenever I’m having a moment of stress and anxiety, too. The AI chat does a good job of breaking down what I’m feeling and explaining it back to me.

Another nice perk is the “Today’s goals” section where you can customize what you hope to do with your day. I’ve added stretching, reading, and going for more walks — and it feels good to pop back into the app and check them off as I go.

It’s nice to wind down with the Evening Reflection section too. The AI prompts you to answer questions like “What was the highlight of your day?” or “What was stressful about your day?” Similar to how a therapist would ask you check in with yourself, Rosebud encourages you to pause and reflect — and it’s nice to see what I’ve learned about myself in the weekly Insights reports that lay it all out.

It isn’t always easy to figure out what to write, which is why I love the various journal prompts and workbook-style sections in the Explore tab. There are things like gratitude journals, dream journals, relationship check-ins, and journals made by therapists with themes like “acceptance and commitment,” “nervous system rebalancing,” and “knowing your needs.”

As an anxious girly, I immediately clicked on the nervous system rebalancing journal and was prompted to start off with four deep breaths. Once I was chill, the chat guided me through questions about what puts me on edge, how stress makes me feel, the triggers that set me off, and how I tend to relax and reset.

It was all very eye-opening. Turns out I need a slow, mellow morning routine or I’ll be a total wreck for the rest of the day. I also can’t skip daily walks — not even when it’s rainy or cold — or else I kind of crumble. And it appears that I really value (and talk a lot about) accomplishing my to-do list. (Very Virgo rising of me.)

As I typed, the app offered the option to either finish my journal or “go deeper,” which meant it kept asking questions and encouraging me to reflect on what I had just said. This is where I really started to notice that the AI was learning my patterns and encouraging me to think further — something I wouldn’t have gotten out of a regular paper-and-pen journal.

The Takeaway

While there’s no true replacement for meeting with a therapist, I like that the Rosebud AI was “trained” by therapists, so it doesn’t just feel like random, cold info from the internet. The chat on the app seems like a conversation you’d have with a real person, which makes it feel warmer and more helpful. I’d say this is a great tool for venting, noticing thought patterns, and setting goals — or if you just really miss chatting with your therapist between sessions.