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MoodSync

MoodSync vs How We Feel: clinical scales or emotional vocabulary?

1 min read · Sources last checked: May 2026 · Editorial comparison, not affiliate.

TL;DR

Choose MoodSync if you live with bipolar disorder and want clinical-style scales over weeks (the same setup also fits structured anxiety or BPD tracking alongside care).

Choose How We Feel if you want to expand your emotional vocabulary and check in with named feelings each day.

  • Built for bipolar

    MoodSync
    How We Feel

  • Mood scale

    MoodSync
    0–3 clinical-style anchors per axis
    How We Feel
    Pleasantness × energy grid + emotion words

  • Bipolar-specific axes

    MoodSync
    Depression, elevation, irritability, anxiety
    How We Feel

  • Sleep tracking

    MoodSync
    Built in, plotted with mood
    How We Feel
    Light

  • Medication tracking

    MoodSync
    Daily 'meds taken' toggle on every entry
    How We Feel

  • Emotional vocabulary

    MoodSync
    Notes only
    How We Feel
    Extensive — the app's main feature

  • Free tier

    MoodSync
    Free, with an optional Pro tier
    How We Feel
    Free, no paid tier

  • Data storage

    MoodSync
    On device, with optional private iCloud sync
    How We Feel
    See current App Store privacy details

How We Feel is a beautiful app and a meaningful project. It comes out of research on emotional granularity and is designed to help people name what they feel with more precision over time. That work is not the same as tracking bipolar disorder, and that is OK.

What How We Feel does well

A pleasantness-by-energy grid plus a wide emotion vocabulary. Daily check-ins. A clean visual of your week. For someone whose goal is "I want to know what I am feeling more accurately", it is hard to beat.

What it does not do

It does not separate depression from elevation. Mania has been measured on its own scale since 1978 because it does not live on the same axis as depression1978; an emotion-grid app collapses both into one location. It does not track medication. It does not chart sleep alongside mood for the "was the bad week the week of bad nights" question.

Where MoodSync fits

Clinical depression rating has used compact ordinal scales since 19601960. Ambulatory assessment in psychiatry depends on logs that capture exactly the kind of data MoodSync stores — short, real-time, repeated2013. The MoodSync chart is built to be the thing you scroll through at a psychiatry visit, not the thing you check at lunch to name your feelings.

If your question is "what am I feeling right now," How We Feel is probably the better app. If your question is "what shape did the last four weeks take, and what should I bring to my appointment," MoodSync is.

More on this choice

FAQ

Is How We Feel a bipolar tracker?

No. How We Feel is built around emotional granularity — naming what you feel from a wide vocabulary, with the goal of building emotional literacy. It is not designed to track depression or mania separately, log medication adherence, or surface the patterns clinicians look for in bipolar disorder.

Should I use both?

Some people do. How We Feel is good for emotional vocabulary practice; MoodSync is built for clinical-style mood, sleep, and medication patterns over weeks. If you only have time for one daily app, choose the one that matches the question you are trying to answer.

Sources

  1. Young RC, Biggs JT, Ziegler VE, Meyer DA (1978). A rating scale for mania: reliability, validity and sensitivity, British Journal of Psychiatry. link
  2. Hamilton M (1960). A rating scale for depression, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. link
  3. Trull TJ, Ebner-Priemer U (2013). Ambulatory assessment, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. link