10 Best Vision Board Apps to Help Achieve Your Goals

One of the first steps to realizing your dreams is to make them more clearly defined and focused. Just as you make grocery lists at home or project outlines at work, a vision board can help you stay on track while you work towards your personal and professional goals.

While it can function as a gentle reminder of where you want to be in a few years’ time, thus influencing your actions, vision boards can also act as inspirational, multimedia to-do lists for the near future.

So, how do you get started?

The best way to begin the process is to consider what type of vision board would work best for you (such as minimal, video-based or accompanied by music) and then find an app that can help you create it.

Ready to find out more? Let’s jump right in!

What is a vision board?

You can think of a vision board as a collage of images that represent your goals and dreams. For example, if your dream is to become a successful writer, then you might create a vision board with images of cozy cafés and libraries, covers of books you love, and quotes from famous authors whose work has inspired you to pursue writing in the first place.

You could even add an image of your favorite author receiving a prize in front of an audience to help you visualize being in their shoes.

As you can see, the idea of a vision board is to act as a source of inspiration and motivation every time you look at it, encouraging you to stick to a course of action even when the going gets tough.

The benefits of using a vision board

As Oprah Winfrey (a firm believer in the power of vision boards and manifestation) famously said: “We don’t create our future life in the future... We create it now.”

Let’s look at some ways in which dream boards can help you realize your dreams:

• You define your goals. You can’t go after something unless you know exactly what it looks like.
• You visualize achieving those goals. This can be incredibly rewarding and keep you going.
• You stay motivated. Seeing a visual representation of your dream life every day can be inspiring.
• You stay focused. If your dream board functions more as a to-do list, it can help you tick off your steps to success one by one.
• You shift your mindset. Instead of focusing on what you can’t do, a vision board can remind you of what’s in your control.

Best vision board apps to consider

We’ve seen how vision boards can positively influence your actions and help you stay on track to crushing your goals. Now let’s look at 10 apps and platforms that can help you create an effective dream board based on what you’d like to include!

To select the best apps out there, we considered affordability, number of features, user-friendliness and quality of customer support provided to users.

1. Perfectly Happy

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Available on Android, iOS and desktop

Perfectly Happy is an easy-to-use vision board maker that’s available on Android, iOS and desktop. Besides vision board creation, the platform offers gratitude journaling and affirmation features, with thousands of affirmations in various categories. These include confidence, body positivity, relationships and stress.

The vision boards themselves can include moving images, audio affirmations and motivational music, which evokes stronger emotions than static images do. This is essential in using the visualization technique for success, as you need to engage your senses for it to have an effect. The vision boards also allow for direct image import from the web (a feature that’s unique to Perfectly Happy!) in addition to image uploads and image selection from a library.

With thousands of “perfectly happy” users and a 4.8 rating on the App Store, Apple has included the app in its App Store Foundations program for promoting new and innovative applications.

Check out Perfectly Happy

2. Gratitude

Available on Android and iOS

This multi-use app boasts a 4.9 approval rating on Google Play as well as the Apple store, and over 1.5 million downloads. Gratitude allows users to create multiple vision boards featuring photos, quotes and affirmations. With it, you can also compile a video with all your aspirations and have it accompanied by a soundtrack.

Dream boards can serve as great motivation for life and career success, but that’s not all this app has to offer. Additional tools for inspiration include a gratitude journal with daily prompts for writing, feel-good quotes delivered in the form of notifications, as well as guided challenges for overall wellbeing and positivity.

By promoting good mental health and a sense of self-appreciation, the Gratitude app creates the premise that’s needed to thrive and crush your goals.

3. Canva

Available on Android, iOS and desktop

While not created specifically for dream boards, Canva has become a favorite among users as an exceptional (and free!) design tool. This app features thousands upon thousands of templates and stock photos you can use to vividly represent your goals and dreams.

Being particularly easy to use while producing graphics that look expertly designed, Canva helps you unlock your creativity and experiment with color, blur, pixelation, text, filters, stickers, and more. The best part is that you can do it from any device you want!

Considering all this, it’s no wonder that the online graphic design tool attracts 150 million users per month. It’s also easy to understand why it’s received numerous awards and acknowledgments since its foundation in 2012 — including making it on the TIME100 World’s Most Influential Companies list and the Forbes Cloud 100 list in 2023 alone.

4. Visuapp Vision Board

Available on Android and iOS

Dreams come in all shapes and might change or evolve over the course of our lives. So, what’s the best way to keep track of them? Visuapp Vision Board has the answer: to “take all your dreams with you”!

This dream board app follows a traditional model that allows you to build a slideshow of multiple life and career goals with photos, text, music, and more. It also lets you set reminders to receive a regular dose of inspirational quotes as well as prompts for meditation.

Visuapp, which has a 4.7 rating on the App Store, also has a feng shui vision board feature which lets you categorize your dreams. To do this, you select photos that represent nine aspects of life: family, relationships, career, fame, money, health, creativity, knowledge and travel.

5. Udreamr

Available on desktop

So far, we’ve looked at platforms and applications that allow you to create stunning digital vision boards. But what if you want a physical copy of your design, too? Hanging up your dream board somewhere in your home where it’s visible can be a great way to trigger positive emotions, like excitement, which fuels your determination to pursue your dreams.

With this in mind, Udreamr was created. It gives you the best of both worlds by allowing you to create digital vision boards using professionally designed templates and giving you the option to have them printed and shipped anywhere in the world.

Udreamr offers several templates in two main categories: dream board posters and journals. Choose the one you like, fill in the prompts for fonts, text and colors, then add your desired photos. You’ll see your customization take place in real time as you complete each step!

6. Desygner

Available on Android, iOS and desktop

Like Canva, Desygner is a graphic design tool that can be used for any project, vision board-related or not. It offers thousands of free templates you can make use of, as well as countless royalty-free images, stickers and fonts you can incorporate in your designs. In addition, Desygner has a wealth of editing options, including animations and filters.

For those looking for a printed version of their vision board, Desygner can be a great choice with its print-on-demand option. Conveniently, even if you start designing your board on desktop, you can continue editing on the go on your phone!

Since it launched in 2016, the graphic design maker has been featured on the Google Play Editors’ Choice section, mentioned on Forbes, and attracted 22 million users worldwide.

7. Visbo

Available on Android and iOS

Visbo: Dreams Vision Boards allows you to create multiple vision boards and easily organize them into categories, such as travel destinations and healthy habits. The app allows you to upload your own photos or select from thousands of options on the Pexels image library to make your most visually impactful dream board yet.

In addition, Visbo comes with its own music library, which adds another layer of inspiration to your boards, making it likelier for you to stay motivated and work towards achieving the things you envision.

What really stands out about this app is the fact that you don’t need to create an account in order to get started. Although this will result in a more limited number of features accessed, it can be great if you’re looking for a quick and easy way to create your first vision board. You always have the option to subscribe for a yearly fee and create multiple vision boards if you want to.

8. Sparkello

Available on Android and iOS

Sometimes the motivation to accomplish more in life requires a little spark, which is where Sparkello can help. The app features an aptly named “Sparks” section designed to help the user generate ideas for a fun, fulfilling future. These are divided into categories, such as fitness, creativity and travel. Each category then provides suggestions, such as “exercise every day for a month”, “learn to knit” and “go on a road trip”.

Once you select the dreams and goals that align with your values, Sparkello prompts you to expand on why each of these goals matters to you. It also encourages you to select a time period in which you’ll have completed your goal, and gives you the option to rank how much of a priority it is to you. When you put into words why a goal matters and set a deadline to hit your milestone by, it helps you stay committed and focused!

The app also comes with daily gratitude prompts and interest groups you can follow to stay connected with fellow goal-setters.

9. Vision Board, Visualize Dreams

Available on Android

If you’re inspired by bright, colorful imagery, this could be the best vision board app for you. Choose a photo or upload your own, add text, clip art, stickers, and more. If you've ever used the stories feature on Instagram, then creating a visually stunning dream board with a soundtrack on this app should be a piece of cake for you — it’s very similar and that easy to use.

Like with productivity planner apps, Vision Board, Visualize Dreams has a dashboard with goal progress tracking so you can see at a glance how far along you’ve come with the targets you’ve set for yourself.

The app also has a community page where you can exchange thoughts and ideas with other users, leave likes and comments, and repost the content that resonates with you. Last but not least, Vision Board, Visualize Dreams has an affirmations section, which you can easily navigate using categories, such as gratitude, success and self-esteem.

10. Vision Board - Aesthetic Quote

Available on iOS

A survey by Reviews.org has shown that Americans aged 18 and older pick up their phones 144 times a day. Imagine how powerful it could be, then, if every time you checked your screen, you saw something relating to your goals!

That’s the idea that Vision Board - Aesthetic Quote was built around. The app allows you to create impactful vision board backgrounds for your phone, consisting of both quotes and images you find inspiring so that you never lose sight of your goals and dreams. You can also create your own affirmation-based backgrounds by selecting a premade backdrop and adding your favorite sentiment to it.

Thanks to its ease of use, Vision Board - Aesthetic Quote has a near-perfect 4.8 rating on the App Store.

Tips for making a great vision board

Once you’ve decided on the app you’re using, consider the following five points to make a vision board that inspires action!

• Keep it focused. Create separate vision boards for different aspects of your life, such as your fitness, career and travel goals.
• Browse the web for inspiration. Looking at vision board examples will help you identify what layout and contents you find most inspiring.
• Use vibrant, high-quality images. The more esthetically pleasing, the better! Great images evoke strong emotions.
• Include a variety of materials. Aside from photographs, incorporate quotes, snippets, affirmations and sound tracks (for digital boards).
• Update your board frequently. Goals change sometimes. Revise your board’s contents regularly to get the most from it!

Key takeaways

The first step to effective goal setting is to have a clear vision of what it is you’re hoping to achieve and why it’s important that you do. The more you remind yourself of these things and envision the sort of future you’d like to experience, the likelier it is that you’ll commit to taking the necessary steps.

To summarize what we talked about in this article:

• Many vision board apps offer additional motivational tools that can be useful in achieving your goals, such as journaling prompts and affirmations.
• Looking at examples of vision boards can help you identify the type of content that evokes positive emotions and inspires action for you.
• If you can, print your vision board and paste it up on your wall, ideally somewhere you’ll see it multiple times a day.

Do you have any additional applications or websites to recommend for vision board creation? Let us know in the comments section!

Originally published on July 16, 2015.