Make Sure You Drink Enough Water With These Free Apps [Android]

Make Sure You Drink Enough Water With These Free Apps [Android]:

It is easy to forget to drink enough, especially in winter time, and especially if you’re not very physically active (no offense, I’m just being frank here). But it is important to take in enough water, both for weight loss and just for your general well-being, energy level, and more.

If you own an Android smartphone, it is probably your constant companion throughout the day (and the night, too, but let’s not go there). Today, I would like to share two simple, fun and free Android apps that you can use to monitor your water intake and be reminded to drink more often.

Water Your Body [1.6+]

Water Your Body is one beautiful app:

As you can see, it’s ad-supported, but they need to make money somehow, right? The shelves look a lot like iBooks shelves, only instead of books, you fill them with cups and bottles showing how much water you’ve been drinking throughout the day. When you first start the app it asks for your weight (and assumes 65kg) and then decides how much water it thinks you should be drinking every day. I have no idea where it comes up with that number, and I see no reason to place too much stake in it. But as a tracker, it is just lovely. Right by the daily water dosage there’s a cup with an arrow. Tapping it lets you set your default cup:

I love this feature, because throughout a typical day, I am likely to drink water out of one of several typical containers. Water Your Body lets me configure those cups and bottles in advance, gorgeous icons and all. Once you select a default cup, a short tap on the shelf would log that cup. You can also press and hold to pop up a menu that would let you specify a different cup.

If the cup sizes and icons aren’t right for what you need, just hop on over to the Settings menu:

You can now enter the Setting Cup option and fill in the list with whatever cups and volumes work for you:

The settings screen is also a good place to discuss the app’s reminder feature. You can have the app prompt you to drink throughout the day, at set intervals. A reminder is a message shown in the notification bar, along with a sound to draw your attention. I highly recommend changing the default sound: It’s a “running water” effect, and I leave it to your imagination what it looks like when you’ve got the phone in your pants pocket and suddenly the reminder goes off. Awk-ward.

Carbodroid [2.1+]

Carbodroid is a much simpler app, but is very cute. You’ve got four configurable containers (you get to set the volume), and a parched Android in the background. Tap a container (to show that you just finished drinking it), and watch what happens:

Ooh, Mr. Android looks a bit less gloomy already. That’s encouraging! Let’s finish another bottle and see how our droid feels:

Much, much better. And let’s round it off with the ultimate achievement, drinking enough water for one whole day:

I’m not entirely sure about their grammar there (I “have drunk” enough water?), but the message is clear. And once we tap the Awesome button, it reveals one seriously overjoyed droid:

If only water could make me this happy in real life. The settings dialog is straightforward, and lets you set your own daily consumption goal, container volumes, and reminders:

Final Thoughts

Water Your Body is a gorgeous app, and it is definitely more full-featured than Carbodroid. You can set more containers, and the graphics are gorgeous. On a less positive note, I don’t like having it decide how much water I should drink per day, without even explaining how it arrives at that number. Carbodroid is much simpler, but it’s also cuter, at least in my opinion.

So, no clear winner here, but I do think that any of them is likely to get you to drink more water. Try them out and tell me which one works better for you!

Image Credit: Shutterstock