Mini Progress vs LighterMind Planner & Journal
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Mini Progress
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Most apps want your attention. They have streaks, badges, and notifications designed to keep you in the app. Mini Progress is different. It wants you to hit your number and get on with your life. Just the Progress Bar No complex dashboards. No "engagement" tricks. Just a simple, beautiful way to track your goals right on your Home Screen. Key Features: - Home Screen Widget: Your goals at a glance. - One-Tap Updates: Increment progress instantly. - Pure Monochrome: A clean, industrial aesthetic. - Privacy First: 100% local data + iCloud sync. No Gamification. No Guilt. Missed a day? Who cares. There are no streaks to break, no badges to lose. It’s a tool, not a game. Pick it up when you're ready.
LighterMind Planner & Journal
Organize your life with a planner that remembers. Combine daily planning, checklists, meal plans, and journaling in a private, local-first app. Features include time blocking, nested tasks, recipe import, and on-device AI for guided reflections.
- Month, week, day planner views
- Time blocks with overlap detection
- Multi-level nested checklists
- Meal planning with recipe import
- Freeform Markdown journaling
- On-device AI for guided reflections
- Custom tables and dashboards
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Plan your day. Lighten your mind. LighterMind is a planner with a memory: time blocks, reminders, and checklists up front, backed by the journal, meal plans, and trackers that give your plan context. Everything flows through one private, chronological feed, organized by tags that work the way your mind does. No account. Your entries never touch our servers. Just your data, on your devices. PLAN YOUR DAY Month, week, and day planner views Time blocks with overlap detection Reminders on any entry or ahead of a time block, with snooze right from the notification Calendar integration and Home Screen widgets CHECKLISTS & TASKS Multi-level nested checklists with due dates T-shirt-size your items and see how long what's left will take Drag-and-drop, quick-add, per-item notes and timestamps TEMPLATES & ROUTINES Save entries as reusable templates Daily, weekly, or monthly routines that spawn entries automatically MEAL PLANNING & NUTRITION Plan every meal for the whole household, person by person Import recipes from any website: ingredients, steps, and nutrition included Calories and macros on every meal, with daily totals checked against your targets SHARE AN ENTRY Invite someone to any entry: a packing list, a plan, a memory Edits sync on everyone's devices; stop sharing anytime Free for everyone JOURNALING & NOTES Freeform Markdown editor with live styling as you type Sketch and handwrite with Apple Pencil. Strokes snap to shapes, and handwriting is searchable Multi-photo galleries, threaded replies, auto-saved drafts Content blur and hidden entries for sensitive moments GUIDED JOURNALING, ON-DEVICE AI Reflections that respond to what you write: process a feeling, think through a decision Runs entirely on your device with Apple Intelligence, so your words never leave your hands Actionable flows end with a checklist of next steps (Requires a device with Apple Intelligence.) CUSTOM TABLES & DASHBOARDS Build your own tables with typed fields Reports and dashboards: counts, sums, averages, and trends POWERFUL ORGANIZATION Four kinds of tags: #topics group related entries @people track who's involved !events show up on your calendar plain tags for everything else Tags are hierarchical and searchable. Search understands meaning, not just keywords. Find anything across years of entries in seconds. CAPTURE FROM ANYWHERE Share links, photos, videos, and files into LighterMind from any app's share sheet Add entries hands-free with Siri Build Shortcuts that drop items onto checklists or log values to your tables On a Mac, opt in to connect AI agents like Claude over a local-only connection PRIVATE & LOCAL-FIRST No account required. Download and start planning Your entries never leave your devices except through your own iCloud sync Shared entries go only to the people you invite, through Apple's iCloud, and we can't read them Face ID and Touch ID protection On-device AI: your reflections are never sent to a server FREE, WITH AN OPTIONAL PRO UPGRADE Notes, checklists, replies, tags, search, reminders, entry sharing, guided reflection, and iCloud sync are free. The app is fully usable without paying. Pro adds time blocking and the planner widget, templates and routines, attachments, Apple Pencil drawings, nutrition, tag expansions, AI agents, and the structured entry types: data tables, recipes, meal plans, and reports. LighterMind Pro is an auto-renewable subscription, offered monthly or annually. It renews automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the period ends. Manage or cancel anytime in your Apple Account settings. Terms of Use: https://lightermind.app/terms/ Privacy Policy: https://lightermind.app/privacy/ BUILT FOR APPLE DEVICES Universal for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with Stage Manager, multi-window, and keyboard shortcuts throughout Free to start. No ads, no tracking, ever. Your plan in one place. Nothing on your mind.
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Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: LighterMind Planner & Journal at none against Mini Progress's 1. LighterMind Planner & Journal also leads on update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 2 months) and device support (3 vs 1). On price, ads and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Mini Progress sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. LighterMind Planner & Journal asks for nothing beyond the download.
Mini Progress ships an update every 2 months, LighterMind Planner & Journal every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 9, 2026 and October 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Mini Progress | LighterMind Planner & Journal |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | — | 1 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | — | Free |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.6 | 18.2 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1 MB | 16 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Peerasak Unsakon | Matthew Tempinski |
In-app purchases
Mini Progress
- Lifetime Unlock$3.99
LighterMind Planner & Journal
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Mini Progress free?
Is LighterMind Planner & Journal free?
Do Mini Progress or LighterMind Planner & Journal have ads?
Which is updated more often, Mini Progress or LighterMind Planner & Journal?
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