Who makes AquaJoy.

AquaJoy is made by Bruno Martins, an independent iOS developer, under the name Driftlab. It’s not a company with a content team — it’s one person who builds the app and writes everything on this site, which is worth knowing when you’re reading a page that compares AquaJoy to other apps.

Why AquaJoy exists

The App Store has no shortage of water trackers, and nearly all of them can log a glass of water perfectly well. The problem was never the logging. It was that after about ten days, there was no reason left to open any of them — a running total that resets at midnight is not a reward, and hydration gives you no visible feedback of its own.

AquaJoy is an attempt at the missing half: keep logging to a single tap, then put a progression layer on top of it — XP, 100 levels, streaks, and collectible pins at hydration milestones — so a good day leaves something behind. Two other decisions came from the same frustration: reminders that stop for the day once you hit your goal instead of nagging about water you already drank, and no account, ever, with hydration data kept on the device.

The app launched on the App Store in August 2026 for iPhone, on iOS 15.1 and later. It’s free to download; what the free tier covers is spelled out rather than buried.

How the app comparisons on this site work

This site publishes roundups that include AquaJoy alongside apps that compete with it — the nine best water tracking apps for iPhone, WaterMinder alternatives, and others. There’s an obvious conflict of interest in that, so here are the rules those pages follow:

• AquaJoy doesn’t automatically win. The roundups are organised by category rather than as one ranked list, because there is no single best hydration app — and AquaJoy is not claimed as the best overall. Waterllama has six years and 159,000 ratings on it, and the pages say so. Where a competitor is the better answer, that’s the answer given.
• Every roundup discloses that AquaJoy is ours, in the body of the page, near the top — not in a footer disclaimer.
• Every app gets a “where it falls short” section, AquaJoy included. Ours currently reads: three weeks old, no rating history, no Apple Watch app, no Apple Health sync, English only.
• Factual claims come from public App Store listings, checked on the date shown on the page. Ratings, rating counts, iOS requirements and Apple Watch support are all verifiable against those listings.
• No invented numbers. Where something can’t be verified from the outside — what sits behind a competitor’s paywall this month, for instance — the page says so and tells you how to check, instead of guessing.
• No affiliate links, no paid placements, no sponsored entries. Nobody pays to be on these lists and there’s nothing to earn from linking out.

Ratings and requirements move. If you find something on this site that’s out of date or wrong, tell me and I’ll fix it and change the date on the page.

Health information

The hydration guides here — like how much water you should drink a day — are general information, written conservatively and in ranges. They are not medical advice, they aren’t written by a clinician, and they can’t account for your health conditions, medications, activity or climate. If hydration matters medically for you, ask a doctor rather than an app blog. The same disclaimer is in the terms of use.

Privacy, in one paragraph

AquaJoy requires no account and no sign-up, and hydration data stays on your device. This website has no analytics, no tracking scripts and no cookies. The privacy policy is the long version, but it doesn’t say anything the previous sentence didn’t.

Contact

One address for everything — support, corrections, press, or telling me a comparison is wrong: [email protected].