Best Yoga Apps

If you're looking to start the New Year with a new you, why not start a healthy exercise activity like yoga? While yoga is an ancient art of breathing and stretching, that doesn't mean that its adherents haven't embraced the wonders of modern technology. A number of yoga apps available for Android and iOS devices provide visual and audio guides to a variety of poses useful for everything from everyday stretching, exercise, to just stretching in a cramped desk chair or business trip. If you're looking to start some healthy habits, check out our favorite yoga apps for smartphones and tablets. (Image Credit: MartyWeil/Shutterstock)

Yoga Studio provides users with 65 ready-made yoga and meditation classes ranging from 10 to 60 minutes, with a variety of difficulties and exercises all presented with HD video. What's more, Yoga Studio also allows users to create their own video classes from the app's library of yoga poses and "pose blocks" (poses commonly grouped together). Users can further customize music and ambient sounds, as well as schedule classes, which will automatically sync with your calendar.

Asana Rebel (Android, iOS) is a yoga app with health, fitness, and weight loss in mind. The app offers up a mix of more than 100 different workout routines and matching video tutorials designed by yoga and fitness experts, with personalized lists to match your fitness goals as well as curated collections. Users can filter workouts by their training goals, duration, intensity, or collection, as well as preview workouts to find the one just right for them. App subscriptions start at $9.99 per month, with discounts for longer periods.

Alo Moves (Android, iOS) offers more than 2,500 video classes from its stable of world-class yoga instructors, offering everything from the traditional styles such as Vinyasa and Ashtanga, to more modern focused takes designed to build strength, flexibility, and wellness. Users can search for the right video class based on intensity, duration, instructor, or style; they can also try out curated collections of classes that have something to offer to experienced practitioners and newbies alike. Subscriptions start at $19.99 per month. 

YogaGlo offers its subscribers a variety of yoga and meditation training videos that they can stream on demand to their phone, tablet, or computer. You can access thousands of classes ranging from short 5-minute exercises to longer 2-hour workouts, designed for beginners, experts, and everyone in between. Pick a schedule, experience level and workout goal, and the app will help choose the right guided program for you. You can also do a filtered search for classes, exercises, and instructors. 

FitStar teams up with yoga guru and Strala Yoga founder Tara Stiles to bring you FitStar Yoga, a personalized yoga training app that streams a wealth of yoga workouts designed to help you lose weight and increase flexibility. As with the core FitStar app, FitStar Yoga first aims to get a sense of your fitness with introductory sessions, adjusting the difficulty of future sessions based on user feedback. Each yoga session is provided in HD video, complete with audio guidance and soundtrack. Users can track their progress with milestones and achievements, and can integrate with the Health app as well as Jawbone UP, MyFitnessPal and Fitbit.

Start the day right with Yoga Wake Up (Android, iOS), an alarm clock app that's designed not just to wake you up but also to get you up and moving. Your traditional wake-up alarm is followed immediately by a guided meditation and yoga session that starts right from your bed, so that you're not rudely forced out of sleep but gently eased into waking up and getting your body active. The app comes with a variety of yoga exercises and meditations to keep your wake up routines varied. In addition to waking you up, the app can also help you get some restful sleep with bedtime reminders and meditations.

Daily Yoga (Android, iOS) provides users with a library of more than 50 yoga classes and 400-plus workout poses, complete with HD video and background music. Seven yoga plans are available for beginners with a variety of exercise focuses, as well as a variety of intensities and durations. For more advanced modules and poses though, you'll need to subscribe to the app.