What do you want in a habit tracker?

Personally, I think streak freezes like Duolingo are essential. Habit trackers have the potential to be just as destructive as they are constructive. If you have a streak in the hundreds and then lose it inadvertently for whatever reason it can be crushing. Similarly, if you’re trying to get a streak off the ground and you keep failing it can be equally disheartening. I think Duolingo really have nailed the underlying purpose of the habit tracker which is to get you to continue doing the activity you want to do rather than to just show you a precise breakdown of your activities.

Duolingo implementation of this is if you miss a day then the streak doesn’t increase but it’s also not lost either. If you go through all your streak freezes then eventually it is lost but it is quite hard to do this; most people have two and if you pay for Duolingo you normally get an extra one. Subsequently my streak on Duolingo is 846. My current streak on Brilliant which doesn’t implement streak freezes is 0 and my longest streak is 45. I am far, far more motivated to use Duolingo than I am Brilliant and the streak implementation plays a big part in this.

If anyone knows any of the Brilliant devs, please send this comment to them. They seem to be making the app more like Duolingo with leagues and XP but, in my opinion, the streak implementation could be vastly improved.

1. Sync with other apps I already use. MyFitnessPal is the biggest example. Todo list apps or workout apps are another. I'm already entering data in these apps, so entering it again in a habit tracker is extra work.

2. Tracking negative habits. I want to tracker whether I refrained from doing something bad as frequently as I want to track doing something good.

3. As automated as possible. The biggest problem with habit trackers is if I'm too lazy to do the habit, I'm also too lazy to enter that in the tracker, so I end up with skewed data.

I've been using Streaks[1] on iOS for the past few weeks and it's everything I've been looking for. It supports widgets, all data stored locally and can import/export as a csv file, no ads, no tracking, no bullshit. I used to use Loop Habit Tracker[2] on android and it was similarly really good in all the respects you mentioned and more, plus I managed to transfer/convert all my habits over to Streaks when I switched as they're both csv formats.

[1]: https://streaks.app/ [2]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.isoron.uhabits/

Ability to print onto paper and then OCR. That way my habit tracking can be more independent of the cell phone I’m trying to habitually spend less time with.

I've been using your app 'flathabits' for over a year (maybe 2) and I love it. You have done right for the users. The intention you put into the app caused me to seek out and start using 'Plain org' as well.

The constructive criticism I have is when I have an 'bad' day or I'm traveling, canceling out each of the daily habits with the 2 step "skip" can be cumbersome. I'd prefer a swipe left or right which would be faster, or maybe 2 buttons (Done,Skip).

As for wider adoption, besides the usability issue above, I use your app because it integrates with my larger org-mode ecosystem (beorg, working copy, emacs) that I sync with my computer. Other comments mention visualization, sync with existing tools, I get that over on the Emacs side so I don't need it in your app.

You've built the great app for a tiny niche market, org-mode users who use iPhone. If you want to expand maybe make the app more intuitive, like others mentioned maybe some visualizations so that the app can stand alone better without org-mode being its primary selling point. I love your app because it is simple, because of the driving principles you put into it, and it syncs with my larger ecosystem.

Your app is great for org-mode people, the issue is that there are not many of us. Please don't undermine your driving principles for a higher download count.

As I’ve recently been testing a bunch of habit trackers for iOS, settling on Routinery for the past few weeks, there’s a few things that seem to be missing:

1. Privacy, subscription-less, tracking-less. Which you’ve covered.

2. A decent widget showing your streak of not breaking the chain. Most of the major habit tracking apps either have no widget or the widget is just to launch a routine set.

3. Timers for each habit item, which then allows you to mark as complete to auto start the next habit and timer, or pause if one is taking a little longer. I’ve found this creates a little more incentive to get them done in succession and want to click that done button even more.

4. Syncs to multiple devices - watch, iPad, phone, etc. I see you can export out of the app but syncing would be helpful.

5. As someone noted in another comment: A way to export and/or print a habit tracker so as to get away from the phone and tech and only come back to log it on the device, should I choose to and snap a quick photo that gets OCR’ed to update the app stats. Maybe a pocketmod.com format could work?

I don't use habit trackers because: - lack of analytics / visualization - privacy concerns - too lazy to input data manually

Apple's ecosystem actually comes the closest to solving these but it's a lot of $$$

I just want it to be automated and forget about it until a year later. Wakatime is a good example.

The data has to be automatically collected like with Wakatime. Otherwise I won't ever use it.

I want the data to get there automatically while keeping data privacy and ownership.