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Show HN: Patterns – Habit Tracker App

73 points by degisner 3y ago

Hi everyone I'm a Notion-addicted person and love to build my own template to cover different aspects of my life, either work or personal stuff. Once, I wanted to build a habit tracker template, and I realized Notion was not the best solution. You can organize it in a much more efficient way just with a pen and a piece of paper. However, the best tool should live on your devices and have a correct structure. Then, I decided to try to build an app using SwiftUI and SwiftData. The goal was to make it a very basic version in one month. But it took me two months. I tried to add only the core features for MVP and see if it works for others. On Twitter, it already received some love, and I'm very excited to share the app here to get even more feedback. Let me know what you think

sneak 3y ago
Thank you for not including surveillance in the app. I’m buying it to show my support for this decision, even before I know if I will use it or not. Edit: spoke too soon. It seems to hang on “Loading pricing plans…” so I can’t seem to. It’s good you offer a lifetime plan (the only way I would buy it) but subscriptionware is repulsive. Please consider just not using subscriptions.
- bigblind 3y ago
  > [...] but subscriptionware is repulsive. Please consider just not using subscriptions. I get where you're coming from, especially if an app has no service component, but it's inevitable if a platform has no good way to charge for upgrades. And as much as some people would like to buy a version of an app once and keep using that same version forever, platforms also make that impossible by changing the environment an app runs in in backwards-incompatible ways, so the software needs to be maintained, and that has a price.
  - _Algernon_ 3y ago
    In the past this was solved by releasing a new major version of the app. Want the new version? Buy it again. Otherwise you could still keep the old version until it broke. Taking away consumer choice is never a good thing and that is exactly what subscriptions are designed to do. Not to mention that subscription pricing is always ridiculously high.
    - anconam 3y ago
      In my opinion having a yearly big release is not great for users. Feature and fixes should that could roll out weekly are artificially delayed to the next major release only because of the pricing model.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bossyTeacher 3y ago
  Expecting not to have a subscription for a mobile app in 2023 is not realistic. For an app to be available on the app store, even if no features are added, needs to be regularly maintained. That maintenance has a cost. If you want to have an application with no maintenance, just side load an app file and be done with it.
  - pantulis 3y ago
    What are the regular maintenance costs that are specific to a mobile application? And more importanty, how does the Streaks app from Crunchy Bagel manage to do without subscriptions? My point being that the recurring cost of a developer license can easily be diluted on one-time payments.
    - bossyTeacher 3y ago
      Dependency updates, security updates, bug fixes. Yes, if your userbase is in the hundreds of thousands, the one time payments will cover a developer's lifetime of maintenance work. But if you are a random HN dev with a 20-user app, then the 100 dollars, you will not cover a 10 year period of maintenance work, unless your app has zero dependencies and doesn't use any web apis. Crunchy Bagel is not a random HN dev making a random app. I highly dislike this attitude people have with expecting free work when it comes to software. If the app was sold as it was with 0 additional work of any kind, I bet you wouldn't buy it. You expect free work. But if I ask you to come clean my toilet for free, you wouldn't do it. This is why we have ads on the web nowadays.
      - master-lincoln 3y ago
        But the dev here claimed they created this tool for themselves. If that is the case, why not let everyone else use it for free too if you maintain it for yourself anyway. I wouldn't answer questions or read feedback then as a dev because it's not a product really, but why not go that route?
        aniforprez 3y ago
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > subscriptionware is repulsive This is far too extreme. It's not repulsive. Just don't choose it if you don't want it.
- degisner 3y ago
  Thank you for buying the premium! I don't really love the subscription type of paying as a user as well, so I included the lifetime option.
tsurba 3y ago
Like others said, subscriptions suck, and especially since there are apps like ”Habit List” (which I use) that have a one-time payment of only 6€, I’ll rather use that. It should not be a complicated app to make and maintain. The yearly Apple developer payment sucks but that is not my problem.
- vapidness_is 3y ago
  I think subscriptions are great especially for solo projects like this. They align incentives between the developer and the customer and can support maintenance and feature requests. If it's a one off payment I'm worried the app will die and not be supported.
pknerd 3y ago
does anyone know the Android alternative? Or I request author to make one
- vapidness_is 3y ago
  I use https://conjure.so/ https://conjure.so/ it's by far the best habit tracker I've found
  - diimdeep 3y ago
    Free - Up to 5 Habits; $9/month - ; I can not imagine world where I pay this much for checkbox app.
    - vapidness_is 3y ago
      I think it's much more than a checkbox app. It does time tracking, objectives, supports integrations with other services like Apple Health and it has a great reporting and data insights. It really is an impressive and incredibly polished service.
- mezod 3y ago
  https://everyday.app https://everyday.app supports android and ios too
- crabmusket 3y ago
  I've been using Loop for years, I find it very simple and efficient to use. It's open source and has just enough features to do its job well.
- scns 3y ago
  https://habitica.com/static/home https://habitica.com/static/home A gamified approach for both Android and iOS.
- degisner 3y ago
  I wish I could build an Android version using SwiftUI... This is so sad I can't cover both platforms atm.
warabe 3y ago
I use https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits This is actually really a good app!
- degisner 3y ago
  The main view looks similar. I love this approach!
- bloopernova 3y ago
  Does Loop support a variable schedule? Like "every 3 to 5 days"
SingAlong 3y ago
I love the design. Thank you for making this. I like the fact that you have a lifetime plan. Given that this is a mobile app, having a lifetime plan is easier to pay-and-forget. Hope you find success with this app.
- degisner 3y ago
  Thank you for the support!
lakpan 3y ago
[dead]
simonbarker87 3y ago
Lovely looking app, well done. I hope you're able to build enough of a business around this to keep the updates and improvements flowing. To those complaining about subscriptions, it's the only viable way to build a business around an app now (even one small enough to justify hobby time spent on it when it's not so fun any more). Why? 1. Customer acquisition cost is sky high, after the initial release bump, getting new users is a trudge and expensive, the amount people are willing to pay for a one off is too low to make most apps viable. 2. Software isn't one and done, even a little app like this needs annual updates to keep inline with the OS. 3. Users say they don't want new features, but they do, to do that the dev needs to be incentivised to keep working on it. 4. Subscriptions = better software ... because the dev gets to keep working on the app. 5. They allow indies in to the market, bigger companies with enterprise offerings and more routes to market can charge one and done, free, ad supported etc. Indies need regular predictable income, subscriptions provide that. The people who say "give me a lifetime price" are really saying "give it to me free". Even those who do land up paying the inflation adjusted correct price for it based on what you paid back in the day (seriously, look at the inflation adjusted price for the one and done software from 20 years ago, it's laughably expensive compared to a few bucks a month sub) land up costing the dev money in the long run. Any established indie app developer (especially if they have server costs) who offered lifetime regrets it after a few years.
- HenryBemis 3y ago
  I had made one app for iOS back in 2017. What people don't get is that even if the changes on the iOS are minimally impacting YOUR app, you still need to be reviewing the iOS changes, testing, updating it constantly (every couple of months you need to make sure it's up to par). Also the time from clients' questions, getting feedback and making improvements, etc. The fee also hurts. Especially if this is how you make a living. I pulled the app as the costs + income - time was not worth it (I put a big price-tag on my time) > 4. Subscriptions = better software this is the way to go, and one better has a darn good app because nobody will be paying you $1-$2-$5-$10 per month in perpetuity if it's not great
  - degisner 3y ago
lucharo 3y ago
I love the concept of this app, I organise my habits in this way using an excel spreadsheet but I really like the idea of having this as a minimalist alternative to that
mezod 3y ago
The app looks good so far! As the indie developer behind https://everyday.app https://everyday.app I'm happy to see more indies joining the market :) You have a lot of work to do ahead!! heheh Cheers and happy to help!
- HenryBemis 3y ago
  Cool shameless plug AND a very nice interface.. I really like the look of it!
- Void_ 3y ago
  I used this one for a while: https://polarhabits.com https://polarhabits.com However these apps should integrate with HealthKit.. I want to run 30km/week, it should be able to track that. Beeminder is cool with their visualizations.
  - merott 3y ago
    I'm the maker, and you're totally right. It would be great if some habits could be tracked automatically. I'll be building a native mobile app soon, and will do my best to remove the friction of logging habits!
- degisner 3y ago
  I've just checked Everyday. Such a wonderful app! I'm going to dive deep into the competitors' functionality rabbit hole soon to see how far I can go lol. Thank you for being polite and positive. Before, I got only bad reactions from other competitors (if they were really competitors).
  - mezod 3y ago
    ahh, ignore that noise. They don't realize that we all together raise awareness on habits and habit tracking and thus we all benefit from each others' work! keep it up!
wirrbel 3y ago
What does it other than habitty
astromd 3y ago
The problem with most habit tracking apps is that they don’t put your habits in context with the rest of the day. For example, let’s say you miss a day reading, and that becomes a pattern. Current apps may not surface the fact that you’ve taken on too many evening commitments because they can’t show you your calendar. I’ve been using Chronicling, another iOS app by an indie dev, and it lets you track just about anything, but since you can’t get data out easily you end up having a silo of events about habits without any sense of why you may or may not be keeping habits. So, I’m building my own activity tracking now with a grist database since they have a nice API and in the end you end up with SQLite files which are highly portable. I am integrating a bunch of iOS shortcuts and also using n8n to auto populate as much as possible into the tracker so that I can correlate habits with other daily activities.
- degisner 3y ago
  This is the reason why there are so many different habit app approaches. My understanding of habits was to see it kind of from the bird's eye view. I want to grow it and cover more cases like repetitive habits, reading data from the Health app, etc.
- nbbaier 3y ago
  Do you have any of that work written up or the code up somewhere?
  - astromd 3y ago
    No it’s still in its infancy. I’m focusing on capturing data as seamlessly as possible but I don’t want any of it to reside in a silo. I’ve got about 15 different shortcuts right now but I think I could probably pare this down with some custom shortcuts if I can figure out how to build them into a simple app. I’ll do a write up at some point when the system bears fruit.
helpfulmountain 3y ago
Hard to understand why something this simple would need iOS 17? Seems potentially worth it to digging into ehy you can't do a slight refactor to support ios 15,16
- anonymouse008 3y ago
  Probably SwiftUI dependencies - onChange was changed in 17 which breaks and complicates a lot of code
- simonbarker87 3y ago
  Interactive widgets is iOS 17 only. Also, since it's a new app (and I think) a new-ish developer, I doubt they want the hassle of supporting old OSes for a key app feature.
  - degisner 3y ago
    Exactly! Interactive widgets were the number one reason why I picked iOS 17 only.
- danproductman 3y ago
  In the the post he mentioned building the app with SwiftData. SwiftData came with the iOS 17 release.
sintezcs 3y ago
Is there any reason for regional restrictions? The app is not available on my AppStore (Russia)
lnalx 3y ago
I ditched all apps for habits, focus, goal oriented. I realized my brain could do that for free and without technology, with some work.
- neontomo 3y ago
  The task of managing your habits can also become another thing to put energy into. When it's frictionless it helps get stuff done, but when it's complicated you end up organising and moving information around instead of becoming more effective.
- seec 3y ago
  I think most people do not realize that the real secret is just doing the thing most of the time and not overthink the times the thing could not be done. And many don't understand that time is limited but energy and focus also is. It does not matter that stuff are planned/schedule or that there are blocks of "free" time, you really can't maximize efficiency for everything, and it would not make a significant difference anyway. The key is strong focus on what matters and letting everything else in the background. This is why very often I get absolutely stunned at how much inefficient crap people put up with in their life, of course at the end of the day they have no real time/focus power to do anything worthwhile.
illiac786 3y ago
Suggestion: make it possible to track events rather than habits, without a monthly/weekly/daily objective, and then a couple of stats (day of the week / hour of the day graphs for example)
- degisner 3y ago
  Good suggestion! I'll consider it.

73 points by degisner 3y ago

sneak 3y ago

Thank you for not including surveillance in the app. I’m buying it to show my support for this decision, even before I know if I will use it or not. Edit: spoke too soon. It seems to hang on “Loading pricing plans…” so I can’t seem to. It’s good you offer a lifetime plan (the only way I would buy it) but subscriptionware is repulsive. Please consider just not using subscriptions.

bigblind 3y ago
> [...] but subscriptionware is repulsive. Please consider just not using subscriptions. I get where you're coming from, especially if an app has no service component, but it's inevitable if a platform has no good way to charge for upgrades. And as much as some people would like to buy a version of an app once and keep using that same version forever, platforms also make that impossible by changing the environment an app runs in in backwards-incompatible ways, so the software needs to be maintained, and that has a price.
- _Algernon_ 3y ago
  In the past this was solved by releasing a new major version of the app. Want the new version? Buy it again. Otherwise you could still keep the old version until it broke. Taking away consumer choice is never a good thing and that is exactly what subscriptions are designed to do. Not to mention that subscription pricing is always ridiculously high.
  - anconam 3y ago
    In my opinion having a yearly big release is not great for users. Feature and fixes should that could roll out weekly are artificially delayed to the next major release only because of the pricing model.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bossyTeacher 3y ago
Expecting not to have a subscription for a mobile app in 2023 is not realistic. For an app to be available on the app store, even if no features are added, needs to be regularly maintained. That maintenance has a cost. If you want to have an application with no maintenance, just side load an app file and be done with it.
- pantulis 3y ago
  What are the regular maintenance costs that are specific to a mobile application? And more importanty, how does the Streaks app from Crunchy Bagel manage to do without subscriptions? My point being that the recurring cost of a developer license can easily be diluted on one-time payments.
  - bossyTeacher 3y ago
    Dependency updates, security updates, bug fixes. Yes, if your userbase is in the hundreds of thousands, the one time payments will cover a developer's lifetime of maintenance work. But if you are a random HN dev with a 20-user app, then the 100 dollars, you will not cover a 10 year period of maintenance work, unless your app has zero dependencies and doesn't use any web apis. Crunchy Bagel is not a random HN dev making a random app. I highly dislike this attitude people have with expecting free work when it comes to software. If the app was sold as it was with 0 additional work of any kind, I bet you wouldn't buy it. You expect free work. But if I ask you to come clean my toilet for free, you wouldn't do it. This is why we have ads on the web nowadays.
    - master-lincoln 3y ago
      But the dev here claimed they created this tool for themselves. If that is the case, why not let everyone else use it for free too if you maintain it for yourself anyway. I wouldn't answer questions or read feedback then as a dev because it's not a product really, but why not go that route?
      - aniforprez 3y ago
robertlagrant 3y ago
> subscriptionware is repulsive This is far too extreme. It's not repulsive. Just don't choose it if you don't want it.
degisner 3y ago
Thank you for buying the premium! I don't really love the subscription type of paying as a user as well, so I included the lifetime option.

tsurba 3y ago

Like others said, subscriptions suck, and especially since there are apps like ”Habit List” (which I use) that have a one-time payment of only 6€, I’ll rather use that. It should not be a complicated app to make and maintain. The yearly Apple developer payment sucks but that is not my problem.

vapidness_is 3y ago
I think subscriptions are great especially for solo projects like this. They align incentives between the developer and the customer and can support maintenance and feature requests. If it's a one off payment I'm worried the app will die and not be supported.

pknerd 3y ago

does anyone know the Android alternative? Or I request author to make one

vapidness_is 3y ago
I use https://conjure.so/ https://conjure.so/ it's by far the best habit tracker I've found
- diimdeep 3y ago
  Free - Up to 5 Habits; $9/month - ; I can not imagine world where I pay this much for checkbox app.
  - vapidness_is 3y ago
    I think it's much more than a checkbox app. It does time tracking, objectives, supports integrations with other services like Apple Health and it has a great reporting and data insights. It really is an impressive and incredibly polished service.
mezod 3y ago
https://everyday.app https://everyday.app supports android and ios too
crabmusket 3y ago
I've been using Loop for years, I find it very simple and efficient to use. It's open source and has just enough features to do its job well.
scns 3y ago
https://habitica.com/static/home https://habitica.com/static/home A gamified approach for both Android and iOS.
degisner 3y ago
I wish I could build an Android version using SwiftUI... This is so sad I can't cover both platforms atm.

warabe 3y ago

I use https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits This is actually really a good app!

degisner 3y ago
The main view looks similar. I love this approach!
bloopernova 3y ago
Does Loop support a variable schedule? Like "every 3 to 5 days"

SingAlong 3y ago

I love the design. Thank you for making this. I like the fact that you have a lifetime plan. Given that this is a mobile app, having a lifetime plan is easier to pay-and-forget. Hope you find success with this app.

degisner 3y ago
Thank you for the support!

lakpan 3y ago

[dead]

simonbarker87 3y ago

Lovely looking app, well done. I hope you're able to build enough of a business around this to keep the updates and improvements flowing. To those complaining about subscriptions, it's the only viable way to build a business around an app now (even one small enough to justify hobby time spent on it when it's not so fun any more). Why? 1. Customer acquisition cost is sky high, after the initial release bump, getting new users is a trudge and expensive, the amount people are willing to pay for a one off is too low to make most apps viable. 2. Software isn't one and done, even a little app like this needs annual updates to keep inline with the OS. 3. Users say they don't want new features, but they do, to do that the dev needs to be incentivised to keep working on it. 4. Subscriptions = better software ... because the dev gets to keep working on the app. 5. They allow indies in to the market, bigger companies with enterprise offerings and more routes to market can charge one and done, free, ad supported etc. Indies need regular predictable income, subscriptions provide that. The people who say "give me a lifetime price" are really saying "give it to me free". Even those who do land up paying the inflation adjusted correct price for it based on what you paid back in the day (seriously, look at the inflation adjusted price for the one and done software from 20 years ago, it's laughably expensive compared to a few bucks a month sub) land up costing the dev money in the long run. Any established indie app developer (especially if they have server costs) who offered lifetime regrets it after a few years.

HenryBemis 3y ago
I had made one app for iOS back in 2017. What people don't get is that even if the changes on the iOS are minimally impacting YOUR app, you still need to be reviewing the iOS changes, testing, updating it constantly (every couple of months you need to make sure it's up to par). Also the time from clients' questions, getting feedback and making improvements, etc. The fee also hurts. Especially if this is how you make a living. I pulled the app as the costs + income - time was not worth it (I put a big price-tag on my time) > 4. Subscriptions = better software this is the way to go, and one better has a darn good app because nobody will be paying you $1-$2-$5-$10 per month in perpetuity if it's not great
- degisner 3y ago

lucharo 3y ago

I love the concept of this app, I organise my habits in this way using an excel spreadsheet but I really like the idea of having this as a minimalist alternative to that

mezod 3y ago

The app looks good so far! As the indie developer behind https://everyday.app https://everyday.app I'm happy to see more indies joining the market :) You have a lot of work to do ahead!! heheh Cheers and happy to help!

HenryBemis 3y ago
Cool shameless plug AND a very nice interface.. I really like the look of it!
Void_ 3y ago
I used this one for a while: https://polarhabits.com https://polarhabits.com However these apps should integrate with HealthKit.. I want to run 30km/week, it should be able to track that. Beeminder is cool with their visualizations.
- merott 3y ago
  I'm the maker, and you're totally right. It would be great if some habits could be tracked automatically. I'll be building a native mobile app soon, and will do my best to remove the friction of logging habits!
degisner 3y ago
I've just checked Everyday. Such a wonderful app! I'm going to dive deep into the competitors' functionality rabbit hole soon to see how far I can go lol. Thank you for being polite and positive. Before, I got only bad reactions from other competitors (if they were really competitors).
- mezod 3y ago
  ahh, ignore that noise. They don't realize that we all together raise awareness on habits and habit tracking and thus we all benefit from each others' work! keep it up!

wirrbel 3y ago

What does it other than habitty

astromd 3y ago

The problem with most habit tracking apps is that they don’t put your habits in context with the rest of the day. For example, let’s say you miss a day reading, and that becomes a pattern. Current apps may not surface the fact that you’ve taken on too many evening commitments because they can’t show you your calendar. I’ve been using Chronicling, another iOS app by an indie dev, and it lets you track just about anything, but since you can’t get data out easily you end up having a silo of events about habits without any sense of why you may or may not be keeping habits. So, I’m building my own activity tracking now with a grist database since they have a nice API and in the end you end up with SQLite files which are highly portable. I am integrating a bunch of iOS shortcuts and also using n8n to auto populate as much as possible into the tracker so that I can correlate habits with other daily activities.

degisner 3y ago
This is the reason why there are so many different habit app approaches. My understanding of habits was to see it kind of from the bird's eye view. I want to grow it and cover more cases like repetitive habits, reading data from the Health app, etc.
nbbaier 3y ago
Do you have any of that work written up or the code up somewhere?
- astromd 3y ago
  No it’s still in its infancy. I’m focusing on capturing data as seamlessly as possible but I don’t want any of it to reside in a silo. I’ve got about 15 different shortcuts right now but I think I could probably pare this down with some custom shortcuts if I can figure out how to build them into a simple app. I’ll do a write up at some point when the system bears fruit.

helpfulmountain 3y ago

Hard to understand why something this simple would need iOS 17? Seems potentially worth it to digging into ehy you can't do a slight refactor to support ios 15,16

anonymouse008 3y ago
Probably SwiftUI dependencies - onChange was changed in 17 which breaks and complicates a lot of code
simonbarker87 3y ago
Interactive widgets is iOS 17 only. Also, since it's a new app (and I think) a new-ish developer, I doubt they want the hassle of supporting old OSes for a key app feature.
- degisner 3y ago
  Exactly! Interactive widgets were the number one reason why I picked iOS 17 only.
danproductman 3y ago
In the the post he mentioned building the app with SwiftData. SwiftData came with the iOS 17 release.

sintezcs 3y ago

Is there any reason for regional restrictions? The app is not available on my AppStore (Russia)

lnalx 3y ago

I ditched all apps for habits, focus, goal oriented. I realized my brain could do that for free and without technology, with some work.

neontomo 3y ago
The task of managing your habits can also become another thing to put energy into. When it's frictionless it helps get stuff done, but when it's complicated you end up organising and moving information around instead of becoming more effective.
seec 3y ago
I think most people do not realize that the real secret is just doing the thing most of the time and not overthink the times the thing could not be done. And many don't understand that time is limited but energy and focus also is. It does not matter that stuff are planned/schedule or that there are blocks of "free" time, you really can't maximize efficiency for everything, and it would not make a significant difference anyway. The key is strong focus on what matters and letting everything else in the background. This is why very often I get absolutely stunned at how much inefficient crap people put up with in their life, of course at the end of the day they have no real time/focus power to do anything worthwhile.

illiac786 3y ago

Suggestion: make it possible to track events rather than habits, without a monthly/weekly/daily objective, and then a couple of stats (day of the week / hour of the day graphs for example)

degisner 3y ago
Good suggestion! I'll consider it.