I Tested 12 Habit Tracker Apps So You Don’t Have To (2023)

Summary

Over the past month, Mike Dee tested 12 popular habit tracker apps to help streamline the choices for users. Some apps were average, but two stood out with impressive features and user interfaces. Mike delves into the unique aspects of each app, highlighting options like Habitify, which includes live challenges, Habitica's gamified approach, and Productive's community challenges. He also explores the seamless integration of the Streaks app with iOS Health and the unique features of other apps on the list. Each app has its strengths, from simple user interfaces to gamification and community elements. His favorites were Awesome Habits and Productive for their simplicity and design, while others like Habit Hub were favored for Android users.

Highlights

• Mike tested 12 habit tracker apps to find the best ones! 🔍
• Habitify allows joining live challenges with friends. 🤝
• Habitica offers a gaming style experience for tracking habits. 🎮
• Streaks app stands out with iOS Health app integration. 📱
• Tangerine combines habit tracking with journaling. 📓

Key Takeaways

• Habitify and Productive apps stand out in design and features! 🎉
• Habitica gamifies habit tracking by turning it into a game! 🎮
• With the Streaks app, your habits sync with the iOS Health app! 📱
• Tangerine combines habit tracking with journaling for self-care! 📓
• Mike's top picks are Awesome Habits and Productive! 🏆

Overview

Mike Dee embarked on a month-long quest to test 12 habit tracking apps, navigating through a sea of options to find those worthy of your precious phone real estate. Some apps did their job adequately, but there were a couple that nearly swept him off his feet! Those with sleek interfaces and meaningful features caught his attention, with Habitify and Productive shining particularly bright.

Each app has its unique flair—Habitica turns tracking habits into a game, complete with avatars and in-game rewards. Others, like Streaks, integrate seamlessly with the iOS Health app, tracking your daily activities and habits autonomously. Meanwhile, the Tangerine app blends habit tracking with journaling, offering a holistic approach to self-care.

Mike's review is comprehensive, and he remains open to feedback about other apps that might've slipped under his radar. However, his heart leans towards Awesome Habits and Productive for their minimalist design and effective functionality. Whether you're using Android or iOS, there's something for everyone in Mike's analysis.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Habitatify Review The chapter discusses the speaker's exploration and testing of 12 popular habit-tracking apps over a 30-day period. Among these, Habitatify is highlighted for its outstanding user interface, ease of use, and additional features, making it one of the top-performing apps according to the speaker.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Awesome Habits Review The chapter reviews a habit-tracking app called Habitsify, highlighting its standout feature of offering various live challenges. Unlike most traditional tracking apps, Habitsify allows users to join live challenges with others, such as a meditation challenge with over 150 participants. The app also lets users host and invite others to custom challenges, going beyond simple habit tracking.
• 03:00 - 04:30: Habitica Review In this chapter titled 'Habitica Review', the focus is on the benefits of using Habitica, an app that gamifies habit tracking. It emphasizes the importance of forming accountability groups with friends to enhance the likelihood of sticking to daily habits. The chapter highlights a feature that tracks the user's mood, which can impact habit completion, using a smiley face scale. Additionally, the Habitica widget is praised for its good design.
• 04:30 - 06:00: Strides Review The chapter 'Strides Review' reviews an app that is appreciated for its simple and well-designed user interface. However, the downside of the free version is highlighted as it allows users to add only three habits, which makes the widget aesthetically unappealing due to the empty space at the bottom right corner. The reviewer suggests that allowing four habits instead would enhance the overall look.
• 06:00 - 07:30: Productive Review The chapter discusses a habit-tracking app that excels in its core function due to its well-designed user interface and graphical representations of user progress. Despite its excellence, the app's widget is noted as lacking in design appeal, which detracts slightly from its overall impression.
• 07:30 - 09:00: Honeygain Sponsorship The chapter discusses various habit tracking apps, with a particular focus on Habitica. Habitica is highlighted for its unique approach of gamifying the habit-building process. Users can create an avatar and unlock in-game features by completing real-life tasks, making it stand out from the thousands of other habit trackers available. The narrator mentions 'awesome hobbies' as one of their top three habit tracking apps from numerous tested over the years, despite its aesthetic appeal.
• 09:00 - 10:30: Streaks Review The chapter 'Streaks Review' highlights the unique aspects of a habit tracker app. This app allows you to earn armor, pets, and other in-game rewards as you accomplish your objectives, making the process of habit tracking feel like playing a game. Users can gain experience points and even level up. It also distinguishes itself by being an independent app developed by committed volunteers and contributors, rather than a commercial productivity tool designed to generate profit.
• 10:30 - 12:00: Everyday Review The chapter 'Everyday Review' discusses a method for staying accountable and improving one's life through habit tracking. It describes a technique where individuals log their listening habits of podcasts, awarding themselves points for meeting a two-hour listening goal. This process is gamified, helping users track their habits in a more engaging way. Specifically, it describes using a system where users click a plus for completing the habit and a minus for missing it, making the task feel less like a chore and more like a game. Mention is made of the 'Strides' tracker, which aids in habit formation and productivity.
• 12:00 - 14:00: HabitHub Review The chapter discusses the HabitHub app, highlighting its features for habit tracking. It offers four different methods for tracking habits such as time-bound goals, smaller milestones, or set averages. The app provides customized progress reports and charts. Notably, it includes a well-designed, easy-to-use widget, which the reviewer finds particularly appealing. The chapter emphasizes the importance of such features in a habit tracker.
• 14:00 - 16:00: Habitbull Review The chapter discusses a review of the Habitbull app, noting its easily accessible widget. However, it criticizes the user interface as outdated compared to other habit trackers. Moreover, the free version's limitation to only three habits and the necessity of a $5 monthly or $30 yearly plan for more is seen as a downside. Overall, while the app is decent, it lacks differentiation from competitors, making it hard to recommend.
• 16:00 - 17:30: Avocation Review The chapter titled 'Avocation Review' discusses a highly favored application known for its well-designed user interface. The app allows users to click on individual habits to access more detailed information, such as graphs showing the number of completed streaks. Users can easily mark a habit as done by swiping left, or undo it by swiping right. A distinguishing feature of this app, called Productive, is its unique challenges that incorporate a community element. Users can engage in habit tracking with friends or groups of strangers, which enhances the effectiveness of the tracking process.
• 17:30 - 19:30: Habit Tracker Review The 'Habit Tracker Review' chapter discusses the motivational and productive aspects of using a habit tracking app. It highlights creative challenges offered by the app, such as the 'Cut the Clutter' challenge, where participants join others in daily tasks like organizing workspaces or cleaning cupboards. The app includes an active comment section to foster a sense of community and shared effort, enhancing user experience. Additionally, both the app and its widget are praised for their design quality.
• 19:30 - 21:30: Tangerine Review The chapter titled 'Tangerine Review' discusses the impact of mobile applications on personal development and lifestyle. It emphasizes how the choice of apps can either contribute positively or negatively to one's life. The section includes a promotional segment about Honeygain, an application that allows users to earn passive income by sharing their internet connections. The concept is that by allowing other verified companies to use your internet, users can generate sufficient income to cover costs like Netflix or Spotify subscriptions. The narrative suggests that millions are already benefitting from this setup.
• 21:30 - 25:00: Conclusion and Favorite Apps This chapter concludes with a discussion on advertisers' data collection via internet connection. It highlights how advertisers can verify the format and integrity of their ads. Importantly, it assures readers that the app in question does not compromise user privacy or storage but instead uses the internet to gather useful market data, such as spotting the best prices and fake goods online.

I Tested 12 Habit Tracker Apps So You Don’t Have To (2023) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 foreign there are thousands of happy tracking apps out there but over the last 30 days I've been testing 12 of the most popular habit tracker apps so you don't have to some of them perform pretty average but there were two in particular that really kind of blew me away in terms of the user interface in terms of ease of use and extra features so let's get straight into it with habitatify habitify is one of the most well-known tracking apps on the list so
• 00:30 - 01:00 apparently because it goes a bit further than most other traditional tracking apps habitsify does the Habit tracking really well as you'd expect it to but my favorite part of the app is that it offers different types of live challenges that you can join with dozens of other people so for example there's a peaceful May meditation challenge where you join more than 150 other people and essentially do 10 minutes of meditation every day for the month of May you can also host your own challenges and invite
• 01:00 - 01:30 your friends to join which if you're struggling to follow through with your daily habits have some kind of accountability group in the form of a few friends where you're all doing the daily challenges together can be a really powerful strategy to keep you motivated and as a nice feature as well the habitatified tracks your mood on a smiley face scale as defaults when logging your habits to determine whether it's your mood that could be affecting the completion of any habits their widget is well designed too my only
• 01:30 - 02:00 gripe though is that the free version only allows you to add three habits so the widget looks a bit kind of strange with just three habits from an aesthetic standpoint the widget would look far better if it could actually add four habits rather than three so there's not a big empty space at the bottom right corner awesome habits so this app has my favorite designed user interface it's super simple it doesn't have any kind of extra features that give it the edge on
• 02:00 - 02:30 other trackers but it does one thing and it does that one thing really really well it tracks your habits in a super well-designed user interface it also gives you graphs so you can see on one screen how well you're doing and it has a widget now this would be my favorite app on the whole list if the widget was a bit better designed I just think it's slightly on the uninspiring side which is a shame because the actual app itself
• 02:30 - 03:00 aesthetically does look really nice but despite that though awesome hobbies is definitely in my top three habit tracking apps from the dozens that I've tested over the years habitica habitica is exactly why I made this video to find the Habit trackers they're a little bit different and stand out from the thousands of habit trackers out there so habitica gamifies the habit process where you create an avatar and unlock features in the game by checking off your real life tasks you can earn
• 03:00 - 03:30 armor you can earn pets and other in-game rewards when you meet your goals so this habit tracker stands out for so many reasons so firstly it genuinely feels like you're playing a game with health with experience points and you can level up as well but secondly it's an independent app right so you can tell that it's made from a team of passionate volunteers and contributors you just don't get something made by a company that wants to sell a productivity App instead you get a tool made by people
• 03:30 - 04:00 who themselves wants a way to stay accountable and better their lives I have a habit that says listen to two hours of podcasts I hit the plus sign on the left when I do 2 and the minus sign on the right when I don't and this adds or subtracts points to reinforce The Habit it's definitely worth trying if you're looking for a habit tracker that doesn't actually feel like a habit tracker but feels more like a game but a game that actually helps you to be more productive strides the strides tracker allows you
• 04:00 - 04:30 to set smart goals and work at your own pace right so it offers four different ways to track your habits whether they're time-bound goals smaller Milestones or set averages the app also offers customized progress reports and charts and what I really like is their widget also right it's well designed easy to use very helpful and this is a kind of a continuous theme throughout this video I don't think I would use a habit tracker if it didn't have an
• 04:30 - 05:00 easily accessible widget what I don't love though is that the apps user interface it just kind of seems a bit outdated compared with some of the other habit trackers and using the free version only allows you to add three habits if you want to add more then their paid plan is five dollars a month or thirty dollars a year so it is a decent app but it doesn't really differentiate itself enough at least in my opinion for me to recommend it against the competition productive productive's habit tracker is one of my
• 05:00 - 05:30 favorite designed apps right the user interface is super well designed you can click into each habit for more information to see graphs and how many streaks you've completed with that habit and to Mark The Habit is done you just swipe left or to undo a habit you just swipe right and what sets productive apart other than the very aesthetic user interface are the challenges so adding a community element to Habit tracking either with your friends or a group of strangers it is a really powerful way of
• 05:30 - 06:00 keeping you motivated and productive offers some really creative challenges like cut the Clutter challenge where you join hundreds of other people and each day you're given a small task like organizing your workspace or cleaning out the cupboards and there's even a comment section within the app which is actually quite active so you're not feeling like you're kind of doing the challenge alone but you're carrying out the challenges with a group of people which I do think is really nice and just like their app their widget is well designed too overall is one of my
• 06:00 - 06:30 favorite apps on the list it's often the apps we download that determine whether we use our phone to build us up or to tear us down so with today's sponsor honey gain you can make extra cash by simply sharing your internet connection so other companies use your internet connection and you earn a passive income it's that simple millions of users already generate enough passive income to pay for their Netflix or their Spotify subscriptions how it works is that verified companies can use your
• 06:30 - 07:00 internet connection to gather data and statistics based on specific keywords another way is that advertisers can check the Integrity of their ads to make sure that they've been displayed in the correct format it is worth mentioning that the app does not affect your browsing experience and it does not ask for access to the device's storage or other sensitive data instead it uses the internet to gather bits of information from the web such as who's offering the best prices or where fake goods are being sold online so you can try
• 07:00 - 07:30 honeygain now and if you use my discount code macd you'll get your first five dollars straight to your account I'll add a link in the description below streaks so streaks has been my go-to habit Tracker app for the last few months and honestly for one reason and one reason only it has a widget on my iPhone so for my home screen I swipe right and my habit tracker is right there in bright orange staring at me and this is really important for me because your habit tracker shouldn't be hidden
• 07:30 - 08:00 away somewhere where you're going to just kind of forget about it so every time I swipe right to see my calendar which is at least a few times a day I see the Habit tracker right there below it so I don't forget to complete my habits before the end of the day one thing that streaks can do there almost no other Highway tracker can is connect with the iOS Health app so it automatically tracks certain goals like walking 5000 steps or measuring your heart rate and this means that you can basically automate certain habits which
• 08:00 - 08:30 can save you a lot of time instead of having to tell the app that you have walked I don't know 5000 steps the iOS Health app communicates with streaks and ticks The Habit off for you so that's a nice bit of automation now on to the downsides and even though I've used this app for months I usually don't recommend it if someone asked me to recommend them a habit tracker because firstly it's 4.99 so it's a paid app and secondly is for iPhone only but if you don't mind
• 08:30 - 09:00 spending five dollars and you have an iPhone this is easily one of the best habit trackers out there every day so this is an amazing app one of my favorites on the list it easily keeps you accountable and tracks your habits with a simple checked board the more you do the better the board looks right so the user interface is very simple and easy to understand as soon as you start using it you essentially just color the boxes in once you've come completed that habit and there's a widget that shows
• 09:00 - 09:30 the last seven days so you can see immediately if you've missed any days and that's a great motivator to actually complete your habits because for me at least I hate to keep being reminded that I miss the habit every time I look at the widget every day has the same features as most other habit trackers like setting reminders so you don't forget or at least you're less likely to forget to complete that habit before the end of the day but it's the Simplicity of the app and the widget that really
• 09:30 - 10:00 makes everyday stand out a widget for me at least exponentially increases the usability of a habit Tracker app because if a bright colored widget is staring at you on your home screen you're not going to forget about it right definitely worth trying out habit Hub so I've used habit hub for about two years from 2020 to 2022. before I downloaded it I did a lot of research I tried probably half a dozen other Havoc tracker apps and I settled
• 10:00 - 10:30 with habit Hub and it did the job very well for two years so habit Hub is based on Seinfeld's productivity secret don't break the train every time you complete a habit your chain grows longer eventually you'll build a very long chain and then your job is to keep the chain growing so it kind of like gamifies building habits which I really like I love the Simplicity of the app as well as graphs to visualize and get an overview of how well you have been performing and identify any patterns
• 10:30 - 11:00 that might be preventing you from successfully completing each habit now I did say that I use the app from 2020 to 2022 but then I stopped using it and that leads me to my biggest gripe with this app is that it's not available for iPhone yet on their website it does say it's coming soon but currently it's only available for Android but definitely one of my best or maybe my favorite Android
• 11:00 - 11:30 happy tracking app right now habitable habit bull is one of the highest reviewed habit trackers out there I tried it out and I liked it but there's just one small problem which I'll explain shortly Harry bull has a simple user interface where you can see your whole week or your whole month at a glance and I like this because if you skip a day and you don't complete a habit one day you're going to see that red circle for the rest of the week or even the rest of the month so it's going
• 11:30 - 12:00 to keep reminding you and that's motivation in of itself to not skip any habits I also like that their app has graphs and charts showing you visual data on how you performed with your habits and what your success percent is it's even better that you can export all the data in CSV format and analyze it by yourself all you want my only problem with it is that it doesn't have a widget I need a widget for my habit tracker and
• 12:00 - 12:30 habitable just doesn't have one but if you don't mind not having a widget then habitball is a very competent habit tracker avocation so avocation takes a slightly different approach to most other happy trackers on this list avocation doesn't use streaks to put pressure on you instead you grow a plant by implementing your habits every time you complete a habit your plant grows that little bit more if you have a bad
• 12:30 - 13:00 day your plan doesn't grow no punishment so I really like that you're growing a plant and it adds a nice kind of gamification element to the app I love how clear their user interfaces however again there isn't a widget which is a bit of a shame but overall a decent app habit tracker so habit tracker is one of the better apps out there it's super simple it does exactly what it says on the tin one area where this app stands
• 13:00 - 13:30 out is how customizable you can make each habit you can customize what time in the day your notification reminder should pop up on your phone to remind you to complete that habit you can add a reminder message which you can do with most other apps and you can set a start date and end date too free users can add five habits at once which I think is enough for most people but if you do want to add more habits as well as a handful of extra features then it's only about four dollars a year or seven dollars lifetime access
• 13:30 - 14:00 tangerine so Tangerine is marketed as more of a kind of self-care app as opposed to just a habit tracker so you have your habit tracker as you'd expect which works very well but that's just one part of the app it also works as a journal so you can write out daily what you're grateful for one thing that made you smile today which person am I especially grateful to have and that's something that none of the other apps
• 14:00 - 14:30 have I also like that in the free version of the app you can add more than free habits usually with most of the other apps you can enter a maximum of three habits and then you have to pay the paid subscription if you want to add four habits but with Tangerine you can add five or more habits on the free plan and at the end of the day you can report back how the day went so you have a kind of mini Journal I guess out of all of these apps that I tried awesome habits
• 14:30 - 15:00 and productive were my favorite by far they're both super simple to use they don't have any extra features that complicate The Experience they're really kind of aesthetically designed and they have well-designed widgets too so which habit tracker is your favorite or are there any that I've missed out that I should check on let me know in the comments below