Building good habits (and breaking bad ones) is hard. It requires you to fundamentally reshape your behavior, to resist your natural patterns.
We recommend using a habit-tracking app to make the process easier.
Habit-tracking apps work because they give you a visual representation of your progress. You will see all the times you have made this habit listed as an unbroken chain. Once you see your progress, you’re much less likely to skip the habit.
But the problem with habit trackers is that there are hundreds of them. And not all of these apps are worth your time.
To help you find the apps you should be using, we’ve done some research and compiled the list below. All of these apps will help you track your habit progress as well as keep you motivated throughout your habit-building journey.
1. Journy
Journy is a neat and simple habit tracker for Android and iOS. The app includes tracking habits you want to build and break, so it’s useful whether you’re trying to eat more vegetables or less junk food.
The app’s fun, the colorful interface lets you set and track goals on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. You can also set a goal to do the habit several times a day, which is helpful for things like drinking water or stretching.
Finally, Journy has some fun features to keep you motivated. Each habit has a “daily journal” where you can make notes about your progress. And the app lets you group habits into categories for easier navigation. For example, you can have “health” habits, “work” and “exercise” (or whatever categories make sense to you).
Journey App Download Links:
2. Habitify
Next up we have Habitify. It is a well-designed app with a simple yet attractive interface. Habitify gives you a list of your habits for the day and lets you check them off when you complete them. Simple but effective.
In addition to the basic habit-tracking features, Habitify also has a dark mode to ease the strain on your eyes, and lots of great graphs and charts to help you navigate your habit progress.
3. Strides
On the surface, Strides is very similar to Habitify but it’s looks responsive in comparison to habitify. It has a greater color screen and offers a clean, professional user interface that is a joy to use. And the basic habit-tracking function is also the same.
Where Strides differs, however, is in all the ways it lets you set and track habits. To get started, you can set streak goals, which are great for 30-day challenges or other habit streak goals. You can also set habit goals like “Yes or No” which are useful for habits like flossing.
And if you want to do something multiple times, Strides lets you set quantitative goals. For example, you can set a goal to do 25 push-ups every morning or drink 2 liters of water a day.
4. Notion
Notion is one of our favorite tools for taking notes, managing projects, and tracking personal tasks. But with the right template, it can also work as a desktop and mobile habit tracker.
Our Notion habit tracker focuses on simplicity. there is no difficulty rating, no bars, and no fancy user interface. Instead, you’ll find a simple checklist to track your habit progress each week:
In addition to a place to check off your habits, this template also includes a section for weekly reflection on your progress. Here you can make notes about what went well and what you would like to change.
5. Coach.me
Tracking your habits is an effective way to create new ones, but sometimes you need extra motivation. If you want to do it with someone, then Coach.me is the app for you.
At its core, Coach.me is a capable habit tracker that lets you check your habits as you do them. However, the real value lies in the community and coaching aspects of the app.
Let’s start with the community features. For any common habit, you add to your list, there’s likely a discussion thread where you can connect with other Coach.me users. Here you can share ideas on how to do this habit effectively, as well as get support and encouragement when you are struggling.
6. Beeminder
Sometimes tracking your progress isn’t enough to ensure you’re doing your habits. If you want to add some extra “sting” then Beeminder is the app to get. It allows you to put real money into the game; if you fail to make the habit, the app charges your credit card (and the amount they charge increases every time you fail).
That won’t be motivation for everyone. But if you’re the kind of person who performs best when the stakes are high, you’ll love Beeminder. And in addition to financial incentives, Beeminder will also show you a huge amount of data about your habits.
7. HabitHub
Our next pick is HabitHub, a habit-tracking app that lets you visualize your habits as literal “chains.” Apart from the nice design, the app also has some notable features that we haven’t seen in many other habit-tracking apps.
For starters, HabitHub lets you set goals for your habits. This can be very helpful if you are doing a 30-day challenge like “Floss every night for 30 days”.
In addition, HabitHub allows you to mark habits as “Skip”. This is useful if you’re sick, on a business trip, or even on vacation and want to continue tracking your habits even if you can’t complete them.
8. TickTick
TickTick itself is not a habit tracker. Rather, it’s a full to-do list app that includes habit-tracking features.
If you’ve used the task management app Todoist, the design of TickTick will look familiar. And that’s okay with us, because we love how easy Todoist makes it to manage tasks.
The actual features of TickTick’s habit tracker are basic, but it’s an excellent app to get if you want one tool to track both your to-do list and your habits. Plus, TickTick runs on almost any device/platform you can think of, including Apple Watch support.
9. Today
If you were to look up the term “aesthetic” in the dictionary, you’d probably see the Today screenshot. This iOS-only app is gorgeous, easily the most beautiful app on this list.
Underneath the surface, however, Today is still a very useful habit-tracking app with all the standard features for creating and checking daily habits.
Today, in particular, it lets you set custom cover images for each of your habits, which can be useful if you want to remind yourself of a change you’re working on.
10. Loop
Loop has all the standard habit-tracking features you’d expect, including graphs of your progress and the ability to set reminders for your habits. It also supports different habit schedules, allowing you to set a habit to repeat every day, week or even month.
One of Loop’s most notable features is its “Habit Score.” This score represents how many times you did the habit. If you miss a few days after a long streak, your score will go down, but it won’t just go back to zero. It’s a useful tool for sticking to a habit even when life gets in the way.
11. Habitica
Habitica is basically an RPG with built-in habit-tracking features. As you complete your habits, you also build stats for the character in the game. This character can join a party, complete quests, and get new gear (just like you’d expect in an RPG).
Now, admittedly, Habitica is not for everyone. If you’re a nerd who already loves RPGs, this will be perfect for you. But stats, buffs, and other data can be overwhelming or even distracting if you’re new to RPGs.