Show HN: A free minimalist daily habit tracker (rdht.vercel.app)

158 points by pixd ↗ HN
Hello.

I was looking for a simple and clean habit tracker. I went through a few apps but felt they were missing something. I also had some time on my hands, so decided to make my own and share it in case anyone else likes it.

Some of the supported features:

Streaks based, track and beat your longest streaks

Fully useable offline

Freezes (similar to Duolingo's streak freezes)

Visual map for tracking consistency

Pause the app when you need a break or will be away

For anyone curious about the tech stack: - React for frontend - Dexie cloud for storage and syncing - Vercel for hosting

Link: [https://rdht.vercel.app/]

95 comments

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This is perfect, I've been wanting something like this forever.
That's great to hear. Thanks!
Nice and clean. I would love a collapsed view of the habits. How does the offline mode works? Any monetization plans?
That's a great idea, thanks.

The data is stored locally on the browser using IndexedDB so everything works offline. If you login, it'll sync your data with a remote server.

I haven't really thought about monetization as this primarily started as just a tool for myself. Might have to give it some though but not sure what I would monetize

Agreed. Being able to see more than 1.5 tasks on a page would be an improvement.

It would also be nice to have some indicator (at the top) that all tasks for the day have been completed.

Looks good. How do you "done" past days? Sometimes I don't actually miss the habit but not have the time to open screen.

I also created similar habit tracker app for mobile https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yedev.habi... The unique thing is that I use google drive to sync habits

I like the design, very clean.

For the past days, if you click the 3 dots next to the checkbox, there's an option to add checks for previous days using the calendar

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Great idea!

Doesn’t work well on mobile safari

Thanks!

I'll spend some time debugging on safari and see what the issue is

Unusable on iPhone 13 mini. Couldn’t log in as the OTO entry screen was not visible.
Thanks for the feedback! I'll have to debug for safari, not sure what the issue is
ios issues should be fixed now. there was a problem with the zoom in and overflow for safari
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Nice. I see the GitHub style tracker alot lately
I'm always up late and I'd like to get a last minute habit checked off before I go to bed, but so many tools move to the next day at midnight. I ended up building my own minimal chore tracker[1] because I couldn't find any that aligned to that schedule. I really think everyone has slightly different needs and chore/habit trackers make a great minimal programming+design project.

[1] https://alexsci.com/blog/personal-apps/

Hi there, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog post - especially the part about single-purpose software. It's a recurring tension in my digital/physical existence.
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This looks like a product a lot of effort and thought went into, including a consistent graphical design. Congrats!

The style that was chosen, to me is deeply unsettling. These Well-lit, colourful, rounded, smooth 3D objects remind me of a chaotic, visually complex and triggering while trying-to-be-baby-safe environment, and indeed puts me into thinking the exact opposite of what I'd want to achieve with this product (which is eliminating chaos, and get my adult daily life sorted out).

Note that this is rather a weird angle and not a criticism of your product. I'm pretty sure it's only me, or at most a handful of people who are triggered into this state of mind. I found it interesting.

That is very interesting feedback, thank you! You might not be alone though, from time to time we get similar feedback, and in fact, we are currently rethinking branding to make it more calm and positive.
I didn't even try to dive into why I left the page within 20 seconds.

> visually complex and triggering while trying-to-be-baby-safe environment resonates perfectly, though.

On a side note: sorting adult daily lives out needs to embrace and make space for the inner child. I observe it everywhere at the moment: parents, old friends, even in my younger brother and myself. An unhealthy kind of stress, burnout and depression build up if you don't.

No science here, but...

Isn't it munching on ice cream at 10pm, video games, and other indulges are for that? Also at work, I am (thankfully) able to tinker a lot while delivering value, and not under constant pressure to just grind, in a dry, too serious environment.

I think I do embrace (quite often) the inner child in me, but I definitely separate the "productivity" of my life from that: things that need the diligence, I do take seriously, and maybe this is what gives me this dissonant feeling when I look at this design language in the context of making me more productive.

Looks slick, but I’d love to be able to see a demo (or more screenshots) before signing up.
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This is really cool. I definitely like the expansive stat tracking. The weekly report is a really nice touch. gives you a chance to reflect on your progress.

I don't use Google Calendar often, so it took me a while to get the tracking part to work, but it worked flawlessly once I understood about the event naming

Like the design. Personally I think the barrier for a project deserving a domain is pretty low.

"Try for free" is ominous. If you have a paid plan, please have that on the home page. Otherwise, I wouldn't use that wording.

That. When a page says “try” and “for free” in connection, I always research the hidden real long time cost before trying. If I can’t find it, I usually leave or Google to find out if the costs have been mentioned somewhere else.
Thanks for the feedback, I updated the text.

My intention behind "try for free" was to keep the barrier for trying out the app low. But I didn't realize that it would also imply a hidden price or some premium level

You can use 16px font size on mobile so the browser won't zoom in to the text field.
Thank you! this should be fixed, I didn't realize ios had a zoom in feature like this. There was also an issue with the overflow not working on ios, which is also fixed
I just want to put out Loop Habit Tracker ( https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits ). Its open source, ad free and has the option to start the day at 3 am. I am very happy with this solution.
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Loop is an all time classic. Just wish it supported other platforms too.
love the UI.

I made habit tracker visualizer based on Apple Reminders

https://public.me/anton/daily

you need to focus on how you'll stop eating pastries man, I'll hope you succeed soon, based on that tracker list

Good luck !

Regards,

Pastry Hater

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Quick bug.

As an unauthed user, add a habit. Then log in. Habit has disappeared. (but can create habits, which then sync just fine to other devices)

I guess I was expecting my unauthed user habit to persist after logging in.

I did it before your comment. My habit persists. Firefox on Android if that matters.
On a side note, The only habit tracker that has worked me is BEEMINDER.
Ever made a side bet with yourself to remove the middleman?
Beeminder reliably makes me spend money on Beeminder. :)
Those are features I’ve always been looking for in a tracker
This is really cool.

I don’t think I have diagnosable ADHD, but I have noticed that gamification features like “streaks” often cause more problems in building habits than helping them. My daughter, who is diagnosed with severe ADHD, eventually had to “give up” some of the streak based apps like Duolingo because they are, imho, preying on our desire to complete “streaks” only to increase in-app activity for their own platform.

I’ve been really loving Llamalife - https://llamalife.co - they don’t do habits but they organize a lot of the schema around people who get overwhelmed easily.

After reading this comment I installed llamalife and immediately abandoned it when it asked me to sign up and accept T&Cs as the first thing after opening. There was no support for sign in with apple either.

I love that the app from this HN submission is usable without creating an account.

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Oh interesting, that's why I added the "freeze" feature to help avoid feeling "required" to go on the app every day. But maybe it requires some more customization to account for wider cases
As someone with ADHD “streak freezes” are a thing I never knew I needed, wow. I’ve tried so many gamified habit things and the anxiety over potentially missed dopamine is just so present no matter how old or “wise” I become.

Excited to try this out

Thanks! I wanted to have something that could serve as motivation but not detract from the idea of building consistent habits and this does seem to work well
This is really nicely done. It looks great and is very responsive. I have some things I track that aren’t daily so it doesn’t work for me, but I like that you didn’t build an app with a billion options.

Are you on the free plan for Dexie? How many users do you think you can support with the 100MB limit?

yes im on the free tier. not really sure how many users can be supported on it. unfortunately the cloud manager doesn't show me how much data is currently being used
You might want to establish a policy for abandoned lists. If somebody hasn’t used the daily tracker for a month, delete it. I know lots of people like me set up a tracker just to see how it works and realistically, I’m not going to be back again.
I've been working on a minimalist daily habit tracker that I designed for counting calories as part of my own weight loss journey. It's called Quick Calories. The PWA is free, it doesn't require an account, has no advertising, and works offline.

Link: [https://calories.joeldare.com]

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I use an iPhone 12 mini. In portrait mode, the site was nearly unusable. I would add a habit, and the keyboard covered up the description field. There was no way for me to scroll the page to get the description field. Fortunately, the iOS keyboard has a next field button which I could click and hello me to entered the habit description.

I too like the clean design and wish you good luck.

The scroll and zoom issues on ios should now be fixed
Trying to add a check in the past but the calendar shows up but can't select a date. Using chrome.
The calendar let's you mark days from one the habit was created, instead of any day in the past