Polar Habits

I've used Polar Habits for a few weeks. I love the idea behind it, that if you mess up your habit for one day it's not the end of the world. Habit forming should not be a binary thing, win or lose. It's the overall progress that counts and that's why I like what Polar Habits is building. The overall aesthetic is very pleasing too, which is important as it makes me want to come back to use the product each day.

Besides being adorable, it's doesn't reset your streak if you lapse. Everybody needs to rest sometimes or misses, Life happens, However, Polar habits lets you pick back up and build on the momentum you've already built. Lovely product, UI is gorgeous yet minimal. Well done!

Been using this to track some daily habits like stretching where momentum is what counts. Glad it doesn’t use streaks which make me feel like starting over any time I miss a day. Simple UI.

I’ve used Polar Habits for a good while in 2023, and I like it overall. Like the app’s creator, I find that habit “streaks” can be a double-edged sword and ultimately a detriment. For me, the “streaks” features in other apps make me more consistent initially (when I’m tempted to skip a day, I might do it anyway to avoid breaking that streak), but then I give up as soon as a streak is finally broken. The “momentum” visualizations are a nice alternative. Overall the web app was simple and usable. It doesn’t do much (as I understand it, both by design and because it’s early days), but does it pretty well. I’ve used it for months, then mostly stopped for a few reasons, with some personal factors (life got busy for a while in ways that were not compatible with several of the habits I was tracking) and perhaps some factors related to the app. Now, for some criticism of the app. (Note that this is personal and may not apply to other users.) 1. Out of sight, out of mind. Currently Polar Habits is a web app, and lives as a pinned tab in my web browser. I can easily use my phone and my computer or work at my desk or do chores without seeing or thinking about that app. I tried installing the web app as a standalone mobile app on my phone, but my login state was lost and signing back in required getting a code by email and accessing my email from my phone was a pain, so I didn’t get around to it. It seems you can now add a password to your account, which works better for me (with a password manager, it’s a much faster workflow than getting a code by email every other month), but I haven’t gotten around to switching to that. If a dedicated mobile app is coming sometime in 2024, that could be a welcome improvement. Though other ways to make the app a bit more visible might be nice. (I could set Polar Habits as my home page in my browser, but my current browser doesn’t really do home pages or new tab pages. And I don’t use reminders or push notifications because they frustrate me or stress me out, so I need something visible but which doesn’t interrupt me. :P) 2. I find that the momentum visualization become less informative, or even meaningless, for long-lived habits. In the first 30 days or maybe even 60 days, the curve shows what happened as you tried to get a habit intention off the ground (for instance it could take off in the first ten days if you checked almost every day, then plateau as you falter and start skipping more days than not, then pick back up as you react to seeing the curve plateau or even dip by being more consistent again). But after a while, the momentum visualization gets harder to read and to use as a motivation tool. So as it stands, it's useful for new habits but not much for long-lived ones. 3. The UI mostly shows you 10 or 20 days of history for checked or unchecked days, and maybe a bit more in the momentum graph form. It’s hard to get a sense of how you’ve done over time, especially over a few months or a year. That’s too bad, because sometimes you could derive a sense of accomplishment from a consistent performance, or use a spotty record as a motivator to be more consistent or resume an abandoned habit. Personally, I’d like to see visualizations like dot grids (a la GitHub) or other graphs. Maybe that goes against the “momentum” concept, but by definition momentum is more about the present and fairly recent past, it doesn’t work well for retrospective assessment. So something a bit more retrospective would be nice, as a secondary view (preferably not as an end of year “wrapped” pseudo-event). Finally, not as a criticism but as a suggestion: have you looked into the “implementation intention” concept? The idea is to make a “if-then” plan for when and/or how you want to do something, usually by anchoring it with some other condition that happens regularly (similar to “habit stacking”). I’m wondering if a habit-focused app like Polar Habits could try to (optionally) model things like implementation intentions, using user input, and maybe surface that information back to the user in the UI and/or in reminders. As I said earlier, I personally get frustrated or stressed out by reminders (because they interrupt my focus on another activity, which is sometimes hard to handle when you have ADHD; or sometimes they remind me that I’m failing my own goals, which is a bit stressful). But if a reminder also reminded me of my own concrete plan for doing something, that might help overcome the frustration or stress, because it would (hopefully) remind me of where/when to start. (Yes I do forget when or where to start on the thing, and get decision paralysis from it regularly. I have ADHD. When I’m thinking “I should be doing the thing” I virtually never remember the part about “and I’ve written down the first (few) step(s)”, even if that part happened half an hour earlier, let alone if it happened a day or a week ago.) Anyway, good job so far, and I’ll tag along to see how Polar Habits evolves this year. I’ve resumed using it yesterday (because new year resolutions ^^).

Awesome app with clean UI and very reasonable freemium model.

Amazing app. I was able to build a habit of drinking water everyday because it was gamified. As a guy with ADHD, this app helped me feel so much better about building habits. Thank you 🙏🏾

That is an interesting take on forming habits. I love the simple UI and will try it out with two of my habit projects (playing chess and moving more). I'm not easily motivated by streaks that breaks too easily, and curious to try this out!

Forgot I signed up for this, until I had an email asking me to review it. Went in to try and use it. Couldn't make head nor tale of how it was supposed to work. I found the habits I'd originally set up. But then couldn't tell if I was adding an instance of completing it or not. On one Habit I could select a day, which I think was adding to the instance of it. But on another Habit I couldn't select a day. I faffed around for a minute trying to give it a shot, but I don't have the patience for trying to work it out any further, so have deleted it. It didn't seem really gamified to me either. Like, what's the reward for completing your Habit that day? It needs to be more intuitive imo. And you can't seem to go back in and add previous days. Which for anyone with ADHD who probably won't update on time, seems kind of punishing. That really annoyed me. And yeah, since the author wanted reviews, I even went ahead and created an account here, just to leave a review. This is how much this app frustrated me with it's opaqueness. Edit: Since I'm being kinda harsh, I'll give you some examples. On one Habit, when I select the day, it has dashes around the day, like a border, and the monthly tracker below seems to indicate that the Habit has been completed. But on another Habit when I select the day, the day turns green instead of having the dashes border around it. So now I have no idea which of those means I've selected that day. That monthly tracker below needs to be expanded, as there are too many months in too short a space. There should be a way to "zoom in", and just see what days I've logged a Habit on just for that month. I don't need to see that I haven't logged any habits in June, when I'm only in January. I don't care about far away June, I care about now. I have ADHD, the future is too nebulous and far away for my brain to be bothered with. Not to mention, it seems depressing to see how much "work" I have to do to fill up the blank spaces to get to June. I tried clicking on this section, and pinching it, but that didn't seem to change the timeframe I could see. I found it really cluttering on the screen to be constantly reminded I needed to upgrade to Pro. Any Pro features should be hidden for Free users, and only appear for the Pro users. Having multiple boxes sat there, cluttering up my screen telling me to upgrade, reminds me of those websites with an ad every few paragraphs. The UX is dismal because of this. Now maybe a middle aged woman with ADHD, from the UK, who doesn't code; is not your target demographic. But if you're hoping for mass appeal, I just don't think it's easy or fun enough to use. Anyway, feel free to ignore me. If it works for you to help you achieve your habits, that's really the only consideration.

I have tried several habit tracking tools. One of them was great in that it was easy to use across all platforms (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, etc.), but when I snapped my streak, it was a terrible feeling. That is where Polar Habits makes a positive contribution to habit tracking. I have found that I continue to persist towards my goals and habits, but if I miss a day, it doesn't blow up in my face and cause unnecessary regret. I pick right back up the next day and build the track forward. I look forward to seeing this tool evolve (i.e. maybe a mobile app, even though creating a shortcut on the home screen works fine and I haven't had to log back in once I bookmarked or placed icon on my home screen!) and to supporting the team behind it. Great software all around.

Great app to keep up with new habits