Ready to get your productivity on?
Trying to stop biting your nails? Want to make time to meditate each day? Need to catch up on your reading? Whatever it may be, there’s never a bad time to start working on building healthy habits and/or breaking bad ones.
Doing this on your own can be pretty tricky, but with the help of these apps, you can put yourself in the best position possible to stick with your goals moving forward.
Top 3 Apps:
- 1. Grow
- 2. Fabulous
- 3. Habitica
More options
- Daily
- Google Calendar
- HabitNow
- TickTick
- HabitHub
1. Grow
Our top pick, Grow, is a simple and beautiful app that you’ll want to use each day. Adding a habit takes just a few seconds, and after you do that, you can add as many other ones as you’d like.
You can set start and end dates for your goals, certain times during the day you want to complete them, and as you keep going, you’ll see a tree gradually grow with each day that you successfully meet it.
Grow doesn’t have quite as many features compared to some of the other apps on this list, but if you just want something easy and enjoyable to use, this is one of our favorites.
Watch it grow
Grow
Free at Google Play
Build habits simply and beautifully
Want a clean, easy-to-use app to help you build habits? Grow is a fantastic choice. It’s not as complex as some of our other favorites, but for people that want to keep things as simple as possible, this is a great fit. We also love the visualization of growing trees as you follow through with your habits.
2. Fabulous
If you know you want to take better control of your life but aren’t sure where to start, download Fabulous right now.
Not only is Fabulous one of the best-looking apps on Android, but it’s also one of the most feature-rich habit trackers around. Whether you want to lose weight, sleep better, feel more energized, or something else in between, Fabulous has a life coaching plan for you to follow.
Fabulous teaches you how to take power naps, has built-in workout routines to follow, and meditation sessions to help you calm down and focus on what matters.
You can start using Fabulous for free, but to take advantage of everything it has to offer, you’ll need to pay up. After a seven-day free trial, the retail price of Fabulous is $11.89/month, or a little over $142/year. Fabulous does often run sales and promotions to lower the cost of your first year, with one of the best one offering a 72% discount that brings it down to just $3.33/month (billed as $39.99/year).
Life-changer
Fabulous
Free w/ IAP at Google Play
Science-backed habit builder
Fabulous is the most expensive and feature-rich habit builder on our list, but if you want to take things head-on with everything the Play Store has to offer, this is the app to get. Its methods are based on scientific studies and can be used to better your life in many different ways.
3. Habitica
Tracking habits on its own isn’t the most exciting thing ever, but thanks to a nifty little app called Habitica, it can actually be quite engaging.
Habitica gameifies habit-tracking by turning it into an RPG. You can create habits and to-dos that you want to stick to, and as you complete these, you’ll earn experience points, mana, and more to level up your character.
Completing tasks allows you to earn points, and once you earn enough points, you can redeem these for rewards (such as a health potion, cosmetics for your character, or something a bit more tangible, like allowing yourself to watch an episode of your favorite TV show).
Habitica is free to use, but you do have the option of buying Gems (used for buying cosmetics, app backgrounds, and more) or a subscription that includes exclusive monthly items, the ability to buy gems with gold you earn, and other perks.
Gamify things
Habitica
Free w/ IAP at Google Play
The most fun you’ll have building habits
Habitica takes a unique approach to the habit-building process — it turns it into a video game! Habitica is designed to play like an RPG, featuring things like quests, unlockable armor, customizable characters, and more. You progress through the game and level up by completing your tasks/habits.
Daily
For folks looking for a more conventional habit-tracking app, we recommend downloading Daily.
Daily is another well-designed app that’s extremely easy to navigate and makes your habits the primary focus above all else. The Today page shows all habits you’re currently tracking, and the built-in calendar will show which habits/tasks you need to complete for any given day.
You can track the progress of your habits at any time from the All Habits page, and when creating a habit, it can be customized with a schedule, reminders, card colors, and a badge that gives it a unique visual indicator.
Daily is another app that’s free to use out of the box, but the $1.99 Premium version comes with a dark theme, the ability to add unlimited habits, and more.
Does it all
Daily
Free w/ IAP at Google Play
Great features, low price
Daily is one of the more straightforward habit trackers out there, but everything it does, it does incredibly well. You can start tracking habits right out of the box for free or get the premium version for unlimited habits, color coding, more badge icons, a stunning dark theme, and much more.
Google Calendar
Yes, Google Calendar can be used for tracking habits. Seriously!
When you tap on the + icon in the app, you can tap the Goal bubble to add a goal/habit you want to follow. You can make goals for exercising, learning a new language, spending time with a friend, taking up a new hobby, cleaning the house, and a lot more.
Once you find a goal you’d like to stick with, you choose how often you want to do it, how long you want to do that particular thing, and the time of day you want to do it.
This is all built right into the Google Calendar app that’s already on your phone, and yes, it’s completely free to use.
More than a calendar
Google Calendar
Free at Google Play
The habit tracker you already have on your phone
We all use and rely on Google Calendar for keeping track of doctor appointments and important meetings, but did you know it’s also a pretty great tool for tracking habits? Google Calendar allows you to create Goals for exercising, building a skill, organizing your life, and more. Plus, it ties in with your Google account.
HabitNow
Finding a habit tracker that can fit into your regimen is extremely important, especially if you want a habit to stick. HabitNow gives you all the tools you need to successfully built a new habit, from custom habits to reminders and alarms.
It can be tough to motivate yourself, but HabitNow aims to cut down on the frustration by giving you all the tools you need for success. The app provides quite a few different options for each habit, including the ability to set a priority, create a category, or set a goal date. And the app itself is customizable so you can set the right color theme to fit your mood or personality.
There’s a calendar built into the app, making it easy to track your progress, along with graphs and charts to view your progress at a glance. You can even add notes to your different habits if you want to give yourself an explanation (excuse) as to why you broke your habit streak. HabitNow also includes a few home screen widgets, so you can always be reminded, or you can get satisfaction in hitting the checkbox each day.
Set a new routine
HabitNow
Free w/ IAP at Google Play
It’s time to quit procrastinating
HabitNow is one of those apps that may seem overwhelming at first glance with all of the different customization options. However, this is one of the best features as you can fine-tune your habits to fit your needs, instead of relying on “cookie-cutter” habits that don’t precisely match what you’re trying to do.
TickTick
Task managers (or to-do list apps) can be tricky enough as you’ll want to make sure that they will work for you. But when it comes to building habits, why not have an app that keeps everything housed together, acting as your one-stop-shop for productivity? TickTick has upped its game over the last few months and has added some extremely useful features, including habit tracking.
That’s right — you can use TickTick to knock out your daily tasks, along with either starting a great habit or quitting a bad one. The app sports a simplistic interface, while having much more power under the hood than you would expect. As for habit tracking, there are a plethora of already-created options for you to choose from, or you can create one from scratch.
Creating habits is as simple as tapping on the Habit toolbar icon, and tapping Create a new habit. Then the app will guide you through creating a new habit to track, offering some fun icons to choose from, a quote to add, and setting goals or reminders. TickTick even includes an interactive widget so you can mark off your tracking as they are completed.
Not just for tasks
TickTick
Free w/ IAP at Google Play
Not your standard to-do list
TickTick already offers a fantastic experience for those looking to get more productive with its task management and Pomodoro features. But the app also makes it easy to start (or quit) habits, and they are customizable from top-to-bottom, including the ability to set reminders and pick goals.
HabitHub
Although it’s been a few years since Material Design was first introduced, there are still quite a few apps that take advantage of this gorgeous design with some minor updates. One app that falls in this category is HabitHub, as this app still sports the older design language with a few tweaks to keep things looking fresh.
HabitHub is based on the “streaks” productivity method, which involves building streaks for days on end. As the streak gets longer, you will be more inclined to keep it going instead of having to start over from zero. The app offers a few pre-built themes, along with a calendar view to keep track of all of your habits and how you are doing. With this calendar, you can see the streaks building, as each successful day is connected, and each broken day stands alone.
For each habit that you are trying to create and maintain, there’s a “habit strength progress” page, giving you an idea of just how well you are doing. This provides an alternative viewpoint than just looking at the calendar or number of days that the habit/task has been completed. HabitHub also sports a few widgets so you can keep track of how you’re doing at a glance.
Not just for tasks
HabitHub
Free w/ IAP at Google Play
Stay motivated no matter what
Regardless of whether you’re using a smartphone, tablet, or smartwatch, HabitHub has your habit tracking needs covered. The app provides flexible goals and a beautiful design in order to help you build your streaks to turn a menial and forgotten task into something you do without even thinking.
