Habits and challenges
The Habits tab keeps score. Digital habits are refereed by a rule. Physical ones are refereed by you.
Two kinds of habit
Digital
A rule does the blocking, the habit keeps score. Starting one switches its rule on.
You cannot fake a day. The evidence is whether the rule held.
Physical
Nothing is blocked. You tick it off each day, with optional reminders.
Water, the gym, reading, a walk. The honour system, and that is fine.
Both live on the same tab, with a filter at the top to switch between them.
Digital habits
A digital habit watches one or more rules. Every day they all held is a day kept. Break one and the day is broken. Pausing, stopping or editing a protecting rule counts as breaking it. Letting it run does not.
- Pick what it watchesYour own rules or any of the 30 presets. Free watches one per habit, Pro watches several.
- Name it and set a length3 to 90 days. Under three days is not a promise. Over three months is a life, which is what an open-ended habit already is.
- Place your milestonesTwo flags by default, draggable to the days you want to celebrate. Fixed once it starts.
- Start itThe rules it watches switch on for you.
If a rule still needs setup, the habit will not start on it. It says which one and offers to take you there, rather than starting a run that could never be kept.
When a challenge ends with its rules still on, you are asked whether to leave them running. Finishing is not automatically a reason to unblock everything.
Physical habits
- How often. Once a day for a yes or no habit. More for a quantity: water is owed eight times, because one glass is not the day. The day counts once you hit the target.
- Reminders. Times you pick, grouped into morning, afternoon, evening and night. Having none is a fine answer, and you can still check in any time.
- Check in and undo. Tap to record one, undo if you got ahead of yourself.
- Check in with a tag. Give the habit a Check in tag and it checks in only by tag: tap it or scan it. Undo still works. Pro.
Six presets ship with the app, and Something else covers the rest. See the preset list.
Check in from your home screen
The Habit widget puts your habits on the home screen as a grid, in three sizes. Tap a habit to check it in without opening the app. Pro.
Duplicate this habit, in a habit's settings, makes a copy to start from. The same exists for rules and block lists.
Committing to a term
A habit runs open-ended until you give it a finish line. Commit to a term turns it into a challenge: a fixed number of days, ending with a verdict.
| Outcome | Means |
|---|---|
| Active | Running. The timeline shows days kept, today, and days ahead. |
| Completed | Reached the full term without two breaks in a row. |
| Relapsed | Two broken days in a row, or you ended it yourself. |
One slip does not end a run. Two in a row does. One bad day is a bad day. Two is a decision. Ending it yourself counts as a relapse, and you can start again straight away. Restarts are numbered, so a second attempt reads as one.
A committed habit cannot be deleted until the term ends, and its rules inherit the hold: stricter yes, looser no.
How a day is scored
Days are recalculated from the record rather than stored as a running total, so a habit cannot drift from the evidence. A finished run keeps its verdict permanently.
Every card shows the same three figures:
- Current streak, with your best run beneath it.
- Last 30 days, as a percentage kept.
- Today, done or not, or a count towards the target.
The Aurith streak
Separate from individual habits, Aurith carries one streak on Home. One rule, and that is all:
| What you do | What happens |
|---|---|
| Hit your daily goal, 2 hours by default | Streak up one |
| Anything else | Nothing changes |
Nothing takes a day away. Ending a focus early, pausing a rule or missing a day costs you nothing here. Habits and challenges are the strict ones, and they keep their own score. The goal is filled by undisturbed focus, block list or rule time, credited while it runs rather than only at the end. Blocks from Home count too.
When a day's goal is reached, Appcognito opens a short celebration: your streak, your week so far and the time protected today.
Adjust the goal in Settings, Aurith streak, with an optional daily reminder set to morning, midday or evening.
The scene on Home grows with your streak, and 7, 14, 30, 60, 100 and 365 days are marked as you reach them. Nothing unlocks and nothing is spent. It is just an achievement.
Tapping the streak opens Stats: total focus, best day, last 30 days, breakdowns by block list and by rule, and recent blocks with their reasons. All of it stays on your phone.
Free plan limits
Habits are free. Challenges, meaning a habit with a term, are the Pro feature.
- Three challenges per device, for life on free. The trial counts. This is the only lifetime cap in the app.
- One challenge at a time on free.
- One rule watched per challenge on free.