About
RIPEN is a habit tracker built on an idea from James Clear’s “Atomic Habits”: a habit is not only something you do, it is who you become. So you start with who you want to be, then add habits that get you there, and the app draws them as one tree.
why a tree
A checklist starts empty every day, so it shows nothing of the weeks behind you. The tree keeps them. Every marked day makes a branch longer, and branches never get shorter. The leaves show how you are doing lately: they grow on marked days and fall on missed ones.
You do not add tasks here. You start with the sentence “i am someone who …” and end it in your own words, for example “takes care of my body”. That identity grows out of the trunk, and the habits that help you become that person grow on it as branches.
how it works
- Each day you do a habit, mark it. Every marked day makes its branch longer and adds a leaf.
- Miss a day and 1 leaf falls from that branch. Miss the next day too and 2 fall, then 3 on the third day and on every missed day after it. One marked day stops the run.
- A day counts as missed when you choose “not today” or leave it unmarked until midnight, and only on the days the habit is scheduled for. Until midnight you can undo a mark or “not today”.
- Fallen leaves lie under the tree, and the branch keeps its full length.
- When a branch has 66 leaves at once, a fruit grows on it. A new fruit is green: the habit is ready to be rooted, if you want. A green fruit can also fall: when a branch runs out of leaves, it drops. From a full branch that takes 23 missed days in a row. A gold fruit stays for good.
- “root it” is for a habit that has become automatic. It stops asking for marks, its branch stays on the tree with all its leaves, and the fruit turns gold.
- “cut it” stops a habit you no longer want. The branch stops growing and is cut back to a stub, as thick as the branch had grown, without its leaves.
- For illness or travel, “take a break” gives all your habits up to 7 days off, starting today, and you can extend it. Those days do not count: no leaves grow and none fall.
Why 66: in a study at University College London, that was the typical number of days a new daily habit took to become automatic. For some people it took 18 days, for others 254. So 66 is a guide, not a promise. What that study actually found.
numbers
“numbers” in “more” shows what the tree adds up to. Nothing here is sent anywhere — these are counted on your phone, from your own tree.
- tree — age, planted, identities, branches, still growing, rooted, cut
- progress — leaves, missed, fruit
privacy
There is no account and no sign-up, and the app has no analytics. Five things can leave your phone: a public page while “public link” is on, a picture or a film when you share one, a problem report when you send one, ideas and feedback when you send them, and the online copy for moving your tree to a new phone, which is made by itself.
All of it is on its own page: what each of these carries, what our server keeps, and how to delete it.
the recovery secret
There is no account, so the app gives you a recovery secret: 10 words, under “show recovery secret” in “more”. The app keeps an online copy of your tree, and on a new phone these words bring it back. They also open the app if you forget the pin. Anyone who has them can do the same, and the words can never be changed. Write them down somewhere outside your phone.
What does not move with the tree: the pin, because it belongs to the phone, and your purchases, because they belong to your App Store or Google Play account. Sign in to the new phone with the same account and use “restore purchases” in “more”.
what it costs
Free: 1 identity with 5 habits. Pro is a one-time purchase, not a subscription: up to 4 identities with 5 habits each, the time machine (your tree at any hour and in any weather), nature sounds and music that keep playing after you leave the app, pictures and films without the RIPEN watermark, and the star map. The night sky over the tree is real for everyone — the stars from a catalogue, the Milky Way, the planets and the moon in its true phase; the star map is the layer that names them, a hairline through each constellation with its name beside it. Nothing you have grown is ever locked behind Pro, and nothing stops working when a card expires.
Two more one-time purchases, separate from Pro. “change the shape” redraws your tree in another shape: your habits and days do not change, and after buying it you can change the shape whenever you like, but you cannot go back to a shape you left. “sweep fallen leaves” sweeps all fallen leaves under the tree into the soil, whenever you like: missed days stay missed, and leaves keep falling after it.
where to get it
RIPEN is an app: iPhone and Android. There is no browser version and there will not be one — a tree you keep for years should live on your phone, not in a browser tab that clearing the cache can empty.
RIPEN is out: App Store and Google Play. One purchase, no account, no subscription. The tree on the front page is a demo, and play with the tree opens the same scene with every slider left open.
credits
The type is Geist Mono by Vercel, under the SIL Open Font License 1.1; the license travels inside the app with the font. The icons are Tabler Icons by Paweł Kuna, under the MIT license, redrawn to the hairline weight the rest of the app is drawn in.
Most of what you hear is field recordings from freesound.org, released by their authors under CC0 — no attribution asked for, which is exactly why it is given here. A few, among them the crow, the owl and the brook, come from Pixabay under its own licence. Six are synthesised for this app and exist nowhere else: the three winds and the three rains of an ordinary day. The winter wind, the downpour and the thunder are recordings, like the rest. One author asked for a line even under CC0, and it is the least I can do: “Respect” by Misterbates.
The music comes from two places. Part of it is CC0: the authors gave up their rights and ask for nothing. The rest is from Pixabay, under its own licence — it costs nothing and asks for no credit either, but it is a licence, not a waiver, so it is named separately here. Either way I put the author and the track in the player: it names them while it plays.
Built with Flutter, and SoLoud for sound. Both are open source.
The idea the whole app is built on — that a habit is not only something you do but who you become — comes from “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. The 66 days come from Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts and Wardle, “How are habits formed”, University College London, 2009. It is the median of a range from 18 to 254 days.
who made this
Anton Kozionov, a product designer and product manager. I built RIPEN because every habit tracker I tried looked like a spreadsheet that was disappointed in me, and I wanted one that grows a tree instead.
questions people ask
Longer answers to the things the app gets asked about, with the numbers they rest on:
- All of them in one list — the same index in every language RIPEN speaks
- How long does it take to form a habit? — what the 66-day study actually found, and why “21 days” has no study behind it
- What happens if you miss a day? — the leaf arithmetic, and why a streak counter prices misses backwards
- Does a habit have to be every day? — schedules, and what a non-daily habit costs in time to a fruit
- Habit trackers that grow a tree — the one question to ask any of them before you plant anything
- What RIPEN costs — why it is bought once and not every month
- No account, no sign-up — where the tree lives, and how it survives a new phone
- How does the sky know where I am? — real stars from your time zone, never from a location permission
- No points, no coins, no levels — the only two numbers in the app
- Streaks is Apple-only — what to use if you moved to Android
- Loop Habit Tracker on iPhone — why there is no official one
- Play with the tree — the same scene in the browser, with every slider left open
support
Write to [email protected] — bugs, questions, or a tree that stopped making sense. There is no ticket system; the mail comes to me.
For a bug, “report a problem” in “more” opens an email with the app version and other details already in it, so I do not have to ask.