How breakhabits Works: Rhythm Over Chains

What breakhabits believes

Most habit trackers turn your life into a chain: keep the streak going, never break it, and feel terrible when you do. breakhabits is built on a different idea — rhythm over chains. A missed day is a skipped beat, not a broken anything. Rest is a right, not a reward. And quitting a habit on purpose can be a win.

Everything below follows from that.

Checking in

Your day lives on the Today screen. Tap the circle next to a habit and it's done — that's the whole job. Counting habits (glasses of water, pages read) go up by one per tap; tap the "2 of 8 today" label to type an exact number instead.

Made a mistake, or want to fill in yesterday? Open the habit and tap any day on its heatmap to edit history.

Your rhythm, not your streak

When you miss exactly one day, the habit shows a small badge: "skipped a beat." That's it. No zero, no red, no lecture — because one miss means nothing, and checking in today puts you right back on rhythm. Miss more than once and the badge simply goes quiet.

On each habit's page you'll find two stats that matter more than any streak:

Return speed — how quickly you historically get back into a habit after a break. This is the number that actually predicts success.
90-day trend — whether the habit is finding its groove, holding steady, or going through a quieter stretch.

Your classic streak numbers are still there too (current and longest) — they're just not the headline anymore.

If a habit has been quiet for a long while, its page shows a gentle note suggesting you make it smaller, rest it, or let it go. That's information, not a verdict.

Why you can only have 5 active habits

Five habits on the daily board — that's the limit, on purpose. Real change comes from a few things done consistently, not fifteen things done anxiously. When you try to add a sixth, the app asks you to make room first, and gives you two good ways to do it:

Park it — the habit moves to the holding tank on the Habits screen. It's waiting, not deleted. Bring it back anytime with one tap (as long as there's a free slot).
Graduate it — for habits that have become automatic. Brushing your teeth doesn't need a tracker anymore; neither does anything you now do without thinking. A graduated habit leaves the daily board but keeps its full history and heatmap. That's the best possible outcome for a habit — celebrate it.

Survival mode: the smallest version that still counts

Every habit can have a "smallest version" — bike 30 minutes becomes "3 minutes", write a page becomes "one sentence." Set it when creating or editing a habit.

On a day after you've missed, Today will offer it to you directly: "Bad day? 3 minutes counts." Tap it and the habit is done — fully done. A survival check-in counts exactly like a normal one everywhere in the app, by design: on hard days, showing up at all is the habit. The only difference is a lighter shade on the heatmap, visible only to you.

You can also log the smallest version anytime from a habit's menu.

Taking a break from a habit

Not sure a habit still deserves a spot? Don't white-knuckle it — test it.

Pause for 2 weeks (in the habit's menu): the habit is parked, and in two weeks Today asks you one honest question: "2 weeks without it. Did anything break? Did you miss it?" If you missed it, bring it back. If nothing broke — maybe you didn't need it.
Retire it: the deliberate goodbye. A retired habit disappears from your screens but keeps all its history (find it under "Show retired" on the Habits screen). Retiring is not failing — it's one less thing you were pretending to do, and future-you will thank you for the honesty.
Delete still exists for habits you never meant to create — but it erases history permanently. When in doubt, retire instead.

The weekly review

Once a week, on a day you choose (Settings → Rhythm → Review day, Sunday by default), Today shows one quiet card: "It's review day. Five quiet minutes with your week?" No push notification, no email, no nagging.

The review walks you through your habits one at a time:

You see the week as it actually was — which days happened, which didn't.
If a habit missed a few days, you pick why in one tap: couldn't start, life interrupted, too much on, or didn't care. Each answer gets a fitting suggestion — and "life interrupted" gets none, because life is allowed to happen.
For every habit you make one small decision: keep, shrink (set a smaller version), park, or retire.
At the end, you can jot a sentence about the week. It lands in your journal, tagged to that week.

That's the whole ritual. Five minutes, once a week, and your habit list stays honest.

Identity votes

When you create a habit, you can answer one optional question: "Who does this habit make you?" — a writer, a runner, someone who calls their parents.

Habits that share an identity group together on Today, under a heading that counts your votes: every check-in is one vote for being that person this month. Two votes for writer today beats zero, and thirty this month is an identity, not a statistic. There are no levels, badges, or leaderboards — the votes are for you.

The extras

"That's enough for today." Counting habits can have an upper bound (set it in the habit form). Once you hit it, the counter stops and the app says so. Eight glasses of water is health; eighteen is a competition with no prize.
Away mode (Settings → Rhythm → Away time): mark a vacation or an illness, and those days count neither for nor against you. Your streak bridges right over the gap — a 10-day rhythm, a week off, and 5 more days shows as 15, because that's the truth of it.
Stretch or coast (Settings → Rhythm, off by default): if you turn it on, each check-in asks one optional question — felt easy or pushed myself? If a habit has felt easy for a week straight, its page will suggest raising the bar or graduating it. Bored is a signal too.
Habit stacking: when creating a habit, you can attach it to an existing one — "after Coffee." Today then shows it right under its anchor, because the easiest time to do a new thing is right after a thing you already do.

Your data

Your data is yours, unconditionally. Export everything as JSON anytime from Settings — this works even if your membership has lapsed, no exceptions. The export is compatible with the old breakhabits.app format, so you can move in either direction.