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.
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.
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.
There is no account and no sign-up, and the app has no analytics. What can leave your phone: a public page while “public link” is on, a picture when you share one, a problem report when you send one, 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.
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”.
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, and pictures and films without the RIPEN watermark. Nothing you have grown is ever locked behind it, 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.
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.
The App Store and Google Play builds are on their way. This page carries the links the day they are live. Leave your email on the front page and you get one message the day it is out — then the whole list is deleted. The tree on the front page is a demo.
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. The winds, the rain and the thunder are made for the app and exist nowhere else. One author asked for a line even under CC0, and it is the least I can do: “Respect” by Misterbates.
The music is CC0 too. I put the author and the track in the player anyway: 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.
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.
Write to hello@ripen.day — 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.