Etude

Habits and a diary, for Android

An app that works for you, rather than you working for it.

There are plenty of habit apps, but nearly every one wants something back: an account, a subscription, your attention for an ad, another visit today. I wanted a simple tool that does its job and asks for nothing else. I couldn’t find one, so I made Etude.

An étude is a piece you practise to train your hand. Habits work the same way: day by day, a little at a time, and ideally without strain.

What I wanted it to be

No internet, no account, no ads

Etude doesn’t need a network: it doesn’t even have permission to use one. It doesn’t track what you do, collect statistics or ask you to create yet another account. Your diary lives only on your phone. You save a backup yourself, wherever you like, and move it to a new phone yourself.

A missed day is not a failure

Progress builds up from the days you’ve done and doesn’t burn away because of one you missed. The app never scolds you or counts days without the habit. If misses start to pile up, it suggests a smaller step, one you’re sure to manage today. On the day you come back, it asks what got in the way, so next time is easier.

The game is quieter than the habit

There are no points, coins or levels. Progress is what you’ve actually done: days, minutes, kilometres. You can turn the streak off if it feels like pressure. The goal is the habit itself, not another visit to the app, so a reminder stays quiet once the day is marked.

Made for one hand

Marking a day is one swipe along the row, with no small checkbox to aim for. Everything you touch every day sits in the lower part of the screen, under your thumb. The top is for reading: progress on the habit you’ve selected.

For everyone

Etude works with TalkBack and with large system fonts: I checked every screen, not just the main one. It has light and dark themes, in English and Russian.

Grounded in research

Much of Etude comes from research into how habits form and how people return to them. A habit rests on a link between a situation and an action, so the app asks what you usually do it after. Everyone has hard days, so every habit has a minimum for a bad one. And a response to an obstacle planned in advance works better than willpower in the moment, so Etude helps you prepare one. The questions come up along the way, not as a form at setup.

Free

No subscription, no in-app purchases, no paid version.

What it does

• Daily habits, or a few times a week.
• A value for the day — time with a stopwatch, distance, count, volume — plus the running total.
• Tags for what kind of session it was: track or park, paper book or screen.
• Pause for illness or holidays: those days don’t count as misses.
• Mark a past day if you didn’t get to your phone yesterday.
• An event diary — poor sleep, a headache, a coffee — with intensity, duration and a calendar.
• A summary of one habit or event over a period, as readable text, for a doctor or a coach.

When

Etude is getting ready for Google Play. Before an app can be published, Google asks for it to run for two weeks with a small group of testers. If you’d like to try it early and tell me what’s awkward, write to support@alyz.app.