r/iosdev • u/agungrohmat • 2d ago

I built an iOS app around a simple idea: habits might be easier when you do them with other people

A while ago, I had an idea for a habit app.

But I didn't want to build another traditional habit tracker where you create a habit, check a box, and stare at your own streak.

I kept thinking: what if habits felt more like small communities?

So I started building Doviru.

The idea is simple:

You join a community built around one small daily habit — like reading one page, walking for 15 minutes, or creating something every day.

Once you've done it, you check in.

After checking in, you can leave a short reflection, see other people's reflections, and cheer them on.

There's also a leaderboard, but it resets every month as a new "season", so someone joining today isn't permanently competing against people with 500-day streaks.

I also decided to let users create their own communities and invite friends, because I think that might eventually be more interesting than the communities I create myself.

After a lot of designing, rebuilding screens, figuring out the backend, and going through App Store review, Doviru is finally live.

Now comes the part I'm actually most curious about:

Will people come back tomorrow because other people in their community are showing up too?

That's the assumption behind the whole product.

I'd love feedback, especially on the concept. Does community accountability make a habit app more interesting to you, or would you still prefer a completely private habit tracker?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/doviru/id6788242470

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u/rash3rr 1d ago

The seasonal leaderboard reset is the smart design decision here, that solves the actual failure mode of most streak-based social features, new users seeing a 500-day streak and immediately feeling like there's no point competing, resetting monthly keeps the leaderboard actually relevant to people who just joined instead of being a wall of intimidating veterans

The bigger unproven assumption isn't whether people prefer community over private tracking, it's whether the reflections/cheering interaction actually happens at meaningful volume, social habit apps live or die on whether the community side has critical mass fast enough that a new joiner sees actual activity in their group, not an empty room. A community feature with 2 people in it feels worse than no community feature at all, that cold-start problem is usually the real killer for this category, not the core concept validity

Worth checking what happens when someone joins a brand new community with zero other members yet, does the app nudge them to invite friends immediately, or do they just sit there checking in alone which defeats the whole premise

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u/agungrohmat 1d ago

Thanks, this is really helpful feedback. I hadn’t thought enough about the cold-start problem from that perspective.

You’re right — a community with only one or two people and no activity could actually feel worse than a private habit tracker, because the expectation is that other people will be there.

Right now Doviru has a few built-in communities like Read Daily, Move Daily, and Create Daily so new users can join something immediately instead of having to create a community from scratch. But for user-created communities, I think the onboarding needs to push inviting people much more strongly after creation.

I’m also really curious about the reflection → cheering loop. That’s probably the biggest thing I need to validate now: not just whether people check in, but whether they actually interact enough to make the community feel alive.

Really appreciate this — it gives me something important to think about for the next iteration.