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How apps can help you form better habits

Changing your behavior can be hard – especially when it comes to giving up the things you love, or doing more of the stuff you don’t. Whether you’re looking to kick old habits or start new ones, your iPhone has you covered. Two smart apps – Streaks and Tangerine – can help change your behavior for the better using nothing more than your iPhone.

Streaks

Streaks is perfect for motivating you to make – or break – habits.

After installing the app, launch Streaks and choose which aspects of your behavior you’d like to change. This can include positive behaviors you’d like to do more of – like reading or exercising – or negative behaviors you’d like to eliminate from your life. Choose an icon for each habit, and Streaks will display them in its main interface.

Streaks.

From here, the game begins. You can record habits in the Streaks app (on iOS, iPadOS, or watchOS), or you can access your streaks from a widget. The aim in Streaks is to build your longest streak possible – the app rewards your efforts and marks your progress using stats and graphs which show how you’re doing over time.

Track your efforts.

Streaks is great for motivation, and you’ll soon find yourself trying to break your best-ever streak in the app. Before you know it, a habit will be formed.

Tangerine

Tangerine is a little different. The focus here is on forming self-care habits that improve your overall well-being. Instead of placing an emphasis on building streaks, Tangerine rewards you for the small steps you take in the hope that this may translate into a longer-lasting change.

Tangerine.

To help, Tangerine lets users set reminders for their different self-care tasks. You might choose to meditate in the morning, run during the day, and visit the gym in the evening. Tangerine can alert you at the right time and will reward you when you mark each item as complete.

Tangerine goes even further, though, by offering users mood-tracking. In doing so, it’s possible to use the app to see the impact your positive habits have on your emotional well-being and mental health. Tangerine will let you know what kind of habits you did on the days you felt best. This, in turn, can motivate users in forming long-lasting self-care habits which help them feel good.

Checking your mood.

Streaks and Tangerine are two apps that support you in developing positive habits using different approaches. While one focuses on building streaks, plotting graphs, and achieving personal bests, the other takes a more holistic approach and explores the relationship between habits, mood, and general well-being. Both are great apps and can help you change your behavior for the better.