HabitKit Alternative: What to Use When One Habit Keeps Leaving Empty Squares

HabitKit is one of the best-looking habit trackers on the App Store, and its idea is simple: every habit gets a grid of tiles, "one square for every day you show up". The listing is confident about why that works: "When your grid looks this good, you will not want to stop." On the US storefront on 12 October 2026 it was rated 4.84 from 2,468 ratings. For many people the grid does exactly that. This page is for the other case: one habit whose grid keeps getting gaps, where the empty squares are the only thing that changes.

It is not a list of twenty apps. It explains what HabitKit is built to do, when it is still the right choice, and what to look for if what you actually need is help on the day after an empty square.

What HabitKit is built to do

HabitKit is built around visible progress. Every habit gets "its own tile grid, like a contribution graph", and the listing promises that "One glance tells you the whole story: what you did, what you missed, and how far you have come." Its core loop is short and the listing repeats it: "do it, log it, watch the grid grow." The motivation it names is the streak: "Fill the tiles, protect your streak, and let consistency do the heavy lifting."

Around that grid it offers yes/no, count and amount tracking, flexible schedules, a dashboard with Classic, Compact and Split views, widgets, reminders and a daily check-in, statistics with current and best streaks and streak goals, categories, themes, and a quit mode where "every day counts as clean until you log a slip". It is also private in a way few apps are: "No account. No sign-up. No ads." Data stays on the device and the app works offline. On price, "HabitKit is free to use with up to four habits", and Pro can be paid monthly, yearly or once.

The listing is also explicit about tone: "No guilt trips, just daily habit tracking that feels rewarding." And it lets you "add a short note to any day: what went well, what got in the way." What it does not describe is the app doing anything with that note, or changing your plan when the same habit keeps leaving gaps. A missed day becomes an empty square and a shorter current streak; what you do about it is up to you.

Why a prettier grid does not fill the gap

Seeing your progress does help. Harkin and colleagues (2016) pooled 138 studies and found that monitoring progress toward a goal reliably improves the chance of reaching it. But a grid is best at rewarding the days that went well. An empty square tells you that a day was missed; it does not tell you whether the cause was time, energy, place or a week that had no room for the habit, and that cause decides what tomorrow should look like.

The moment after a gap is also when motivation is easiest to waste. Dai, Milkman and Riis (2014) showed that people are more likely to start working on their goals after "temporal landmarks", such as a new week, a new month or a birthday. That fresh-start feeling is useful, but it often arrives as "I'll start properly on Monday", which turns one missed day into several. Habits are built by repeating the same behaviour in the same context: Lally and colleagues (2010) found a median of 66 days to automaticity, with a range from 18 to 254, and missing one opportunity did not materially affect the outcome. One empty square is not the problem. Waiting for a clean start, with the same plan that already failed, is.

What works better is deciding in advance what you will do in a specific situation. Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) combined 94 tests of these "if-then" plans and found a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals. So if one HabitKit grid keeps getting gaps while the others fill up, the fix is usually not a better-looking grid. It is a smaller version of the habit, a different time or a different anchor, chosen before the next miss.

When HabitKit is still the right choice

Switching apps is not always the answer. Stay with HabitKit, or go back to it, if any of these describe you:

• The grid genuinely motivates you. If filling squares keeps you going, that is exactly what HabitKit is designed for, and it does it beautifully.
• You track several habits, counts or amounts. Glasses of water, pages, kilometres and schedules like three times a week are all built in. BeMooore tracks one habit and nothing else.
• You want to quit something. HabitKit has a quit mode with clean days and daily limits, like two coffees a day. BeMooore is built for building one habit.
• Privacy and offline use matter most. No account, data on your device, offline, plus import and export backups in Pro. BeMooore has no data export.
• You want to pay once. HabitKit offers a lifetime option. The BeMooore paid plan is a subscription.
• Your grids are mostly full. If your habits are sticking, the right number of apps to change is zero.

What to look for in an alternative

If the problem was one habit that kept leaving gaps when your week changed, another tracker with a nicer grid will show you the same gaps in a different colour. Filter on what the app does after a miss, not on how well it displays it:

If your last app was Streaks, see our Streaks app alternative guide; if it was a game that takes health points, the Habitica alternative guide; if an all-in-one routine became too much, the Fabulous alternative guide; if a polished tracker recorded your skips but nothing changed, the Habitify alternative guide; if a chain of perfect days broke, the Productive app alternative guide; if a self-care pet kept you busy but one habit never stuck, the Finch app alternative guide; if you know the Atomic Habits method and the habit still slipped, the Atoms app alternative guide; if your charts showed the slide but nothing changed, the Strides app alternative guide; and if a green and red grid kept showing red days, the Way of Life app alternative guide. The apps side by side are in the best habit tracker app, by the reason you quit the last one.

BeMooore: one habit and a mentor that changes the plan after a miss

BeMooore is deliberately narrower than HabitKit. It does not give you a dashboard of grids; it is built around one habit and what happens after you miss it. Its App Store listing opens with the problem: "Miss one day and everything resets to zero. That is why most habit apps stop working after week two." What the listing says the app does instead:

• "Missed days do not wipe your progress. No streak shaming, no starting over."
• "An AI mentor that asks what got in the way and adjusts the plan, instead of sending another reminder."
• "Routines that flex around real life: sick days, travel, bad weeks."
• It is made for people who have quit habit trackers before, including people with ADHD whose attention does not run on a schedule.

The suggested start: pick one habit that matters this month, log it with one tap, and when you slip, let the app ask what got in the way and rebuild the plan with you. Where HabitKit leaves an empty square and a place for a note, BeMooore is built for the conversation that follows the note: why the day was missed and what tomorrow should look like.

Where it is weaker than HabitKit, honestly: it has no tile grids or multi-habit dashboard, no count or amount tracking, no quit mode, no widgets, themes or data export and no lifetime purchase. It is built for one habit rather than many, it has no public rating history yet, and it is iOS only. The BeMooore download is free and the paid plan starts with a 1-week free trial that you can cancel in Settings. Some people use both: HabitKit for the grids that are filling up, BeMooore for the one habit that keeps leaving gaps.

Whatever you choose, plan for the empty square

Any app, HabitKit included, works better with one ritual it cannot do for you: deciding in advance what you will do the day after a miss. Three rules help more than any app choice:

One habit first. Pick the habit that matters most and put it at the top of your dashboard, before the grids that fill themselves.

Never miss twice, and do not wait for Monday. One empty square is noise. Write down now what the two-minute version of the habit is, so the day after a miss has a plan instead of a fresh start that is still days away. That is an if-then plan: "if yesterday was empty, today I do the two-minute version".

Use the note for the cause, then change one thing. HabitKit lets you note what got in the way; do it, in one word: time, energy, place or forgot. After three weeks the pattern is usually obvious, and you can change when and where the habit happens. More on choosing an anchor in morning rituals, and on how habits form in habit formation and change. The case for dropping streak pressure entirely is in habit trackers without streaks, and nine iOS trackers are compared on exactly this point in our missed-day comparison.

Frequently asked questions

References

• Harkin, B., Webb, T. L., Chang, B. P. I., Prestwich, A., Conner, M., Kellar, I., Benn, Y., & Sheeran, P. (2016). Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 142(2), 198–229.
• Dai, H., Milkman, K. L., & Riis, J. (2014). The fresh start effect: Temporal landmarks motivate aspirational behavior. Management Science, 60(10), 2563–2582.
• Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119.
• Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009.
• Apple Inc. iTunes Lookup API, US storefront: Habit Tracker - HabitKit (id6443918070) and BeMooore (id6505137869), retrieved 12 October 2026.

Does one bad day knock over your whole Me+ routine?

Me+ is great at helping you plan a full, colourful self-care day. If the routine looks right but one bad day keeps knocking it over, and the habit you care about goes with it, there is a short guide on when to stay with Me+ and what to look for instead. Read: Me+ app alternative, what to use when the whole routine falls apart after one bad day.