The first version of Dotty had no rest days at all. If you caught a cold on Wednesday, your run ended on Wednesday. People wrote to tell us they had deleted the app from a sickbed, which is a bad moment to lose someone.
Version two charged you for the break
We tried a freeze you could earn by finishing three rows. It sounded fair in the meeting. In practice it turned rest into a currency, and people started hoarding freezes instead of resting when they needed to.
A rest day should feel like a decision you made, not a debt you owe the app.
Version three asked for a reason
Next we added a short form: sick, travelling or other. Nobody wants to explain a migraine to a habit tracker. Most people skipped the form, lost the run anyway and left.
Version four is one tap
Now you mark the day as rest and the dot turns yellow. Your run carries on and nothing else happens. Rest days are used on about one day in nine, and people who use them keep their habits twice as long.
Written by Tove Halvorsen
Product designer at Dotty
Keep reading
Habits
10 September 2026
3 min read
Start with a habit that takes two minutes
People who begin with one tiny habit are still tapping dots three months later.
Stories
28 August 2026
5 min read
A family row on the fridge
How one household of four shares a single row, and what happens when someone forgets.
Product
14 August 2026
4 min read
What we left out of Dotty, and why
No scores, no leaderboards, no streak freezes for sale. A short list of things we said no to.
