TAP: Building a Life Tracker for the Way My Brain Actually Works
I build apps. I also have ADHD. The overlap between those two things is where TAP came from.
The Problem I Was Solving
Task blindness is a common ADHD trait. It’s not laziness or forgetfulness in the conventional sense — it’s that tasks which aren’t in your immediate field of attention don’t feel real. Out of sight is genuinely out of mind, at a neurological level.
I tried the habit tracker apps. Most of them are well-designed. But they all share the same weakness: they live inside a phone screen, and screens are easy to not look at. The moment a notification gets dismissed or a habit tracker app gets tucked into a folder, it’s gone.
What works better — for me, and for a lot of ADHD people — is environmental design. Physical cues placed where the habit actually happens.
That insight drove most of TAP’s design.
What TAP Is
TAP is a five-module iOS life tracker. Each module is independent, can be toggled on or off, and works completely offline.
Tasks
The core module. You create recurring tasks — brushing teeth, taking meds, watering plants, whatever your routine requires — and TAP tracks them with smart notifications, a dot-matrix history grid, streaks, and completion rates.
The key feature is NFC sticker support. You buy cheap NTAG213 stickers (~$10/50 on Amazon), stick them on the relevant object, and link each sticker to a task. From then on, tapping your iPhone to the sticker marks the task done. No unlocking. No opening the app. One tap.
The physical sticker is the whole point. It exists in the room. It’s on the thing you use. It can’t be scrolled past.
Tasks support intervals from every 12 hours to monthly, multi-completion requirements (e.g., 3× daily), multiple reminder times, and multiple NFC stickers per task.
Logs
Sometimes a habit doesn’t have a fixed schedule — it’s just something you want to count. Water intake. Medication. Meditation sessions. Coffee cups.
Logs is a freeform tap counter. Create a log, give it a name and colour, and tap it whenever the thing happens. It tracks frequency with a dot-matrix history. NFC stickers work here too.
Events
Countdown to dates that matter. Trips, appointments, birthdays, deadlines. Events shows a progress bar, total days, days elapsed, and days remaining. It sends notifications at 7 days, 1 day, and the day of.
Year
A 365-dot grid showing every day of the current year. Passed days are filled. Today pulses. Quarter markers are highlighted. It’s a simple, stark visualisation of the year’s shape — how much you’ve used, how much remains.
I look at it more than I expected to.
Life
Based on your age and gender, Life shows a mortality timeline — how many days, weeks, months, and years are likely remaining. There’s a progress bar. It updates daily.
It sounds morbid. In practice it’s clarifying. When you can see the shape of your time, small decisions feel different.
Design Choices
Monospaced, stark, dark-first. The aesthetic is intentional — inspired by Nothing Phone’s OS, SF Mono throughout, minimal border radius, no shadows. Everything functional. Nothing decorative.
Local-first. No accounts, no servers, no network requests. SwiftData stores everything on your device with automatic rolling backups. The only data that ever travels is widgets talking to the main app via an App Group — and that stays on your phone.
One-time purchase. TAP has a 3-day trial so you can evaluate everything. After that, it’s a single lifetime purchase. No subscription. I find subscription habit trackers philosophically weird — you’re paying recurring fees to maintain habits that should become automatic. TAP is an app you buy once and own.
Toggleable modules. Not everyone wants a mortality countdown in their daily app. The module system means you build the version of TAP that makes sense for your life.
What’s Next
TAP is at v1. The foundation is solid — the five modules work, NFC is reliable, the widget suite covers all modules.
Things I’m thinking about for future versions:
- iCloud sync as an opt-in option for people who use multiple iPhones or want backups in the cloud (local-first stays the default)
- Shared tasks for households — completing a task on one phone marks it done everywhere
- Import from other habit apps for people migrating from Streaks, Habitica, etc.
- Shortcut integration for automation workflows
If you have a feature request, email or use the feedback link inside the app.
Try It
TAP is available on the App Store. 3-day free trial, then a one-time lifetime purchase.
If you have ADHD and habit trackers haven’t worked for you before, the NFC approach is worth trying. The physical cue is genuinely different from a digital reminder — and it takes about 5 minutes to set up once your stickers arrive.