Every habit app eventually adds a social layer, and most of them add the same one: a feed. You post your streak, strangers give it a heart, there is a leaderboard somewhere, and for about a week it feels great. Then you miss a day, and the feed is the last place you want to open.
Rewardly now has friends too. It took a long time to ship because I did not want to build that. This is what got built instead, and why.
Why accountability works, and why feeds break it
Accountability is one of the most reliable levers in habit formation. Telling one specific person what you intend to do, and knowing they will notice whether you did it, changes the math on a lazy evening. It is the same reason a running partner gets you out the door on a cold morning when a running app cannot.
A public feed takes that mechanism and adds three things that undermine it. Comparison: someone is always on day 340. Performance: you start picking habits that look good rather than habits you need. And public failure: the moment a streak breaks, the feed becomes a record of it, and the easiest fix is to stop opening the app.
The part that works is small: a person you know, noticing. Everything else is noise, and the noise is what makes people quit.
What habit buddies actually does
You turn on Friends in Settings. You pick, habit by habit, which ones to share. Then you send a friend an invite link, or read them your eight-character friend code. Once you are connected, each of you sees the other's shared habits: the streak, and whether today is done. When they check in, you can tap to send a cheer. That is the feature.
A few deliberate limits:
- No chat. Encouragement is a tap from a short list of cheers. There is nothing to type, nothing to keep up with, and nothing for anyone to moderate.
- No feed, no leaderboard, no strangers. You add people by code. Nobody can find you, follow you, or rank you.
- Per-habit sharing. Sharing your morning run does not share your therapy homework. Unshared habits never leave your phone.
- Off until you turn it on. If you never open the Friends settings, Rewardly stays exactly what it was: an offline app with no account.
What leaves your phone, and what does not
Rewardly's whole pitch is that your habits are yours, so the server behind Friends holds as little as possible: a display name, your friend code, who you are friends with, and for each shared habit its name, icon, streak, and which recent days were checked in. Nothing about unshared habits. Nothing about your rewards or your points. No email, no password, no account to create.
Turning Friends off is a real exit. It deletes everything the server held about you, and your friends simply stop seeing your shared habits.
Cheering is not a chore
The cheer button is the part that surprised me in testing. A cheer is trivial to send, and it lands as a small push notification: your friend saw that you showed up. The first cheer you send each day also earns you a point, so noticing someone else is never a cost.
That is the loop. Not likes, not comments, not competition. Two or three people who see each other keep going.
How to set it up
- Open Settings, then Friends, and turn it on. Pick a display name.
- On any habit, toggle Share with friends. Leave the rest private.
- Tap Invite. Your friend opens the link on iPhone or Android, installs Rewardly if they need to, and enters your code.
- Check in as usual. When they do, send a cheer.
If you already use Rewardly with someone in your life, a partner, a sibling, a colleague trying to quit the same thing, this is for the two of you. If you use it alone and like it that way, nothing changes.