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A Bad Habit is a behavior you’d rather do less of, or quit entirely, because it works against the life you’re trying to build. It can be something small and easy to overlook, like checking your phone the moment you wake up, or something bigger, like smoking or staying up too late. In Habitify, tracking a Bad Habit isn’t about guilt, it’s about awareness. Seeing the pattern clearly is often the first step to breaking it. This article covers everything you need to know to work with Bad Habits in Habitify - from adding one, to logging your progress as you cut back.

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Adding a bad habit

  1. In Journal, tap the + button at the bottom right corner.
  2. Choose ‘Break Bad Habit’.
  3. Choose a pre-defined habit template, or tap ‘Custom Habit’ to set everything from scratch.
  4. Configure the details of the bad habit.
  5. Once everthing is set, tap ✓ button to save the bad habit to your tracking list.

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Details of a bad habit

Bad Habit Details I OS

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Icon & Name

The icon and name of your bad habit helps it easily be identified across your Journal, Progress view, and everywhere else in the app.

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Goal

Goal of a bad habit defines what “success” means for the habit, and it comes in two types:
  • No More Than (limit-type): you set a maximum, and your goal is to stay at or under it each day. Go over, and the day is marked Failed once your logged total exceeds the limit.
  • Quit This Habit (quit-type) : there’s no numeric limit; the goal is zero occurrences. A single instance of the habit fails the day.

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Start date

The date from which your progress on this habit is saved in Habitif. It’s also the date the habit begins appearing on your Journal view.
Auto-Succeed on days in pastIf you set the ‘Start from…’ to a day in the past, every day from that date up through yesterday is automatically marked as Succeeded.

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How a bad habit appears in the list

The bad habit will start showing in your Journal since its start date.Since there is no settings of Repeat, Area, and Time of Day for the bad habits, these ones always appear in the ‘All habits’ list and the ‘Time of Day’ list.Bad Habits Journal I OSWhere a bad habit lands in within each list in the view depends on its goal type:
  • Limit-type habits with a daily goal sit together with your Good Habits that also have a daily goal; both are core, everyday actions expected of you today, so they’re grouped as one.
  • Quit-type habits get their own separate sub-category, ‘Quit Habit(s)’, since there’s no daily numeric goal to hit, just a day to get through without the behavior happening at all.
  • Limit-type habits with a weekly, monthly, or yearly goal are categorized followingly to the section ‘This Week’, ‘This Month’, ‘This Year’ together with the good habits.
Like any habit, once it’s checked in for the day, it moves into the ‘Completed’, ‘Skipped’, or ‘Failed’ groups depending on the outcome, keeping what’s still open clearly separate from what’s already resolved.
When a quitting habit is checked with “Mark as Done”When a habit to quit is marked as Done for the current day, it stays where it is in the Day view of Journal. Under its name, there is a tag line “Secured day [current streak]”.
Otherwise, in Week view, your habit always appeard in the view as long as it is not archieved, being sorted equally regardless of their goal type and current day’s status.Week View Bad Habit I OS 1

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Recording progress of a bad habit

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Status of a bad habit

A bad habit can possibly carry one of three statuses: Succeeded, Skipped or Failed.
  • Succeeded: your total logged value for the day is 0, or within your set limit.
  • Skipped: you went over the limit or did the habit, but chose to treat it as a cheat day rather than break your streak. A skipped day freezes your streak instead of resetting it.
  • Failed : your total logged value exceeds the limit (or, for a quit-type habit, any occurrence at all).

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Checking in bad habits in Day View

For quit-type habits:
  • Tap the ••• button on the right of the bad habit and choose between
    • Mark as Done: confirm you successfully avoided it for the day (Succeeded).
    • Reset my Streak: log a slip and start over (Failed).
  • Swipe the habit left for the Skip option.
For limit-type habits:
  • Tap the smart button ⌨️ to add a progress log
  • Swipe the habit left for Skip or Fail.
  • Swipe the habit right for Succeed or Log Value.

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Checking in bad habits in Week View

For quit-type habits:Hold on today’s cell to check in Succeed, Skip, or Fail.For limit-type habits with a goal per day:
  • Tap on today’s cell to log a progress value.
  • Hold on today’s cell to mark the day with Skip or Fail
For limit-type habits with a goal per week, month, or year:
  • Tap on the habit’s progress stripe to open the Log Progress box.
Auto-Succeed by the end of the dayAt the end of the day, if your logged value is still 0 or under the limit, the habit is automatically marked as successful.
What happens when marking a habit as “Failed”What gets logged behind the scenes depends on the habit’s goal type:
  • Quit-type habits: marking Failed automatically logs “1” as the progress value for the current period, since a single occurrence is the entire event.
  • Limit-type habits: marking Failed flags the day as failed, but logs a progress value of zero. Habitify doesn’t know how much you actually did, so it doesn’t guess. If you want the real amount reflected, log it yourself using Log Progress.

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FAQs

To edit a bad habit:
  • From Journal, tap on the habit to open its single progress view.
  • Tap the ••• button in the top right corner, and choose ‘Edit’.
If your habit does not appear in the today’s list:
  • Go to Settings.
  • Tap All Habits.
  • Tap on the habit, and choose ‘Edit’.
If the habit already has a status for the day:
  • In Journal, swipe the habit right and choose ‘Undo’
  • Pick either ‘Remove Today Data’ (resets today’s value to 0) or ‘Edit Log Manually’ (swipe left on the specific log entry and choose Delete).
If the habit is still in progress:
  • In Journal, tap on the habit
  • In next screen, tap the (•••) button in the top right corner, and choose ‘Log History’
  • In the Log History, swipe left the log you want to remove and tap ‘Delete’
To log progress for a past date, tap on the bad habit, then tap the (•••) button in the top right corner, choose Log Progress, then select the date and enter your value.