An app that does one thing and says so

Loop Habit Tracker is a habit application for Android, maintained by a single independent developer, with its source published under the GPLv3. Its position is written into its own description: no advertising, no nagging notifications, no unnecessary permissions, and no plan to add them later. Every feature is open to every user, there are no purchases inside the app, and the number of habits you may keep is not capped. It does not need a network connection, it does not ask you to create an account, and the record stays on the device.

That last point is the one worth dwelling on. A habit log is a description of someone's private life in unusual detail, and most applications in this category treat it as something to be synchronised, analysed and monetised. Here the file simply sits in local storage until you decide otherwise, which is a quieter arrangement than it first appears.

The score is not a streak of days

Instead of counting consecutive days, the app computes what it calls habit strength with an exponential smoothing algorithm. Each completion raises the number, each missed day lowers it. The consequence is the interesting part: after a long run of practice, missing a few days does not wipe the progress the way many trackers do, because the accumulated weight is still there. That is closer to how a habit actually behaves, and it removes some of the frustration that makes people abandon a tracker the moment a streak breaks.

Smoothed scoring also makes the number less moralistic. A missed day is a dip rather than a verdict, so the review at the end of a month becomes a reading of the trend instead of a list of failures.

Schedules, reminders and statistics

Daily checking is the default, but the app also handles more complicated rhythms: three times a week, every other day, once every two weeks. Those are the shapes that suit exercise and reading, which are rarely daily activities in practice. Each habit can carry its own reminder time, and the notification itself lets you check the habit, postpone it or ignore it without opening the application. A home screen widget shows what is pending as soon as the phone is unlocked, and the same can be done from a smart watch.

The charts and statistics show how a habit has moved over time, and the whole history can be scrolled back. Being able to look at six months of data at once is what turns a log into evidence, and it is usually the moment people decide whether a habit is actually forming.

The data belongs to the person who made it

For further analysis, or for moving to another service, the app exports its record as a spreadsheet file or as a database file. Advanced users can also tick habits from a task automation application. As of September 2026 the current version is 2.3.1, and the previous one added support for newer Android releases, a confetti animation when a habit is completed, and a streak display for habits that are measured by quantity rather than by a simple yes.

One limitation deserves the same prominence as the promises: there is no cloud synchronisation, so changing phones means exporting a file and carrying it across. For anyone who has ever had a service shut down under their data, that trade is easy to accept; for anyone who works across a phone and a tablet, it is the one place where this design asks something of you.

For a clean tracker that collects nothing and still lets you take the record away, Loop is a rare option on Android: open, free of advertising, and forgiving in the way it scores. The price is the absence of cross-device sync, so export a copy before you change phones.