Guide · 4 min read
Getting Started with ProtoHabit
From first launch to your first logged habit: pick a focus area, answer a few questions, start your goal, and log an activity — all in a few minutes.
Pick a focus area
Open the Goals tab and choose what you're working on — Health & Fitness, Finance, Personal Growth, or Work & Career. If nothing fits, tap "Create your own" to define a custom goal and habits.
Choose a goal and answer a few questions
Pick a curated goal like Lose weight or Save more money, then answer about five short questions — your baseline, timeline, barriers, and how consistent you've been. Honest answers get you a plan sized to your real life.
Curate your habit plan
ProtoHabit shows a tuned habit plan under "Curate the habits for '<Goal>'." Add or remove anything — you can change it all later. When it looks right, tap "Start this Goal" and it lands on Home under MY GOALS.
Log your first activity
On Home, find any habit card and tap "Log Activity". One tap logs one activity. That's your first entry — the whole app builds on taps like this one.
Peek at the Schedule tab
Every habit you added shows up in your Schedule tab. Tap today's date to see what's planned, and log straight from there when it's easier than scrolling Home.
You don’t need an hour of setup to start tracking habits. ProtoHabit gets you from a fresh install to a working plan in a few minutes — pick a goal, tune the habits, log once. This guide walks that path.
Goals first, habits second
ProtoHabit is organized around Goals, not a loose list of checkboxes. A goal like Lose weight or Build daily routine holds the habits that serve it, and everything on Home groups under MY GOALS and MY HABITS. Starting from a goal means your habits have a reason to exist — and later, the Breakdown card on each goal page can show you exactly where your effort went.
The goal builder does the heavy lifting. Pick a focus area, pick a curated goal (Save more money, Learn new skill set, Stop impulse shopping — there’s a solid list), answer roughly five questions, and you get a habit plan you can edit before committing. Nothing is locked in. Rename, hide, or delete any habit later from its 3-dot menu.
Make day one count
The single most useful thing you can do after setup is log one activity today. Tap “Log Activity” on any habit card — Drink Water is an easy first win. That tap starts your active-days streak on the Home “This week” card, and it teaches you the core loop: see the habit, do the thing, tap once.
If your goal involves numbers — glasses of water, km run, dollars saved — the log sheet takes those too, plus an optional note and photos. But don’t overthink day one. One tap is enough.
Where to go next
Two guides are worth your next coffee break: create your first goal for a deeper walk through the builder, and understanding streaks so you know how the “This week” card and achievements work. And remember — everything’s free for up to 10 habits, so there’s nothing to unlock before you start.
Put it into practice
Open ProtoHabit and try it — this guide will still be here.