Productivity isn’t one-size-fits-all, but you can certainly get a boost with the right tools. Gamifying productivity can strip the intimidation out of a long day of focusing on your tasks, if you know how to go about it.
These third-party apps for iPhone let you change the way you focus on a work or study session, bringing stakes to the game with reward systems, interesting interfaces, and satisfying level-ups. Here’s all you need to know.
Using Your iPhone’s Features
Before you find a third-party favorite for gamifying your focus sessions, there are a few productivity features on your iPhone that you can get started with. For starters, Focus modes are, in my opinion, one of the most underutilized productivity features that can help you work distraction-free.
Since these are completely customizable, you can assign gamified themes for Focus modes or names to make your focus sessions feel like an adventure or quest. There’s also Apple Shortcuts, which allow you to create custom actions that you can use for your productivity and gamify automated tasks.
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One of the iPhone’s most powerful tools.
For health, Apple Health’s move rings always give off the vibe of a daily quest that you can complete and track progress for.
1
Habitica
Habitica is a gamified task manager app that turns your daily tasks, chores, and habits into a retro RPG. You get to pick a customized avatar and go about your quests (completing your tasks), which earns you gold coins to spend on in-game accessories and gear for your character.
Habitica’s pixelated elements and organized interface make navigation easy and fun when switching between your repeat tasks, to-do list, and habit tracker. You can check your rewards and spend in-game currency on swords, shields, and other rewards. Each task can be customized based on difficulty level and frequency, assigned reminders, and tagged by category (like Health, Work, and Study). Habits work because you lose health points for each negative habit you indulge in, and earn rewards for picking up good habits.
One of Habitica’s best features is collaboration. The app offers community through parties (you can either join other users’ parties or create your own) and custom challenges. As you progress with habit-building and checking off tasks, you can view your skills, stats, and achievements. Habitica offers a subscription ($4.99/month or $47.99/year) that offers free monthly gems, hourglasses, second chances, and special reward drops, with gem pack options ($0.99 onwards).
2
Study Bunny
Want a companion for your study (or work) sessions that you can also spoil with virtual treats? Try Study Bunny, a motivational, gamified study timer that features a 2D bunny to help you with your productivity. The app’s uncluttered and MS-Paint-esque interface design makes it stand out from other focus timers. In addition to the study timer, Study Bunny offers features like flashcards, a to-do list, and a custom Study Tracker.
As you complete study sessions, you earn coins that can be used to buy items from the app’s store for your bunny, including costumes, treats, backgrounds, animal companions, and gifts. You can also invite friends for a focus session (and give your bunny some friends). You can buy coins and carrots for your bunny and remove ads (starting from $0.99).
The developer of this app, SuperByte, also offers a gamified habit tracker for the iPhone with Habit Rabbit.
3
Focus Hero
Focus Hero is a gamified focus timer that allows you to level up in-game and in real life. This app uses an RPG-style narrative and pixelated interface design to assign you a character that keeps leveling up as you successfully sit through focus sessions. Each focus session earns you rewards,
What I like about Focus Hero’s timer is its flexibility. If you want to earn a set amount of XP or other rewards, you can use a Set Timer, or if you want to push yourself further without losing out on any XP, you can use a stopwatch timer that fetches you better XP Rates the more you focus. The focus timer activates a screen lock, with ambient music and visuals (in your level’s forest), and can be used offline, which is a great advantage if you’re trying to minimize distractions. When leveling up, your character finds loot and earns Focus Energy, allowing you to buy in-game gear like shields, amulets, and weapons.
Focus Hero offers an Adventure Mode to help you earn more rewards through in-game quests.
4
Forest
Forest is an eco-friendly way to gamify your focus, and is one of the top productivity apps you can download for your phone. This app helps you focus on a task at hand with a simple concept: your tree in the app grows as you focus, but dies when you leave in the middle of a task. The app creates a relaxing focus session with a Pomodoro timer, Allow Lists for certain apps to reduce distractions, and a visually pleasing interface. As you improve your focus, you cultivate a green forest (starting with a seed),
With Forest, you can earn rewards and unlock new plant species, collaborate with friends or family to plant new trees, and view stats for your blocking and productivity. Forest is compatible with Apple Health and can be used to track your focus time.
Forest partners with a tree-planting organization to plant real trees as you plant your virtual plants in the app, with over 1.8 million trees planted so far. You can make a one-time purchase ($3.99) and use Forest on compatible Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch).
5
Habits Garden
If you want to build new habits and stick to existing ones, Habits Garden is an app that turns monotonous tracking into a game. Instead of keeping track of your daily, weekly, or monthly habits in a calendar or journal, you can use Habits Garden to check off habits as you complete them. This earns you in-game rewards that can be used to grow a virtual garden with different plants, similar to Forest. Completing daily quests increases rewards and contributes XP, and if you want, you can also participate in a leader board with other players.
Habits Garden is a good way to track habits for your health, work, study, chores, and wellness, or any other custom habits you may want to build. After a 7-day trial, you can access Habits Garden with a subscription ($5.99/month or $49.99 for lifetime access).
6
Magic ToDo
If you want a detailed breakdown of your tasks to make life simple, try Magic ToDo. This productivity app breaks down your tasks into smaller sub-tasks, which takes away any hesitation you may have with starting a task.
The app uses a Magic AI feature to break down, organize, and edit your tasks and sub-tasks, with options to keep the sub-tasks simple or detailed. Each task can be assigned an expiration time and frequency, with space for your remarks. Magic ToDo offers a customizable focus timer that can also be used as a stopwatch.
As you check off tasks, you earn coins that can be used to upgrade your virtual home island and add elements like clouds and houses to it. The app is free to use with a Pro subscription option ($2.99/month or $29.99/year).
7
Happify
Productivity is not complete without a little break: even Pomodoro timers come with small breaks for a reason. Happify lets you take a break from work or study with bite-sized quizzes and games. The app’s science-based activities can be a good way to reduce burnout and relax without falling into addictive habits like doomscrolling.
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Once you set up Happify with a personalized assessment, the app lets you choose a track to manage your stress. Tracks have different purposes, like building self-confidence, working towards a successful career, and dealing with negative thoughts. Your track will then show you activities you need to complete (games, audio, quizzes, etc.), which lets you “Happify” a worry. As you tick off tasks, you earn Happify points that contribute to medals within the game and evolve your stats over time.
Happify offers activities you can do on your own (Instant Play) that you can play without starting a new track. You can also browse through self-care/wellness articles and participate in discussions with other app members. Happify offers a premium subscription ($14.99/month or $139.99/year) for unlimited access to all tracks, games, and meditations, although the free version has an impressive collection of activities and tasks for you to browse through.
8
SuperBetter
SuperBetter is a self-care app that doubles as a productivity app for your fitness, work, mental health, and social well-being. This is a quest-based app that allows you to pick a challenge of your choice for any category and complete tasks every day to improve your habits.
For example, a physical challenge can involve tasks like eating three power foods a week, walking 30 minutes every day, and utilizing an “element” (such as getting fresh air) to cope with guilt after making poor food choices. SuperBetter makes tasks feel like you’re battling a bad guy (productivity blockers like procrastination or laziness) by asking you follow-up questions after you complete a quest, including a rating. As you complete challenges, you earn power-ups and epic wins.
SuperBetter calculates your resilience score based on its categories as you successfully complete challenges. You can use the app to reflect on your progress through notes, and add short-term and long-term goals to customize challenges. The app also offers Squad Play for social quests that encourage bonding with your friends and family. For solo play challenges, you can explore the app’s large library of quests, or create your own using tasks that are available on the app.
SuperBetter offers a neat and uncluttered interface with fun quests, some of which are unexpected yet balance out the overarching challenge. If you enjoy the gratification of completing mini-tasks to work towards a larger goal (and defeating a “final boss”), then SuperBetter can be a constant part of your self-care or habit-building journey. After a 14-day free trial, you can subscribe for a Hero Plan ($24.99/year).
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As someone who has experimented with many productivity apps, I find those with predefined goals and gamified elements (good UI elements help, too) to be very effective, especially if you struggle with a short attention span.
