I started learning German on Duolingo last year. A few friends were doing it and I kept getting notifications showing their streaks. That was enough to pull me in.
It was genuinely fun at first. The lessons were short, the progression felt natural and I was actually picking up the language.
Then my streak got long enough to matter.
At some point I stopped thinking about German and started thinking about the streak. I’d open the app last thing at night, half asleep, do the shortest lesson possible and close it. Job done. Streak intact. German not learned.
The final straw was finding out that Duolingo teaches other things alongside languages. Things like chess and music. And those count toward your streak too. I spent a week doing that instead of German lessons.
I wasn’t using the app for what I downloaded it for anymore. The gamification had quietly become the product.

I kept thinking about this when I was building SecondStep. It’s a mental wellness app. One small action at a time, two minutes, whenever you feel ready. The idea is that when you’re having a heavy day and a big plan feels impossible, you do one tiny thing. It creates a small domino effect. One action leads to feeling slightly lighter, which makes the next thing a little easier.
Early in the build I started sketching out a streak system. It made sense on paper. Streaks drive retention. Retention drives growth. I knew how to build it and I knew it would probably work.
But I kept coming back to the Duolingo thing.
The people I was building this for weren’t looking for a new commitment. They were already overwhelmed. Adding a streak would shift the whole relationship from “this app helps me when I need it” to “I have to show up for this app every day.” That’s a small change that breaks everything.
So I took it out. No streaks, no daily check-ins, no rings to close, no notifications making you feel guilty for disappearing for two weeks. The app doesn’t track whether you came back. It just does its job when you show up.
The other thing that followed from this was keeping everything on device. No account, no backend, no login. Partly because it simplified things as a solo developer. Mostly because asking someone to hand over their data on their worst day felt like the wrong trade.
I launched in April on iOS as a one time purchase. That felt clean. You pay once, you own it, no strings.
Android is a different problem and honestly one I haven’t solved yet. A one time purchase works on iOS but the Android audience expects free with ads more often than not. And I can’t get comfortable with ads in a mental wellness app. Imagine trying to do something small to feel better and getting served an ad for something you were browsing last week. It kills the whole point.
So I don’t have an answer there yet. If you’ve faced something similar I’d genuinely love to know how you thought about it.
SecondStep is on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6761472522