https://dotsjournal.app

I’ve been suffering from migraines for the past few years and wanted a dead simple way to log when they happen, as well as any other contributing factors I could think of. Inspired by the simplicity of spreadsheets, I built a grid of events, and as you tap on cells, you log “dots”. Those dots, over time, reveal patterns.

I’ve already identified several contributing factors to my migraine triggers using it. It’s been so genuinely useful I wanted to share it with others hoping they might also benefit.

The next big release is coming out later this week which includes visualizations, charts, and on-device analysis of your journal to provide insights.

But I ended up taking it too far. Boundaries start to get blurry, my value started to get wrapped up in my service, to the point it became “well if I stop serving I’ll be worthless”. Which is a tough feeling to face, especially when a subset of the people you end up serving, while appreciative, really end up not caring that much about you as a person. They’re not in a place to give you emotional support, usually.

All that to say, balance is the spice of life. Service is great. Just be sure to balance it out with another source of replenishment.

https://dotsjournal.app

It’s an iOS app to help tracking events and stats about my day as simple dots. How many cups of coffee? Did I take my supplements? How did I sleep? Did I have a migraine? Think of it like a digital bullet journal.

Then visualizing all those dots together helps me see patterns and correlations. It’s helped me cut down my occurrence of migraines significantly. I released the full app last month and have been learning the difficulty of marketing and social media.

I started this project to better understand frequent migraines. I was having clusters of debilitating days. Getting in to see a doctor was taking months.

I wanted a lightweight way to log symptoms, sleep, stress, caffeine, and everyday habits without the overhead of a full habit tracker. Most tools I tried felt complex for what should be simple: did this happen today, and how often?

The core interaction is deliberately simple: one tap records an occurrence (a dot) for an event on a day. Dots accumulate into a calendar-like grid that makes it easier to reflect across days and weeks without long entries, reminders, or gamification.

Privacy was a top priority, as was a local-first approach. Data stays on device by default (iCloud sync is optional), analytics can be turned off, and everything can be exported to CSV.

I’d love to get your feedback on: - whether the dot-grid is intuitive without explanation - what feels unnecessary - what visualizations you’d expect for this kind of data - anything confusing in onboarding / naming

Thank you for checking my app out!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46344048

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https://dotsjournal.app

It’s an iOS app to help tracking events and stats about my day as simple dots. How many cups of coffee? Did I take my supplements? How did I sleep? Did I have a migraine? Think of it like a digital bullet journal.

Then visualizing all those dots together helps me see patterns and correlations. It’s helped me cut down my occurrence of migraines significantly. I’m still just in the public beta phase but looking forward to a full release fairly soon.

Would love to hear more feedback on how to improve the app!

I appreciate your interest!

https://dotsjournal.app

Sort of like a digital bullet journal. You setup some rows of events you want to track, then just tap for when/if that events happens. It’s already helped me spot certain triggers for my migraines, which I can now minimize. My wife has been finding it helpful to diagnose sleep problems. I think it might be super helpful to others with trying to understand lifestyle choices and how it impacts their wellbeing.

About to roll out the beta. Hoping to have a full release by the end of the year.

It’s my first iOS app in 8 years! Learning SwiftUI after UIKit has been quite the shift.

There’s something about another human being caring about my problems, even if it is just because that’s their job, that makes more difference to me than saying the right sequence of words to help me feel better.

In my experience, habitual users can seem perfectly fine but maintaining meaningful relationships has been difficult. Forgetfulness, unfocused thinking, constant talking about the drug or using the drug, etc. all dominate the relationship in those friendships of mine. We all have our baggage and difficulties in a relationship, but with habitual cannabis users it seems to be a prevailing pattern.

I recently tried building out some financial reports using Observable but found myself really stuck on the quirks around HTML and Markdown. It felt like it would have been a great tool if I could just drop down into full HTML templates rather than having to mix in Markdown. Markdown is great for initial prototyping but once I needed to customize some tables outside what the stock controls allowed for it became really impossible. Ultimately I had to scrap the project and move over to Gatsby which allowed for better template control. Though it’s certainly a lot heavier of an option.