This app was mentioned in 10 comments, with an average of 1.90 upvotes
It seems to only be available for Android. The title says Nail Biting but it's for all picking behaviours.
Thanks so much for the report! I will dig right into that bug report. You're saying it crashes when you try to view the history of an entry with a photo attached? Please PM me any other details you think might be relevant.
By the way I never thought people would willingly (and so quickly!) want to share their photos. Would a share button right from the app be something you'd want? I didn't want to freak people out at the prospect of their stuff not being private.
EDIT : Do me a favor, when that happens can you hit the "Report" button? That does actually send useful information back to me so I can see what's happening. I believe that it is an OutOfMemory error, but at the moment I cannot recreate it on my device.
EDIT : Link to the app for people that don't know what we're talking about ;)
You and I seem to be thinking about complementary things! The idea for the app I describe above, which focuses only on the positive things and thus would not be good for tracking nail biting, came about in response to the release of my app to help stop nail biting! Having made such a specific, single purpose app I wanted the next one to be something more general purpose that still worked on that same idea of giving yourself credit for the small wins throughout the day.
I'll keep calendar view in mind as I work on the design. However I don't want it to be confused with all the other streak/chain daily habit apps that are already flooding the app store.
This is exactly what my app does. You don't mark off "I picked" moments as a yes or no thing, you mark them off in a scale ranging from "Didn't do it" (what the article describes - thinking about it but not doing it) through "Started, stopped" (for when you had to pick just a little) all the way to "Stopped when it hurt" (those horrible moments when you're off to get the bandaids). The most important thing is that it gives you something to do at those moments, rather than just thinking about it and not doing it. You get feedback (a score, a smiley face, a history log). You get to take pictures (if you want to track positive progress), and most importantly you get a quick diary form where you can spend a few seconds jotting down why that urge was so difficult to overcome.
P.S. - I apologize if that was spammy. I've been picking my skin all my life and I get very excited when I see the mainstream press covering our problem, and people openly talking about it.
I created an app for a very specific audience - people (adults, really) who bite their nails. It's been well received on /r/calmhands, I've got some downloads and some reviews and fixed some bugs. So far everything's going well, if slowly.
I've got a couple of questions. First, can I get some help brainstorming how I might get it in front of a larger audience? It's not really an "everybody needs this" kind of app I can just beg of family and friends. If you don't have the problem, the app literally has no value for you. So I need to market to an audience that already acknowledges having the problem and is looking for a solution (even if they don't yet realize an app solution exists).
I got a (fairly old) list of "mommy bloggers" from a coworker, but I have not mailed them yet because I've never been good at the cold call type of stuff. I've been trying to think of a way I could approach doctors/counselors/psychologists who deal in this problem, but I don't know where I'd begin to find a reasonable list other than going through the phone book.
Second, right now it's only an Android app. I've got people on /r/calmhands asking for the iOS version. I'm wondering how much effort to put into just jumping into that, as opposed to, say, creating a web site and setting up a mailing list (which would have the added benefit of getting me some Google SEO). I'm just one guy doing the development work myself, not farming anything out, so I often find myself frozen with that "There's 10 equally important things I could do next, and because I can't decide which one is most important I don't do any of them" mentality.
Thanks!
Oh, biting my nails, by far. Done it all my life. Badly. Until they bleed.
I hang out on /r/calmhands, and I even wrote an app to help me stop, but to date I've only ever been able to go a few days at most before I start up again.
I'm going a slightly different way, I made an app for a very niche market because I'm in that market and could not find a good enough app in the space -- an app to help people stop biting their nails. With no marketing (other than launching on a related subreddit) it's done well as a proof of concept, with a few dozen downloads, some good reviews and no obvious "it crashes on device X!" errors. It's just a flat for sale price, I didn't muck around with free/IAP or anything like that.
I'm building slow because it's just a side project. Moving it forward on multiple fronts:
1) Working on an iOS version (initial version is Android only).
2) Creating web site (have domain, working on finishing up the design and content).
3) Marketing. Have an initial email list for PR, and have the support of some "mom blogger" friends who can help get the word out.
4) Continue to improve features and interface. This unfortunately flies in the face of #1, it's like trying to hit a moving target.
I don't think I could ever support myself on something so niche, but that wasn't the goal. Learning how to do all of the above was the goal. If you can build one app, you can build 50. Where I need the most experience is in juggling the priority across those bullet items.
The original link in the /r/calmhands group goes directly to the play store. Sorry about the confusion :). The app is called Calm Hands.
I need focus. I recently put my first app (Android) out in the store and now, whenever I've got spare time, my brain pulls me in 5 or 6 different directions. So I'm wondering if by consensus you can help me push one of these to the front of the pack and stop thinking that they're all equally important and that by working on one I'm neglecting the others:
Continue to market the app, do cold emails to big names in the field in the hopes that they'll mention my app, write press releases, etc... I've done a bunch of this (the emailing, not the press release) and gotten some nibbles.
Make a web site / landing page for the app. Have domain, have WP installed, purchased theme, just haven't customized theme yet.
Enhance existing app. Current users have given me ideas for stuff they'd like to see, and I feel at least somewhat obligated to not abandon them and never update the thing. Worked on this a bit, half heartedly because none of the features seem like they're "Why didn't I think of that?!" type of things that I feel the app absolutely needs.
Work on iOS version. People have said loud and clear that they want one. But I also know that this will take the most time, so I've been avoiding it because it feels like once I start I will have to shelve all of the above things.
Take my new and improved knowledge of creating Android apps and work on the next idea on my list, to increase my streams of revenue (more like trickles, but still). This seems like the most fun (isn't initial creation always the best part? prototyping and inventing?) but it also seems like starting over from scratch and wasting any momentum I may have with the current project.
Help me stop fighting with myself and pick which one to work on? Note I'm full-time employed, and this is entirely a "micro-preneur" effort consisting of me in my spare time using my own money. So resources are limited in those areas. Ultimately my entrepreneurial goal would be to bring in a reasonable passive income through app development, but the short term goal is to gain more knowledge about the process by taking my initial app through all the right steps to see what kind of success I can make out of it.
have you tried an app like calm hands? It seems to have worked for some.