Recently, I was interested in trying Habitica.

Habitica is a productivity app and habit tracker that gamifies everyday tasks by turning them into a role-playing game.  You earn experience points, gold, etc. for completing tasks and building habits. If you neglect what you’re supposed to do, you take hit points of damage.  There’s also a community with features like guilds, parties, and challenges to encourage accountability.  The interface features retro pixel-art style and RPG mechanics, and appeals to gamers.

Sounded fun.  And I was intrigued when I saw that you can self-host the app.  Nice.

Unfortunately, this is the sort of application where a mobile app is really critical.  But…there’s no way to connect your Habitica mobile app (available in the usual app stores) to your self-hosted instance.  The only option is to subscribe to their service.

I found a GitHub issue from back in 2020 where someone asked if this was possible:

If we do this, I would like it to be a hidden feature that isn’t visible to the average user since it is a very small use case. It could be through a button that only appears after switching on a ‘developer mode’ in app settings, or only appears when shaking your phone on the login screen or tapping a certain thing like the melior logo 5 times.

Then we would post documentation on how to do this on the habitica wiki, or provide explanation through email if someone were to reach out.

You can build the iOS or Android app yourself, but compiling that, much less side-loading it, is not something I’m up for.

Now, this isn’t a criticism of Habitica.  They have a right to make money on their app and offer their service, and likewise, they have no moral obligation to make their code available.  The fact that you can self-host it is a plus, and kudos to them for offering this option.

But I would like to self-host and “complete the loop,” so to speak.  I’m bringing the server, the bandwidth, and all the sysadminnery that it takes to run this.  I’m the sort who’ll likely open a bug report if something breaks, so they get that too.  In this case, it’d be nice to be able to connect my mobile app to my self-hosted instance.

I think because this is indeed a “very small use case,” the number of people who’d do this is pretty small, so I’m thinking it’s a net benefit to Habitica to have more people banging on their server code.  I suppose there’s a risk that some third party would start a service and charge people using its backend, but some kind of access limiting should be able to control this (i.e., only 1 user can connect to any given non-official backend).

This isn’t the first time I’ve run into this.  And just to repeat, I’m not criticizing companies who go this route.  But in a perfect world, self-hosters would be first-class citizens.

BTW, Habitica is pretty cool.

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.