my self care app is a small bird and it's doing better than i am

At 11pm I'm in bed, tapping "drank water" and "went outside once" into my phone, because my bird needs energy for tomorrow's adventure. She's a small round cartoon finch named Pickle, she owns a scarf, and she's wearing it with a tiny raincoat she earned, so yes, I'm the adult in this arrangement, allegedly.

(That photo up top is a real house finch, since photos of the app are all marketing screenshots. Pickle looks less like that and more like a grape with eyes.)

Across the group chat, Priya K. just sent me good vibes through the same app, which arrive as a little animated hug, and I send one back. It's 11pm and I'm exchanging blessings with my friend through a bird.

the honest bit, with the birb's blessing 🐦

The confession is in the first row. I pay $69.99 a year for an app whose actual self-care features are free. Finch's core loop costs nothing: you check in, you do one small thing for yourself, the bird gets energy, and overnight the bird goes on a little adventure and tells you about it in the morning. Reviews across the app stores say the same thing, which is that the features that help are free and Plus mostly buys extras. The monthly option is $9.99, the yearly is $69.99, and the app runs in-app discounts so often that the number you see might not be the number I paid. It also charges different prices on different phone stores, which people are loudly mad about, correctly.

So why. Two reasons. The first is the soundscapes: rain on a tent, a creek, a library, and I use the tent one on nights when my brain won't stop replaying the day. The second is slightly embarrassing, which is that I wanted to pay for the thing that was being kind to me. I've never once had that impulse about a gym.

And the timeline, because you know me. I own eleven planners. Every one had a habit tracker page, every one asked for ink, daily, in a little box, and every page was un-stamped by March. I paid for a year of Finch in February and I'm eight months in.

what it's actually like to live with

The loop is smaller than it sounds and that's the point. You tap a thing you did, the bird gets energy, the bird adventures overnight, the bird comes home with a two-line story about a river. That's the whole product. I have never once opened Finch and felt behind, and it took me two months to even notice that feeling was missing.

The free tier is real. This matters to me as someone who designs software for a living: the core is a product, not a trailer. Goals, mood check-ins, journaling prompts, the bird, the adventures, all free, with Plus adding more customization, all the soundscapes and breathing content, extra reflection prompts and seasonal rewards. If money is tight, the thing that helps you is still there.

The notifications need pruning on day one. The negative part, said plainly, because every review thread has it: out of the box, Finch buzzes you about everything. New quests, the shop, your bird's personality reveal. My first week, the bird texted me more than my landlord. Gene is a lovely man but the bird was winning. I turned off all but one notification and the app became perfect. A self-care app that demands attention has missed its own assignment, and to its credit, it lets you fix it.

The company structure is quietly one of my favorite parts. Finch's developer is listed as Finch Care Public Benefit Corporation, and there's a raffle called Guardians where people who pay fund free Plus subscriptions for people who can't. I don't know if that changes the world. It changes the taste in my mouth at 11pm, and for an app, that's most of the job.

And the plain part, because it's the plain part: this is a routine app, not therapy. Finch doesn't claim to treat anything and neither am I. It's a small kind structure for doing slightly better at drinking water and going outside. On my worst week this spring it got me outside once, the app counted it, the once mattered, and the app is not a substitute for a person, and I want that written down so nobody reads between lines.

the screen that isn't there

Okay so, product designer hat on. The most impressive screen in Finch is the one that doesn't exist.

There is no shame screen. In April, during a deadline, I skipped Pickle for three days, and when I came back, the app did not mention it. No "you missed 3 days." No gray bird. No counter reset to one. Pickle was just there, wearing the scarf, glad to see me, in exactly the condition I left her in.

I've spent two years at my healthcare startup, on and off, trying to make one onboarding screen be kind, actually kind, and I can report from the trenches that this is genuinely hard. Kindness is easy when it's vague. The hard part is being kind without lying, and Finch's trick is that skipping a day is not an event. There's no red state to come back to. Nobody has to apologize.

My old fitness app once emailed me about my lapsed goals on a Monday morning, and I want to be clear that the email was well designed and I hated it with my whole chest.

The eleven planners asked for ink because ink is proof. Finch asks for a tap, because a tap is a door, and you can walk through a door even on your worst day.

Anyway, moving on, I have feelings about error states, is what I'm realizing.

the soft landing

This morning Pickle came back from her adventure and told me about a river, a new bridge, and a snack she found, in that order, and I read it before I got out of bed. Noodle has accepted that I say good morning to a phone now. Mochi remains unbothered, as is his right.

A small round thing expects nothing from me and wishes me luck, and it's working on me anyway.

I keep meaning to set one of the shared goals with Priya K., the kind where she can see mine and I can see hers, because I pay for that feature and use it at about ten percent capacity, and I keep opening the little envelope and

Good night, Pickle. Good night, everyone with a scarf.

• ava 🪶