There is a category of task that every productivity app quietly fails at. Not your work projects, not your grocery list. The other stuff: the haircut every five weeks, the AC filter every six months, the dentist twice a year. These are real recurring tasks, but they don’t fit a calendar and they don’t fit a to-do list. A calendar assumes a fixed date. A to-do app clutters them with your actual work. And a habit tracker turns them into a streak you’ll feel guilty about missing.
Again is a small, focused app built by an emergency doctor who was fed up with the same problem. The core idea is simple: recurring tasks should restart from when you actually finished them, not from an arbitrary date on a calendar. Tap done, and the next due date sets itself. That’s the whole thing.
It lives on your phone, works fully offline, requires no account, and the everyday version is free. It’s not trying to replace whatever task manager you already use. It just fills the gap those apps have always left open.
What Again Actually Does: Three Modes, One Tap
Loops: Dynamic Recurrence That Moves With You
A Loop is the heart of Again. You set a cadence, say “haircut every 5 weeks,” and when you tap done, the next due date counts forward from that moment. Not from June 12th. From right now. If you’re a week late, the next one is a week later too. No punishment, no correction needed. Loops can also fire on specific weekdays, which is useful for gym schedules or watering plants on certain days of the week.
Per-Occurrence Variations for the Messy Real Stuff
Some tasks don’t repeat uniformly. Your dentist appointment is every six months, but every second visit includes whitening. Your grocery run is weekly, but every fourth trip is the big Costco haul. Again handles this with variations: you pick every Nth occurrence and the app overrides the title, notes, or emoji automatically. The loop row shows what’s coming next before you even tap, so nothing catches you off guard.
Sleep Windows: Seasonal Tasks That Know When to Disappear
This one is genuinely clever. You can put a loop to sleep until a specific date, or set a seasonal window so it only appears during certain months. Pool maintenance, May through September. The loop goes quiet every winter and reappears every spring, forever, with zero input from you. It’s the kind of detail that shows real thought went into the design.
Dailies and Tallies for Everything Else
Dailies are simple daily check-offs that reset at midnight: vitamins, journaling, stretching. No streaks. No loss pressure. Tallies are plain counters with no goals attached: push-ups, coffees, glasses of water. Tap once to add one. That’s it. No graphs demanding your attention, no targets you’re failing to hit.
Marcus at 7am: A Morning That Used to Feel Scattered
Marcus, a 34-year-old freelance designer, used to keep a note in his phone with things like “change water filter?” and “dentist, was it April or May?” Every few weeks he’d realize he’d forgotten something for an embarrassingly long time. At 7:15am on a Tuesday, he opened Again while making coffee. The Loops screen showed one item overdue: bloodwork, five days late. He made a mental note to call the clinic. Two items were due this week: a toothbrush replacement and a call to his parents. He tapped the call to parents row after hanging up that evening, and the next due date moved itself forward two weeks from that moment. No rescheduling required. By the end of the week he’d caught up on everything that had quietly drifted. The app hadn’t nagged him once. He just checked it when he thought of it, and it was accurate every time.
How Again Tracks Your Tasks From First Tap to Next Due Date
Step 1: Pick a Mode
When you add something new, you choose between a Loop, a Daily, or a Tally. Templates for common tasks like “Haircut every 5 weeks” or “Take pills” are available so you’re not starting from scratch every time.
Step 2: Set Your Cadence
For Loops, you choose the interval and whether the clock restarts from completion or from the due date. You can add specific weekdays, seasonal sleep windows, and per-occurrence variations from the same screen.
Step 3: Tap to Log
One tap marks something done. The next due date recalculates immediately. You can add an optional note to any past completion from the history, useful for things like “crown on the upper left” after a dentist visit, but the log itself never asks for one upfront.
Step 4: Sync Across Devices (Optional)
Everything on one device is free and local. If you want your data on a second phone or a tablet, there’s an optional account-less sync. Adding a new device is a single QR scan. Your encryption key never travels in the QR code, so a screenshot of it gives nothing away to anyone.
Pricing: Free First, Optional Sync Later
Everything on a single device is free, forever. That includes Loops, Dailies, Tallies, the home-screen widget, reminders, a calendar mirror, sleep windows, and JSON backup. No ads. No upsells.
- Single device: free, forever
- Cross-device sync: $9.99 per year (local equivalents apply)
The $9.99 subscription only adds sync across devices. There is nothing locked behind it on your primary phone.
Who Should Try Again
If you’ve ever thought “I should probably get a haircut” and genuinely could not remember when the last one was, Again is for you. It works best alongside whatever task manager you already use, not as a replacement. It fills one specific gap, and it fills it well. Local-first, no login required, and free to start. You can download it for iPhone and Android at again.nopanic.ing.
