We Rebuilt the Motivator Experience (And Fixed the Stuff That Was Driving You Crazy)
Here’s the thing about building a social accountability app: the “social” part has to feel natural. Not confusing. Not mysterious. Just… clear. New version Focido v.0.3.0
For the past few weeks, we’ve been hearing the same feedback on repeat: “I got a nudge from someone, but I have no idea who they are or why they’re in my queue.” Or: “The app went blank when my internet cut out.” Or: “I tried to rename a folder and had to dig through three menus.”
Fair points. All of them. So we sat down, tore apart the motivator system, and rebuilt it from scratch. This update isn’t about adding flashy features – it’s about removing friction. The kind of friction that makes people close an app and never come back.
What We Changed The Motivator System Got a Complete Overhaul Before, motivators kind of… appeared. You’d get a nudge, maybe recognize the name, maybe not. The invite process was vague. The queue was invisible. It worked, technically, but it didn’t feel good.
Now:
New dialogues explain what’s happening at each step A visible motivator queue shows you who’s supporting you and who’s next A clearer invitation flow so you actually understand who you’re inviting and why This was the biggest change in the update, and it touches everything – from onboarding to daily nudges. If you’ve been using Focido for a while, it’ll feel familiar but way less mysterious. If you’re new, it’ll just make sense.
Swipe Actions for Folders and Tags You know that satisfying feeling when you swipe to delete an email? We added that to folders and tags.
Now you can:
Swipe right to rename Swipe left to delete No more hunting through menus. Just swipe and done.
Task Owners Can Delete Tasks from the View Screen Before, if you created a task and wanted to delete it, you had to back out to the task list. Annoying.
Now task owners can delete directly from the task view screen. One less tap. One less moment of “wait, where’s the delete button?”
Proper Error Screens (When the Server Is Down) This one’s subtle but important. Before, if the server was unavailable, you’d just see… nothing. A blank screen. Maybe a loading spinner that never stopped.
Now you’ll see an actual error message: “Can’t reach the server. Check your connection and try again.”
Not exciting, but way less frustrating.
What We Fixed Sign-In on Slow Internet If you tried to log in on a slow connection, the app would sometimes just hang. Forever.
We improved the auth flow so it handles flaky networks better. It’ll retry, show progress, and give you a clear error if something fails – instead of pretending everything’s fine while nothing happens.
Crashes on Auth Errors at Startup Some users were experiencing crashes if the app couldn’t authenticate when it launched. Not great for first impressions.
We fixed the crash and added proper error handling, so now you’ll see a message instead of the app just… disappearing.
Notification and Feed Sync Notifications and the feed weren’t always in sync. You’d get a push notification, open the app, and… nothing. Or you’d see something in the feed that never triggered a notification.
We tightened up the sync logic. Now what you see in notifications matches what’s in your feed. Every time.
Why This Matters None of these changes are “launch on TechCrunch” material. There’s no AI, no gamification gimmick, no viral loop.
But here’s what we’ve learned: people don’t abandon apps because they’re missing features. They abandon apps because something feels broken.
A mystery motivator. A blank error screen. A folder you can’t rename without googling “how to rename folder in Focido.”
Those are the moments that kill trust. And trust is everything when you’re asking people to share their goals with strangers.
What’s Next We’re not done. We’re tracking a few more quality-of-life issues – things like better onboarding for first-time users, more granular notification controls, and smarter matching between goal-setters and motivators.
But we’re also listening. If you’re using Focido and something still feels janky, tell us. Email, Reddit, X, wherever. We read everything.
Building a product is one thing. Building a product people trust is another.
This update is one step toward the second thing.
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