Dash

Your data

You decide, grid by grid, what leaves the device.

Out of the box, everything stays on the device — 100% local, nothing to sign up for, nothing sent anywhere. Want a grid on your other devices? Publish it into your own iCloud account and join it from the others. Want somebody else to see it? Share it, and that goes through iCloud too. Nothing leaves until you say, and when it does it travels only through Apple’s own sync services — Dash has no server of its own.

  1. DefaultOn this device onlyYour grids and every tick live in one file on the device. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is tracked, and Dash makes no network connection of its own. It works fully offline.
  2. If you publish a gridYour own iCloudThat one grid goes into your iCloud account so your other devices can join it — part of the paid version.This is the one thing that needs an account — the iCloud one your device is already signed into, not one of ours. Only that grid; only your Apple ID; nobody else — not even us — can read it.
  3. If you share a gridOther people, via iCloudA published grid can be shared with someone you choose, as an iCloud share — so they need an iCloud account too. They see that grid and nothing else of yours.You decide whether they can log into it or only look: read-write and their taps land in the same boxes as yours; read-only and they can watch but not touch. Stop sharing and it goes away for them.

Every device that has joined a grid can log to it. Tap a glass of water on the iPad and tap a walk on the phone — offline, in either order — and the next time the two sync, the day is merged entry by entry: nothing is lost and nothing is counted twice. Deletions sync the same way, so a device that was switched off when you cleared a box won't bring it back.

The Share pane for Liquids: 'This grid — In iCloud', an On Apple Watch switch, Share with someone, Who has it, and Stop sharing on this device

A grid's Share pane. In iCloud, on the Watch, shared with nobody yet.

The grids list: each grid with its shape, hours, goal and nag count, and a cloud icon for the ones in iCloud

The grids list. The cloud beside a grid says it's published; grids waiting for you from another device appear here to join.

"Stop sharing on this device" and "remove from iCloud" are different sentences, and Dash keeps them apart: the first leaves the grid on the device and the copy in iCloud alone; the second takes the shared copy away from every device but deletes nothing anyone already has.

Tiddles

Has anyone fed Tiddles?

Four people in a house, one cat, and it has told each of them — independently and convincingly — that it is starving. Share the grid with all four and the question answers itself: the box is filled or it isn't, and it says who filled it.

Tiddles — fed: 2 of 2, Breakfast and Dinner boxes both filled with the bowl glyph, an 8-day run

Two boxes, breakfast and dinner, shared with the whole house. Tiddles is not a participant and cannot quietly clear a box.

Export & import

Your data is yours to take away.

Any grid, or the lot, can be exported — as a spreadsheet (CSV) for looking at, one row per tick with the option, the amount and the exact time you tapped it, or as a Dash file (JSON) for keeping. And what Dash exports, Dash can import again: a Dash file goes back in, one grid or a whole backup, and folds into what's already there rather than overwriting it. Send a grid file to a friend and they can import it without any iCloud at all.