About Multi

Multi is built on a single idea: a task, a habit and an expense are not three different things. They are one thing, described three different ways.

The same thing, three times over

Look at what a to-do app stores. A title, a date, and whether it’s done. Now look at a habit tracker: a title, a date, whether it’s done — and a rule that says it comes back. And a spending app: a title, a date, and an amount.

That is not three data models. It is one, with two optional fields. Attach a repeat rule and the item becomes a habit. Attach an amount and it becomes an expense. Attach both and you have a recurring expense — the rent, the gym membership, the coffee you buy every morning without ever deciding to.

The cost of pretending otherwise is that most people end up running three apps that each know about a third of their life. “Buy a birthday present” is a task on Monday and an expense on Tuesday, and the two never meet. Multi takes the model seriously instead: one model, one list, one history, one set of totals.

One control instead of three screens

Having a unified model is only useful if it doesn’t come with a unified form full of switches. So the app has one control, and the control is a line.

Inside the app that control is called the LineSculptor, and the same three shapes are used everywhere afterwards. In the list, a flat line means a task, a wave means a habit, a doubled line means an expense. You learn the vocabulary once, in about three seconds, by dragging something. Then you can read the whole app without labels. You can try the add flow for yourself in the app screen on the home page.

How it’s built

Multi runs on your device. Your items live in a local database on the iPhone, and there is no Multi server behind them and no account to create. iCloud sync exists so your list can follow you between your own devices, but it is off until you turn it on, and when you do, it goes through your own private iCloud rather than through us.

The parts that would normally be an excuse to send data somewhere are done locally too. Speak a few items at once and the speech recognition and the model that interprets it both run on the phone. Scan a receipt and the text is read on the phone. Connect Apple Health for Training and that stays on the phone as well. There is no analytics, no tracking and no advertising in the app — not as a marketing posture, but because a personal list of what you did and what you spent is not the sort of thing that should be leaving your pocket. The one thing that does, because a subscription requires it, is purchase status, handled by Apple and a subscription-management processor. The privacy policy spells out exactly what that means.

A familiar line. A personal palette.

Multi keeps its line vocabulary across the app, with room around the things you need to read. Soft color, textured cards and clear charts give your progress a visual form without making every part of your day compete for attention.

Choose a palette that feels like you. Your colors follow you through the app’s cards, charts, Home Screen widgets and the habit-history cards you choose to share.

The fourth thing, kept separate on purpose

Version 2.0 added Training — a plan, a session, a set you log against what you lifted last time. It was tempting to make a workout just another shape the line could take, and deliberately not done: a task carries one completion a day, and a session is five exercises of four sets each. Folding it in would have made the line lie about what it actually holds. Training lives in its own tab instead, with its own Apple Watch app for logging a set without your phone, and it stays out of your way entirely if you never turn it on.

Get in touch

Multi is on the App Store now. If you want to argue about the data model, or ask about Training, Apple Watch or anything else in this version, write to hello@getmulti.app.

The look and feel of some UI in Multi drew inspiration from a public Mortgage Calculator concept by dusankolenovic on Variant.