Checklists you can set back to zero.
A to-do list is finished when it is empty. A packing list never is — next time you need exactly the same one again. Häkchen is built for the second kind: tick things off, head out, and next time one tap puts every tick back to zero.
Coming to the App Store For iPhone, with no account and no server. If you would like to try it early, write to me: sebastian@focusislandlabs.com.
Why another checklist app
Because most of them are built for things you do once. Completed items disappear, the list empties itself, and anyone heading back to the pool next Tuesday types the whole thing again. That is precisely where paper has been winning for decades.
Häkchen turns it around: the list stays, only the ticks go. Which is why “clear the ticks” is not a tidy-up command buried in a submenu — it is the main button.
What the app does
Ticking that feels right
The tick is drawn rather than switched on, and the strikethrough travels with it. The last open item answers differently from every item before it.
Reset in one tap
The ticks fall away from the top down, one after another. Half a second that feels like tidying up. The items themselves stay exactly where they were.
As many lists as you need
Pool, gym, weekend, dog bag, moving house. Each with its own symbol, in the order you dragged them into.
Nothing but items
No due dates, no priorities, no sub-tasks. The moment an item grows fields, a checklist stops being something you can run through in ten seconds.
A list from a topic
Type “a weekend in the mountains” and the phone suggests a list — using Apple's model, on the device. Nothing is sent anywhere. Anything that does not fit gets swiped away before the list even exists.
Light and dark
Both are set by hand rather than derived automatically. In both, the green means exactly one thing: done.
Your lists stay yours
An app you cannot get your data out of is a trap. Häkchen is open in both directions — in formats that are readable without Häkchen installed.
- Import from any text. Copy a checklist out of Notion, out of Notes,
out of a message. Bullets, numbers,
- [x]boxes and ☑ characters are understood; anything else simply becomes an item. - Preview before importing. You see the items and their ticks before anything is created.
- Export as a file. A
.haekchenfile is plain JSON — readable, keepable, and repairable by hand if it ever comes to that. - Export as text. Back to Notion as a Markdown checklist, in exactly the shape the import reads again.
- Back up everything. All lists in one file, wherever you keep your things.
How it goes
- Make a list — or paste one you already have.
- Type the items — the input field stays put, so you type the whole list in one go.
- Tick things off — while packing, on the way, at the door.
- Clear the ticks — next time everything is back to zero.
What the app cannot do
- No reminders and no notifications. Häkchen never speaks first.
- No shared lists and no sync between devices — the backup file is how a list reaches a second device.
- No sub-items, quantities, dates or attachments.
- No statistics, no streaks, no points. Ticking things off is the reward.
- No account. There is nothing to sign up for.
- Suggestions only work where Apple Intelligence runs — everywhere else the text import remains the way that always works.
Privacy is not an extra
- Every list lives on the device, in the app's own storage.
- No account, no server, no sign-up.
- No tracking, no advertising identifiers, no analytics.
- In normal use the app opens no network connection at all.
- An exported file goes exactly where you send it.