What is a wallpaper calendar?

A wallpaper calendar is a phone wallpaper that displays a live calendar grid — showing days, weeks, or year progress — directly on your lock screen or home screen. Unlike a widget or an app, a wallpaper calendar is always visible the moment you pick up your phone. My Life Dots creates wallpaper calendars that show your habits, year progress, or entire lifetime as a simple dot grid.

What is a year progress wallpaper?

A year progress wallpaper shows all 365 days of the current year as a dot grid on your iPhone lock screen — completed days fill in, remaining days stay open. My Life Dots generates a year progress wallpaper that updates automatically every midnight via iOS Shortcuts, so every morning you see exactly how far through the year you are without opening any app.

How does a habit tracker wallpaper work?

A habit tracker wallpaper places your daily habit streak directly on your iPhone lock screen as a dot grid. My Life Dots generates this as a wallpaper image — not a widget — so it is visible every single time you pick up your phone without any taps. The wallpaper updates automatically at midnight via iOS Shortcuts to reflect the new day’s progress.

What is “life in weeks” and why does it matter?

The “life in weeks” concept — popularised by Tim Urban of WaitButWhy — visualises your entire lifespan as a grid of small boxes, each representing one week. Most people have around 4,680 weeks in a lifetime. Seeing how many are already filled in, and how many remain, creates a calm but powerful sense of time-awareness. My Life Dots turns this into a live wallpaper that updates every week automatically.

Is My Life Dots a Pretty Progress alternative?

Yes. My Life Dots is a free, browser-based alternative to Pretty Progress and similar habit tracker wallpaper apps. Unlike Pretty Progress, My Life Dots requires no App Store download, is completely free, and combines daily habit tracking with year progress and life-in-weeks views in one wallpaper. It works on any iPhone via iOS Shortcuts with no subscription.

Wallpaper vs widget — which is better for habit tracking?

A wallpaper is better for passive awareness. It is visible every single time you pick up your phone — before you open anything. A widget requires you to actively look at your home screen. For habits you want to stay top-of-mind throughout the day without active effort, a lock screen wallpaper like My Life Dots is more effective. You check your phone 80–150 times a day — your wallpaper gets all of that attention.

How do I set up the automatic wallpaper update on iPhone?

After creating your wallpaper on mylifedots.com, open the iOS Shortcuts app, create a Personal Automation triggered at midnight daily, add a “Get Contents of URL” action using your My Life Dots wallpaper URL, then add “Set Wallpaper Photo” set to both Lock Screen and Home Screen. Disable “Ask Before Running” so it runs silently. The entire setup takes about 5 minutes and runs automatically every night forever.

About

About My Life Dots

What is My Life Dots?

My Life Dots (also known as MyLifeDots or LifeDots) is a free wallpaper calendar builder for iPhone lock screens and home screens. It turns your phone wallpaper into a live progress grid — showing your daily habits, monthly calendar, year progress, or entire lifetime mapped as weeks — and updates it automatically every midnight via iOS Shortcuts. No app download. No account. No subscription.

What you can build

Daily habit tracker wallpaper

One dot per day. Pick a habit, and watch your streak fill in across the grid. The consistency becomes visible. The gaps become honest. Your lock screen becomes a quiet record of who you are becoming.

Year progress wallpaper

All 365 days of the current year in a single calm grid. Completed days fill in, remaining days stay open. A year progress wallpaper that updates every midnight and never asks for anything.

Life in weeks wallpaper

Your entire lifespan mapped as dots, based on your date of birth. The filled dots are gone. The open dots remain. One glance is usually enough. Inspired by Tim Urban's “Your Life in Weeks” essay on WaitButWhy.

Monthly calendar wallpaper

Every day of the current month at a glance. Today highlights itself. No opening the calendar app to check the date.

The philosophy

My Life Dots is influenced by Stoic thinking on time and attention. Seneca wrote in On the Shortness of Life: “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” The tool is not designed to create anxiety. It is designed to create presence — a quiet, daily reminder that time is finite and attention is a choice.

Three principles behind every design decision:

Awareness. Moving from the unconscious passing of time to a deliberate relationship with each day.
Visualisation. Abstract time made tangible. A dot is a unit of life that either happened or didn't.
Intention. Starting each day with a clearer sense of where you are and what remains.

How it works

My Life Dots is a web-based tool at mylifedots.com. Choose your style, configure colours and theme, and generate your wallpaper in under a minute. For automatic daily updates, the tool uses iOS Shortcuts — Apple's built-in automation app. A shortcut fetches your wallpaper at midnight and sets it as your lock screen without any input. Set it up once, runs forever. Compatible with iOS 26. See the full guide on the iOS Shortcuts tutorial.

Frequently asked questions

What is My Life Dots?

My Life Dots is a free online wallpaper calendar builder for your iPhone lock screen. Choose a grid style — daily habit tracker, monthly calendar, year progress, or life in weeks — and it generates a custom wallpaper image. It updates automatically every midnight using iOS Shortcuts. No app download, no account, no subscription required.

Is My Life Dots free?

Yes. My Life Dots is completely free to use. You can create and download a wallpaper calendar at mylifedots.com with no account required and no subscription. Optional premium themes and styles are available for users who want more customisation options.

Does My Life Dots require an app download?

No. My Life Dots runs entirely in your browser at mylifedots.com — nothing to download from the App Store. You create your wallpaper in the browser, download the image, and set it on your iPhone. The automatic daily update uses iOS Shortcuts, which is pre-installed on every iPhone, so no third-party app is ever needed.

How is My Life Dots different from Left or WeeklyDots?

My Life Dots is the only tool that combines all four modes — daily habit tracker, monthly calendar, year progress, and life in weeks — in one free web tool with no app download. WeeklyDots offers life-in-weeks only. Left is a widget app (not a wallpaper) that requires an App Store download. My Life Dots works instantly in any browser, is completely free, and produces a wallpaper rather than a widget.

Does My Life Dots work with iOS 26?

Yes. My Life Dots is fully compatible with iOS 26. The wallpaper creator works in Safari on iOS 26, and the iOS Shortcuts automation for automatic midnight updates works with iOS 26’s Shortcuts app without any changes to your existing setup.

Contact

For questions or feedback, reach us at hello@mylifedots.today.

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