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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Blog

Dots Calendar: What It Is, How to Read One, and Which Scale to Pick

October 2, 2026

A dots calendar shows time as dots — filled for days gone, empty for days ahead. The four scales (month, quarter, year, life in weeks), how to read one, and how to set one as your lock screen.

A dots calendar is a calendar that has stopped trying to tell you what is happening on each day, and instead shows you how much time has passed.

Every day — or every week — is a single dot. Filled dots are behind you. Empty dots are ahead. One dot, usually in an accent colour, is now. That is the whole format, and its simplicity is the reason it works on a phone screen where a normal calendar does not.

This guide covers the different kinds of dots calendar, how to read one, and how to set one up so it stays useful past the first week.

Dots calendar vs a regular calendar

A regular calendar answers "what is on Thursday?" It is a planning tool: appointments, deadlines, events. It is excellent at that, and terrible at showing you the shape of time, because every month looks identical and none of them show how much is gone.

A dots calendar answers "how far through am I?" There are no events on it. It is a progress tool, not a planning tool, and the two are complements rather than competitors. Keep your Calendar app for meetings. Put the dots on your lock screen.

The four scales

The same idea works at different zoom levels, and choosing the right one matters more than any design choice.

This month

Every day of the current month. The most practical scale — it makes "there are nine days left in October" something you see rather than calculate. Good for monthly goals, budgets, and anyone who finds a full year too abstract.

Three months

A quarter at a glance. Useful if you work in quarters, or plan in seasons rather than months.

Full year

All 365 days of the current year. This is the classic year progress view, and it lands hardest in the second half of the year, when the filled side quietly overtakes the empty one. Many people set it in January and find it most useful around September.

Life in weeks

Your whole life, one dot per week, one row per year. The most confronting scale and the slowest-moving — a single new dot each week. If you want the background on this one, read life in weeks, explained.

There is also a fifth use that is not a scale so much as a range: a habit or countdown grid that runs between two dates you choose. That is covered in the habit tracker wallpaper guide.

How to read one

Three colours are doing all the work:

Filled — time already spent
Empty — time remaining
Current — today, or this week, usually the accent colour so your eye finds it first

Most dots calendars also show a short label: days done and days left, or weeks lived and weeks remaining. The number is useful, but the dots are the point. Your eye can judge "about two thirds full" faster than it can read a number, and the judgement sticks better.

Making it readable on a lock screen

A dots calendar fails the moment it becomes visual noise. A few settings make the difference:

Leave room for the clock. Adjust the top padding so no dots sit behind the time or the date. Turn off iOS Depth Effect, which lifts parts of the wallpaper in front of the clock and wrecks a grid.
Pick one accent colour. Filled and empty should be quiet; only "today" should stand out.
Choose the dot shape on purpose. Circles feel soft, squares feel like a spreadsheet, rounded squares sit in between. On the year view, dots + numbers turns the grid back into something you can use as an actual date reference.
Match your week. Set the week to start on Monday or Sunday, whichever your head uses — otherwise every row will feel subtly wrong.
Dark themes age better. A bright, high-contrast wallpaper is exciting for a day and tiring after a month.

Setting one up

Open the wallpaper creator.
Choose Year (then This month, 3 months, or Full year), Life, or Habit.
Pick a theme and shape, and adjust the padding against the lock screen preview.
Download the image and set it as your lock screen wallpaper.
Set up the midnight iOS Shortcuts automation so it updates itself every day.

Step five is what turns a picture of a dots calendar into a working one. A static image is accurate for exactly one day.

Which one should you pick?

If you are not sure, start with This month. It moves fast enough to stay noticeable and is concrete enough to change what you do this week. Move up to Full year when the month feels too small, and to Life in weeks when you want the long view.

What does not work is cramming several scales onto one screen. A dots calendar is useful because it shows one thing clearly. Pick the one thing.

The point

Calendars are built for what you have planned. A dots calendar is built for what you have left — and that is the number nobody ever shows you.

Make your dots calendar — free, takes about a minute. Comparing dots calendar tools? Read LifeDots vs WeeklyDots.