Most habit trackers are phones first. If they have a desktop version at all it is a web page in a window. Reveal the Dream is a real Windows application, and the goal you are working toward sits on your desktop.
What it does
You pick a photo of the thing you are working toward. It starts covered, divided into one piece per day of a journey you choose. Every daily check-in uncovers one more piece, until the whole photograph is there.
Miss a day and that piece stays covered. Nothing resets, and everything you already uncovered stays uncovered. There is no streak to lose, which is the part most habit trackers get wrong.
On Windows specifically
- An always-on-top mini window. Small, borderless, remembers where you put it, and it stays visible while you work. This is the Windows answer to a phone's home screen widget.
- The app lives in the system tray. Closing the window does not quit the app, so the mini window survives and your check-in reminder still arrives. Switch on Open at login in Settings and it starts there when you sign in to Windows.
- A countdown to your next check-in. The app and the mini window name the time your check-in opens and count down to it. One switch in Settings turns it off.
- Text color that suits your photo. White, cream, charcoal or black for the words over the picture, so a bright photo stays readable. Free.
- Signed by Little Bird Trading LLC, so Windows names the publisher.
- One installer, nothing else to install first. No runtime and no framework. No account either, unless you bought Premium somewhere else and want it here, in which case you sign in with an email address to carry the subscription across.
The Windows 11 Widgets Board
The reveal is available as a Windows 11 widget as well as the mini window. It shows the day you are on, whether today's check-in is open, and when the next one opens. The app registers it for you on first run, per user, with no elevation and nothing to install separately.
The widget is deliberately an extra. Registration can fail for reasons that have nothing to do with this app, on Windows 10 or where a policy blocks sideloading, and when it does the app carries on exactly as before. The mini window is the surface that always works, which is why it is listed first above.
There are step by step instructions for adding it to the Widgets Board, with what it shows and what to check if it is missing from the list.
Backup and sync on a PC
Phones have a free place to back up to. An iPhone has iCloud and an Android phone has Google. Windows has neither, so on the free version your journeys live on this PC and nowhere else.
Premium's cross-platform sync is the backup Windows is missing. It keeps your journeys in step between this PC, a Mac, an iPhone or an Android phone, and the PC encrypts the copy before it leaves, so we cannot read it. Keep the recovery code it gives you: it is what opens that copy on a new machine.
Free, and what Premium adds
Free on Windows: one journey at a time, 7 or 30 day lengths, the Petals reveal style, the mini window and the Windows 11 widget, the countdown, your choice of text color, a daily reminder, and exporting a finished reveal as an image.
Premium adds sync and backup, several journeys at once, custom journey lengths, rest days so the weekdays you take off are not missed days, repeating journeys, seven cover colors, the Rings and Arcs reveal styles, your finished photos as a gallery with per-journey results, and App Lock. On Windows the lock is a password you set, with an optional hint after three wrong attempts, and it can hide the mini window and reminders too. It stops someone wandering past your desk. Someone who takes the machine away is a different problem. Premium is cheapest bought here.
Direct download or the Microsoft Store
Both install the same app, and both update themselves from inside the app. The download from this site is the signed installer.
It is not Windows only
The same journey runs on Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Android and Wear OS, and Premium sync keeps a PC in step with them. Buy Premium once and it unlocks every one of those apps. Using a PC and a Mac? There is a page on the vision board app for Mac and PC. There is more on the vision board widget for your phone, and a printable version for the fridge.