Build → your Duolingo streak
One lesson a day is all it takes. Stake real money against completing it. Hit the target and your money returns. Miss and your stake funds the charity you chose. The streak you already care about, backed by something your brain can not ignore.
Suggested starting contract
$3/day against missing your daily target of 10 minutes in Duolingo.
Free on Google Play and the App Store. On Android, the Learning challenge uses Digital Wellbeing; on iPhone, Screen Time. Both verify your daily Duolingo time without you having to log anything by hand.
Select Learning from the challenge picker. Pick Duolingo from the list of supported learning apps Lockin can monitor.
On Android, you'll be sent to your phone's app-usage settings to allow Lockin. On iPhone, you'll grant Screen Time access and pick Duolingo from the app list. Both flows give Lockin only the signal it needs — daily app time — and never expose screen contents, accounts, or messages.
The default is ten minutes of active Duolingo time per day, which comfortably covers a single path lesson. You can lower it to five minutes if you want a stricter floor that one short lesson satisfies, or raise it for a deeper daily commitment.
The default stake is $3 per day — an amount that would feel like a real loss without being punitive. Pick the charity from Lockin's vetted list across categories including climate, mental health, animal welfare, and digital literacy; that is where forfeited stakes go. Lockin charges a small platform fee to cover payment processing and operations.
By default the deadline is end-of-day — 23:59 in your local timezone — meaning your Duolingo minutes only need to be logged before midnight. Tap Set deadline in the wizard to pick an earlier time on a 24-hour picker — 9:00pm is a strong default for Duolingo, since it pulls the lesson out of the pre-bed scrolling window where most missed days die. An earlier deadline raises both the difficulty and the reward: tighter deadlines unlock higher Locks and XP rewards. The deadline is set once during contract creation and applies to every scheduled day for the life of the contract — it cannot be edited mid-contract.
Your stake is held securely by Stripe. The contract starts at midnight in your local timezone. Hit at least your daily Duolingo time minimum before your deadline each day or that day's stake is forfeited.
From Lockin's data
In the Lockin beta, Learning-challenge contracts where users set a modest daily floor — around ten minutes of active Duolingo active time, enough for one path lesson — showed stronger week-three retention than contracts with longer minimums. A floor that one short session always satisfies removes every plausible excuse, which means every miss is a genuine choice and the financial consequence lands harder.
"I had a 140-day streak and kept burning Streak Freezes whenever life got busy. After two weeks with Lockin on top of it, I stopped reaching for the freeze. The $3 was small, but losing it felt like losing the streak twice."
— Anonymous beta user, Duolingo challenge, 6 weeks active
No. Lockin reads your phone's own daily Duolingo usage — Digital Wellbeing on Android, Screen Time on iPhone. Using a Streak Freeze on Duolingo preserves Duolingo's own streak number, but it does not produce any actual app time, so it does not satisfy your Lockin contract on either platform. You have to actually open Duolingo and use it for at least your daily minimum before midnight.
Yes. On iPhone the Learning challenge uses Screen Time — Lockin reads your daily Duolingo time and the contract settles automatically at end of day. Verification is hands-off; you don't have to log anything by hand on either platform.
None of those. On Android, the screen time permission only reveals which app you used and for how long. On iPhone, Screen Time only reports whether you crossed your daily minimum for the apps you selected — Lockin never sees screen contents, your Duolingo username, your XP totals, your course content, or anything you type. The pass/fail signal each day is a minutes-in-Duolingo check compared against your daily target — nothing more.
Forfeited stakes go to a registered charity from Lockin's vetted list. You choose the charity from categories including climate, mental health, animal welfare, and digital literacy when you set up the contract. Lockin charges a small platform fee to cover payment processing and operations. Refer to the transparency page inside the app for charity-by-charity tallies.
Documented platform outages can be appealed within Lockin's small refund window for verified emergencies. If the Duolingo app itself is offline for an extended period on a given day, contact Lockin support with the dates and we review appeals on a case-by-case basis. Note that the Learning challenge measures active time inside the Duolingo app on your phone, so lessons completed on the Duolingo website in your phone's browser do not count — they do not produce active time inside the app on either Android or iPhone. If you anticipate days the app will be unreachable, set realistic daily minimums and use your skip allowance for genuine disruptions.
Every contract has a per-day deadline by which your Duolingo minutes must be logged. The default is end-of-day — 23:59 in your local timezone — so you have until midnight to clear the daily minimum. During the 7-step contract wizard you can tap Set deadline and pick any earlier time on a 24-hour picker; 9:00pm is a popular choice for Duolingo because it forces the lesson to happen before the late-evening scroll window opens. The deadline you choose applies to every scheduled day for the life of the contract. Tighter deadlines unlock higher Locks and XP rewards, since an earlier cutoff is meaningfully harder than midnight. The deadline is locked in at contract creation and cannot be edited mid-contract — that immutability is what makes it function as a real precommitment rather than a movable goalpost.
Free to download. You set the target, the stake, and the charity.