About

What do you need more of today?

Aloe Bud sends helpful
reminders from yourself, to yourself.

Aloe Bud is your gentle self-care companion, easily accessible in app form (currently on iOS, coming to Android in 2023). Create kind reminders for yourself to do things such as take your medication, move your body, express gratitude, and more. Using push notifications you’ll receive peaceful notes to check in and take care of yourself. Use the reflections feature to write and focus on what helps you nourish and grow.

The Aloe Bud Commitment

What is Aloe Bud’s current mission?
- We are dedicated to bringing affordable health and wellness care to a highly connected population of people. Whether you’re someone starting out on your self-care journey, or have been looking for something different to add to your system, we can help aid you along the way. Aloe Bud wants to let you know every day in some way that you matter.
What are we critical of? What do we not want to be?
- Our app is not your average health app, it features soothing colors and cute pixelated art that’s meant to motivate you into a mindset that puts you first.
- We aim to not feel like a clinical, sterile product but something that makes you feel good about yourself and reminds you that you’re making small steps towards a better future self.

Planting the Seed: the Aloe Bud story

Designed out of the pure necessity of her own mental health struggles; Aloe Bud creator, Serenity Discko searched Apple’s App Store for something, anything to help with remembering basic self-care. Discko, who uses they/she pronouns, hustled to stay afloat. But Serenity’s emotional well-being was slipping through the cracks. Discko wasn’t leaving the house and summoning the effort to do basic things like staying hydrated and eating a full meal felt like a battle. So, they got to work on an app that could help anyone else feeling lost, start to heal.

Discko created it for people struggling with mental illness, chronic illness, ADHD, or people who just forget to floss their teeth before calling it a night.

“I want to show that it’s casual because it has to be,” Discko says, “You’re not going to want something if it’s in your face.”

In contrast to other health-minded reminder apps, like the Activity app on the Apple Watch, Aloe Bud’s nudges are especially soft-edged: “You can’t have a rainbow without a little rain. Ready to shine?” Compare this to what an Apple Watch wearer would see on their wrist: “Make it happen. Yesterday, your Move ring didn’t get enough love. Let’s get it closed today.” You can see the contrast; Aloe Bud’s notifications feel more like texts from your Deadhead aunt than shouts from your high school gym teacher commanding you to take another lap.

Aloe Bud sends you helpful reminders from yourself to yourself.

It’s not meant to and should not replace mental health care or the support of loved ones, but it is a valuable—and free—tool to help bridge gaps in making self-care as accessible and personal as possible.

In August 2017, Aloe Bud launched a Kickstarter project for the beta version of the iOS app. The name Aloe Bud was chosen as a nod to the aloe plant, which is harvested for its medicinal properties, and for its apt imagery of a growing bud on its way to full bloom. “We’re all unaware of our own magnificence until we have someone shine that light on us.”

Discko developed the app with the help of the team at software studio Lickability with the aim of making it approachable and welcoming. When you open the app, you’re greeted with a grid of light-toned icons, all in a pixel-art design you’d see in games like Super Mario World, along with an action verb below each one. You’ll see things like a watermelon with sparkles coming off the top, with the word Fuel underneath, as a reminder to munch on something at times when you might struggle with remembering to eat.