Glucose Buddy Diabetes Tracker

(This was a 3-star review that I forgot to hit send on, back when the app worked ok) I find the logging very useful. My only issues are that the exercise categories are too rigid (e.g. no stationary or elliptical bike). Also, when using the GPS-based step tracker, even if you pause it, it continues to tally your distance as if you’re still moving. So all you can do is completely end your session. There needs to be a better more reliable resuming feature. (Cut to now) First, it’s been 5 months since the last update, and that may be the one causing all the current headaches! Now, the app has become unreliable using auto exercise mode. It crashes randomly while being used, if you luck out and complete your walk it will simply shut down for no reason. There’s clearly a bug that went into the last update and since it’s been so long, you have to wonder if the app itself is EOL. Thus, the 1-star rating; someone fell asleep at the wheel.

The app has a lot of decent features. The interface is cluttered to the point it’s hard to use and hard to find things. The reporting aspect of the app is poorly done, and that’s the most important part. In the free version, the ads after a day become so obnoxious that it’s fundamentally unusable. Full screen ads with the volume forced to 100% that offends everyone in the room. If you purchase this app you are funding a company that cares about monetizing the app far more than providing a good user experience. A premium subscription is VERY expensive, and honestly provides only a few real benefits, outside of removing the ads. I will look at EVERY alternative in the App Store before I feed this marketing tactic. There is a “plus” version with a one time app purchase that likely removes some ads, but there is no clear statement of any difference so the only way to know is to buy it and find out. If you read enough review responses, you will learn if you buy that version you simply get another nagging form of encouragement to buy the expensive subscription. What this app provides is worth no where close to what the premium version provides.

I loved this app before they changed to the subscription model a few months back. There are so many things you used to be able to do that aren’t available, even small things like using a custom label instead of before/after a meal. And now in order to share your graphs with your doctor you can only go back two weeks and you have to print it out vs email it. It’s a real shame not to be able to afford an app that used to be an asset to my medical care. I would have been able to use this app had there been a one time purchase price, but I can’t justify adding another monthly automatic charge just to log my glucose levels. I used to hype this app to everyone I knew with diabetes. Even my doctor was impressed, although I had to explain what happened when I could no longer send her my full detailed data via the health portal. Now I tell everyone about the app, explain how the developers forced a subscription model on users, and use it as an example of how patients suffer when profiting from their diseases becomes the goal. I wish I had never trusted this developer with my data. Now it’s locked away and I had to start over again with another app.