Streaks

Wasn’t sure what to expect from Streaks. Sure, it has high ratings and a simple, clean interface- but how does it hold up against my stubborn ways? Well, I’m here to say so far it holds up extremely well! Has it only been one day of usage? Sure, but I’ve gotten more accomplished in that day than I have in the past week. Streaks seems to hit that perfect balance between simplicity and functionality. Many of the tasks can be automatically tracked/completed by syncing with your phone’s data, which has proved to be very handy since I don’t like having to manually track tasks. I adore all the customization features and various widgets that are available. The Apple Watch app is fantastic too, as you can easily keep an eye on/mark off tasks as you go about your day. My only improvement would be that I wish the watch app allowed you to view only uncompleted and upcoming tasks at the touch of a button, like is possible on the phone app. Other than that and possibly adding in even more customization features, it’s a truly great app that I hope continues to motivate me to better myself every day!

On my forever hunt for an app that makes medication tracking flexible and seamless, because I will frequently lose track of what time or day it is, and trying to remember which of my medications I have taken that day is a challenge. Enter the idea of using NFC tags to scan medications as I open the bottle! Streaks is compatible with NFC tag scanning by way of co-programming using iPhone’s shortcuts, and as long as you have Streaks open 24/7, everything is great. Alas for me, I constantly close background apps in a quest for decent battery life and reduced visual clutter, and if Streaks is not open, the shortcut will fail to log activity into Streaks 100% of the time. Honestly I’m confused by this as 1. Streaks is more than capable of running reminders and task tracking settings within the Streaks app, with the app being closed, 2. Shortcuts are able to create entries in other apps without them being perpetually open and 3. Shortcuts has steps like “open app” available for programming, which would solve my main issue, except Streaks isn’t an option there. Glad this app is an one time purchase vs constant subscription fees, but it doesn’t meet my needs for the singular, explicit function I bought it for. I think it’s a good app, just not for me (yet.) Hopeful in the future to see a fix or enhancement that allows an iPhone shortcut to engage with Streaks while it is not actively open.

Couple things have been bothering me though. One is the teeth brushing tracker. I have one of those fancy toothbrushes that will connect with the health app to track my usage. Its probably completely useless… but my issue is that in streaks it will count it automatically based on time, not instance. Using the brush’s app, I brush based on the motion tracker and all sorts of things so theres no exact time a “good” brushing will be done. So in the streaks app, it will consider the task incomplete if say, its under 3 mins, or it will say both times I do it are complete if its set to say, one minute. That shouldn't be. Two times a day should mean two instances… not 4 minutes or 2 minutes total or whatever. Alternatively, if I switch to tongue cleaning right after which takes only 30 seconds, the app only registers that time stamp instead of the brushing session before it… so i have to go in and just manually finish off the instance which defeats the purpose of having it connected to the health app to do it automatically anyways. So yeah not the end of the world, but I figure if this app is going to be offering these kinds of things maybe just tweak it so it does it right. Maybe just offer the ability to not base it off of time but just how many times. The other thing that has been bothering me is the color scheme. The options are all of these very bold and yucky colors. I mean… again not super important but maybe look into what colors are trending like from pantone or something… you’ll attract more customers I’m sure from just using color psychology like that. I believe lately pastels have been pretty popular, just as a tip.