Swim.com: Swim Tracker

They’ve made some good improvements to the app over the last few years. I like the drill setting, and how it’s easy to edit workouts. However, stroke detection needs work. I’m a pretty experienced swimmer, with really good form, but it still thinks my butterfly is freestyle, and sometimes thinks my backstroke is breaststroke. I’m not sure if this is a bug with Apple Watch 8 (stroke detection was better on my series 5). It is good with lap count, but could be improved in recognizing sets better…even tho I do flip turns and long sets, it still divides sets into smaller sets. Still, I do like the improvements they’ve made in the last few years. Keep working on it.

Strictly from an App Design standpoint, it breaks several of Apple’s UI Design Recommendations. For instance, when searching for a location, the “X” should clear out the text in the search field, because that is the standard for this UI, but in this case, it closed the location settings all together. There are lots of other clunky and unpolished UI decisions that make it hard for me to want to engage with the app as well. In functionality, my pool isn’t listed so all of the leaderboard functionality is not going to work for me. I’m surprised that it asked to read my health data, but didn’t go ahead and import all of the swims that are already recorded into their application, especially when it claims that breaststroke is my least swam stroke (it’s actually fly). Lastly, this has a very social media feel to it in some places, especially as I was going through the privacy settings, so if that isn’t your thing (like it isn’t for me), make sure you turn your profile to private.

After using this app for two years on a Pebble watch, it was hit or miss. Moving on to an Apple Watch 2, the interface was better but motion tracking and distance recording was only slightly better. Recent updates under iOS 12 and WatchOS 5 give much better tracking in the pool. I still get occasional phantom laps added but overall, length tracking is very good. The app still cannot distinguish my breaststroke from freestyle. So frustrating. I wish the app allowed better data analysis of multiple workouts over a period of months, like being able to chart swolf for all of my swims. I’m not a competitive swimmer so many of the apps features don't appeal to me. I just don't understand why I cant look at the pace of all my freestyle sessions over time and see if I’m improving.