Say goodbye to check marks or the pile of pebbles you normally use to count your accomplishments. Now there’s an app for that.
Trakr is a sleek and simple app in which you can keep track of, well, just about anything that you can count — books you’ve read, cakes you’ve baked, pages you’ve written, workout minutes you’ve logged, and so on. Plus, you can set numeric goals for yourself (maybe you want to run 100 miles), visualize your history and progress, sync with iCloud and even export your data via email.
Come on, click “more” and I’ll show you how it works.
Getting Started
Admittedly, Trakr really does only a few things — but it does them impressively well. New records can be added by tapping the + icon in the top right corner of the main screen. Then there are three fields you will have to complete: Title, Units and Action. You’ll be able to edit these for any record at any time by selecting the Edit button in the top righthand corner.
For every record you'll need to name a title, the units of measurement and the action.
Now things start to get fun. Trakr was designed with a scroll wheel that makes adjusting records or updating goals a cinch. Simply hold down the green dot and pull it clockwise — you’ll see the number at the top of the screen start to increase or decrease. Release the green dot once you’ve reached the desired number and presto, you’ve just made an update.
A major feature of Trakr is its scroll wheel; pull the green dot clockwise to add, or counterclockwise to subtract.
Setting Goals
While in a record, if you swipe across the Adjust screen, you’ll come to the next page, which is all about your goals. (Notice that your total remains in the top half of the screen.)
Tap inside the circle to set a numeric goal. Your current total is always shown in the top half of the screen
Tap inside the circle to set a goal. The scroll wheel will appear again, allowing you to set a number. And once a goal has been set, you can tap inside the circle to toggle the display between a number and a percentage (of how close you are to meeting that goal).
After a goal has been set, tap inside the circle to toggle between your goal and your progress (displayed in a percentage).
Further swipes present you with the History pages, which show your progress over the course of the last seven days, as well as the last 12 months. Unfortunately, these pages are not editable, which means that if you forget to enter your progress, you can’t come back to the app at a later date and input it for a day in the past. Finally, a Notes page presents a whole lot of options — the titles of the books you’ve read, the weather conditions on your runs, or thoughts on the plot of your novel.
The app can visualize your progress over the last seven days and then last 12 months.
Extras
On the Trakr home page you’ll see a list of all your records, along with the up-to-date totals and a green visualizer giving some rough indication of the progress you’ve made toward each goal so far. While tapping the + sign in the top righthand corner will create a new record, tapping the information symbol in the top lefthand corner will summon the Settings page.
The Trakr home screen includes your total for each record, plus a vertical green bar showing progress at a glance.
Under Settings, the app shows which version you’re using (in the week I spent reviewing this app, it went from 1.0.1 to 1.0.3). You also have the option to change your iCloud backup settings, export the data in a .csv file via email, send an email to supoort, or follow the developer, Kevin Donnelly, on Twitter. Another option has been added in 1.0.3, which is the option to rate Trakr in the App Store.
The app allows you to export all your data via email in a .csv file.
Final Thoughts
This is a great little app that takes the simplest of tasks and actually makes it fun, with its intuitive information fields and dynamic scroll wheel. The ability to export the data is wonderful — and when I did so, the spreadsheet looked clean, was easily understood and the information well presented. (A heads up: The spreadsheet will display every adjustment you make, which means that if you make several adjustments in a single day, they will all appear on the spreadsheet. This could be frustrating for someone who made a few accidental adjustments but corrected the record later.)
I hope that in a future version it’s possible to add progress for past dates, but the frequent updates that have been made just in the last week make me optimistic that such a possibility could be on the horizon.
In short, if you’re the kind of person who thrives on being able to see the progress you’re making at something … Or, if you tend to be a little OCD about making lists and using check marks … Or, if you just have something you want to keep track of … Trakr will fill that hole in your app arsenal.