Rumor had it, Apple was going to add native sleep tracking to Apple Watch. In 2019. That summer, I began work to add sleep data analysis to RECaf, a feature I had wanted since I conceived of the app. The timing seemed right. If Apple were going to be adding sleep tracking to Apple Watch as a first-party feature, I wanted to be right there, ready to take advantage of that sleep data as soon as Apple started its marketing. Scientifically, it’s pretty well established that caffeine has some…

I have reached the unfortunate conclusion that RECaf’s watch app will not be able to go fully independent this fall with the release of watchOS 6. While you have always been able to log from your wrist using the app or Siri shortcuts, I was hoping folks who didn’t want to keep RECaf installed on their phones would be able to continue using RECaf on their wrist. There are simply too many things that can’t be done on watchOS alone at this point, however. So for now,…

RECaf 1.6 For a while now, I’ve noticed RECaf users had a very different approach than I intended of logging an item from earlier in the day, or from the day before. The frequents list on the front panel of RECaf is great for one-tap access to your most frequent sources. But logging that way always records the current time and date. If you want to customize the date to say, this morning, my intention was for people to go through the custom logging process. (Push down the…

My driving principal while designing RECaf was to make the app “thumb-able.” That is, I wanted to be able to do as many tasks as possible with the phone in one hand, gesturing only with my thumb. This is getting harder with every new iPhone generation. Years ago, Jeff Hawkins, creator of the original Palm Pilot and then CEO of Handspring, commented on the one-hand-ability of the Treo line of smart phones. He was getting asked frequently why Handspring had adopted plastic RIM-style keyboards on its phones, rather than relying…

RECaf version 1.1 is making its way to the App Store today. In addition to some minor bug fixes, this version adds some cool new Siri Shortcuts that make it easy to quickly check on your day’s logging. You can customize the phrase to invoke these to anything you like, of course. They will also work on your HomePod if you have one, which is really cool. I've found these extra Shortcuts very handy for checking in on my current intake, and when deciding if I really should…