Fitness Totals Review: Effortlessly Surface Fitness Data and Track Your Progress – MacStories

Posted: December 23, 2020 at 5:02 pm

The Apple Watch and iPhone can collect a lot of fitness data. The trouble is, theres so much information available that it can be a little overwhelming and difficult to sift through in Apples Health app. The situation has left an opening for third-party apps like Fitness Totals that use smart design and leverage new features like widgets to make sense of the piles of data and provide useful insights.

Fitness Totals benefits from its tight focus on applying a consistent approach to 16 fitness metrics using its app and companion widgets. The app compares fitness data over daily, weekly, monthly, and annual time periods, providing answers to questions like Have I burned as many calories today as yesterday? and Is my step count higher or lower this week than last? The data is available in the app, but its greatest strength is its widgets.

As much as I like Fitness Totals widgets, though, I want to start with the app. This is where you set up which metrics you want to track, and you can view even more data than is available in the widgets. Fitness Totals can track:

The apps main view displays a series of cards for each category youve chosen to track. Each card lists your total for the day and the current year compared to last year. Tapping a card opens a detailed view with more statistics. For example, my step details included todays total and my daily average along with totals for this week, month, and year compared to last week, month, and year, and the averages for each. Finally, theres an all-time number totaling all the data recorded and a button for sharing a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly summary with a colorful graphic.

The main view of the app also has a share button that lets you compose a graphic showing your yearly totals for any of the metrics youre tracking. Currently, theres also a banner at the top of the app prompting users to share their yearly totals, which does the same thing as the share button at the bottom of the screen.

The apps three sizes of widgets are similar to the graphics its share functionality creates. The primary difference between each widget size is how much data it can display. The small widget displays one pair of statistics: today compared to yesterday or this week, month, or year compared to last week, month, or year. The medium widget adds a second set of data points, and the large one allows for three points of comparison.

Ive been using a medium widget to remind me of my step count for today, yesterday, and last week versus this week. The widget serves as a quick way to gauge how active Ive been as the week progresses and is a nice addition to the health and fitness stack that Ive created on a secondary Home Screen. I may add additional Fitness Totals widgets over time, but for now, the step count widget is doing a good job of reminding me to stay active.

The one thing Id like to see added to Fitness Totals widgets is color and typeface customization options. The widgets are pure black, and some statistics are a dark purple that looks good but doesnt offer much contrast against the black, which can make the numbers difficult to read. The black background can also be a bit stark against some wallpapers.

Even so, Fitness Totals fills a nice gap Apple has left wide open. Apples Health app has all the data Fitness Totals displays, but the company doesnt offer a Health widget. Fitness Totals also benefits from its focus on just a handful of fitness metrics that can be turned on or off by users surfacing the data far better than the Health app. If youre looking for a periodic Home Screen reminder to keep you on track with your fitness plans for 2021, Fitness Totals is an excellent choice.

Fitness Totals is available on the App Store for $2.99.

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Fitness Totals Review: Effortlessly Surface Fitness Data and Track Your Progress - MacStories

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