I thought we’d have a thread for recommending good apps for solving all our life problems.
Obviously TARDIS Guide is the top tier, ultimate way of tracking Doctor Who and the rest of the Whoniverse, but I’m struggling a bit to find a good app to track the other things in my life.
Books - outside of Doctor Who book, obvs, what’s a good app to track your reading. I’ve tried goodreads and Bookamory and I’m currently giving Fable and Storygraph trial runs. Any other suggestions?
Movies - I’ve got a Letterboxd account but are there any other good apps for this?
TV - I’ve tried trakt and Showly and am trialing TV Time at the moment. Anything better?
Comics - I’m slowly working my way through Marvel comics - anything good for tracking those.
What other apps do people find useful? Journal apps? Habit trackers? Time wasters? (Not that I need any of those!)
Habitify has become a constant in my life and it’s genuinely so so useful.
It does cost (monthly, yearly, and one time purchase options available), but I think I got the one time purchase with a new joiners offer for like £30, which isn’t cheap, but it’s more than made up for the cost for me
(granted I mostly use the website, but the app is useful to have out, and it’s got a few more features)
I used to use a diary app where I logged everything - I had tags for what I ate, people I met, what hobbies I did, where I went… it became quite obsessive. Then one day I just dropped it and never did it again lol.
I also occasionally track everything I eat with a calorie-counting app, recently I did it for a few months but lately I’ve dropped it again.
I had my personal website which logged all of this as a “life log” but recently I stopped using that much and I’ve turned it all off now.
Yeah I think I have some obsessive tendencies and then just drop them when I start to feel like it’s too much
I still do track Doctor Who (obviously) and other movies and TV, plus workouts, but nothing else at the moment!
You can set times of day for tasks (e.g. I have ‘Brush Teeth/Mouthwash’ as a task 4 times a day, that shows up for me in the mornings and evenings, but not afternoons
You can set a task for an amount of time, not just an amount of times (e.g. my reading is currently just 10 mins a day, and I can use it as a timeer to make sure I don’t do too little)
You can set some tasks for specific days (e.g. therapy is once a week, so I set it just to show afternoons on that day)
There’s also a ‘Break Bad Habits’ option, where you get options to break or limit bad habits, and it counts up from the last time you did that thing (Not going to show what habits i have on there because that is personal)
You can skip days if you feel you couldn’t do the thing that day for whatever reason
It’s more a checklist of daily/weekly/monthly habits rather than being able to log every little thing you do like a diary, and there’s no ‘to-do list’ (at least on the web version, can’t remember the app), but it’s been brilliant for what it is!
For habits and also journaling/mood tracking I used Finch for really long but I kind of stopped a few months ago. Just downloaded it again because I really enjoyed it and it was helpful. In the app, you take care of a little bird by fulfilling habits and goals and it’s also got things like little meditation tasks or grounding techniques for anxiety attacks.
I don’t generally use apps. I have alarms set on my phone, which pings my Fitbit, for tasks at work etc. I also use a notebook that I keep in my back pocket for work task lists.
I use a Fitbit, thus the app, to track my sleep.
Goodreads for books, but that is more so I don’t have to remember what I read 10+ years ago.
I used IMDB for a long time, but after a while I found the logging more of a chore than deciding what to watch.
I had chess.com on my phone for a long time. it was perfect for keeping my mind active while I was waiting etc, but then I felt like I was becoming one of those people who pull out their phone the moment they are “bored”. Now I have headphones on most of the time with either quiet music on or audiobooks.
Not really added much, but just a spurt of my headspace when it comes to people’s need to journal their whole life. Doesn’t work for me, but I know a lot of people that it helps focus their mind. My ADHD tends to get into hyperfocus to the point of neglecting other things. I KISS and try to live in the moment.
Personally not a fan of apps at all. I don’t like the idea of my phone knowing more about me than it needs to. I have a few puzzle apps, spotify, and BF, but that’s really about it - I don’t even have any social media apps, I go on the browser if I want them. forum.tardis.guide is all I need <3
Well, I’m obsessed with apps and tracking things to the point where my wife makes fun of it sometimes
Goodreads and Storygraph for books. I don’t like GR all that much because it’s owned by Amazon these days and hasn’t been properly updated in years. But it’s still the big one in book tracking, which is why I use it. I prefer Storygraph though, which is similar but has better stats and book recommendation tools.
Trakt for TV/film and Letterboxd for film. Trakt mostly just to track what I’ve watched, when and how many times and Letterboxd to review and rate stuff.
I used to have League of Comic Geeks for comics. It works for Marvel, DC and most smaller comic book companies (such as Titan and IDW). You can create your weekly pull lists, mark which comics to own (and how much they cost you), and read. You can rate and review them and follow your favourite series so you know when a new issue is released.
last.fm to track my Spotify listening. I’ve done it since 2017 and it’s interesting to see how my taste in music has evolved over the years! Also, I have a secondary account to track my pods and BF audio and YouTube watches because I’m crazy.
I’ve been using Journal it! as a sort of journal/diary. I jot down important things from my day, and use it for notes, goals and tracking certain things.
For habit tracking I use Habitica, which is free (with in app purchases, but it’s not invasive and not required). It’s yet another “gamify your habits” app, but I find it useful for tracking what I need to do each day even if I don’t really care about the collectables. There are community made challenges that are often fun to join, along with some other features for accountability.
I don’t really track anything else; I don’t watch many movies and my show watching is pretty much exclusively Doctor Who at the moment. I also prefer to have as few apps as possible; a hold over from the days where phones could only hold so much before you ran out of space, but also out of spite for how many things want you to install the app. As I understand it, TARDIS Guide isn’t any different on the app than on browser, so I just keep it in an open tab. Some things I use regularly are easier on the app, so I do use those, but in general I avoid it.
I absolutely hate that many things force you to have an app these days and absolutely refuse to work in a browser. I even need an app to go to the university cinema, it’s so stupid
I downloaded Trakt because I wanted a way to log individual episodes of classic and non-dw tv stuff, but after a few hours of trying around I’ve only come to dislike the thing a lot lol. I think I’ll go back to noting everything myself for now, or until letterboxd gets a tv update. I had to get used to Storygraph for books too, but already that had the way less commercialized feel and much more serene design.
I gotta love my library apps Libby and Hoopla–I haven’t had to pay for 95% of the Doctor Who comics I have read. For me, they have become an indispensable part of my Doctor Who experience.
Libby, or at least my Libby which is linked to the London Library Consortium via my library card, has a fair amount of Big Finish Main Range. It also has quite a bit of the non Doctor Who stuff like B7, Captain Scarlet and it did have some of the originals like ATA Girl - but occasionally stuff disappears or appears.
I’ve been trying out Finch since it came up here but I am just not sure it’s for me. I really want a kind of tamagotchi so I thought it would be perfect but I’m actually just irritated by the cuteness of it, for me it’s all rather patronising.
However, using it did remind me that I like these habit apps. So I’ve gone back to my original one, Daylio.
Luckily I already paid for a lifetime membership so it doesn’t even cost me anything to use.
It’s simpler, more of a diary to log what you did each day than to check off specific tasks, although it can be used for “goals / habits”. And I realised that the main reason for not picking it up again was I felt so bad about the huge gap left since I stopped in 2023.
But it being January, I was able to backfill the rest of the month so now it’s like a fresh start.
My brain is a bit weird like that!
Also I’ve started tracking my food and macros again as I try to get enough protein and fibre for my gym goals. I’m really enjoying that at the moment so let’s hope it lasts!
