Caffeine Plus

Ever since HealthKit got updated with Caffeine support I’ve been tracking my caffeine intake via the Jawbone Up app. But these last couple of weeks the app has been rough to me. Frequently used drinks all started to get random names, date and time didn’t sync to the Health app properly, and the app still hasn’t been updated to support the bigger screensizes. Assets on these devices are blurry and the keyboard is ginormous. This past week I’ve tried out half a dozen alternative coffee trackers, but none of them really attracted me. They were buggy, ugly, confusing or too technical.

What I was looking for was an app that was simple, allow me to pick frequently used coffee types out of a list and sync it to Health. I don’t need graphs, or advice, or tales about the wonderful world of coffee. I didn’t find any good app and I had already started development of an app myself. But today I stumbled across Caffeine Plus, a new coffee tracker that apparently does exactly what I need. Upon launch the app asks you to pick one of three types of caffeinated drinks: coffee, tea and soft drinks. Pick one and you get a second screen that shows you different types of that drink, and an option to select a size. Pick one et voila, instant sync to Health. This list of options may seem limited at first, but I currently can’t imagine any coffee I drink that I can’t add quickly with these options.

For example: A cappuccino is basically an espresso with steamed milk, so you pick the type of espresso the cappuccino is based on.

In case of brewed coffee the selection is kind of hit and miss. The same medium size cup counts as 154mg in Caffeine plus, but as 178mg in Jawbone Up. But since I use Health to measure trends and habits and not exact data, I’m not to worried about this data difference. For drinks that aren’t in the list, like energy drinks, there’s the custom entry button that allows you to manually add an amount of caffeine.

There’s one things I dislike: There is no way to edit the time stamp that Caffeine Plus sends to Health.

If you forget to add the drink when you drink it, bad luck, you can’t enter your backlog of drinks at the end of the day. (You can do it directly in Health though)

Although I have to admit, the app makes it very easy to enter data, and with the Apple Watch extension there’s really no excuse anymore to not quickly enter the drink.