Daily Tracker from CVZ Productions is like a Swiss Army knife of productivity apps. This thing does a little bit of everything; though you can’t actually stab anyone with it, I don’t want you to think that detracts from its value or anything. It’s fairly safe to assume that I have become somewhat obsessed with to-do [...]
Daily Tracker from CVZ Productions is like a Swiss Army knife of productivity apps. This thing does a little bit of everything; though you can’t actually stab anyone with it, I don’t want you to think that detracts from its value or anything.
It’s fairly safe to assume that I have become somewhat obsessed with to-do and/or productivity apps lately. Back in July I reviewed Taskly which quickly became, and remains my favorite to-do app, so you may be wondering why I’m even looking at Daily Tracker, it being simply more of the same boring old tool that most usually ends up reminding you, not of what you need to get done, but just how much you suck in getting anything done at all. That’s a valid question, and the answer is simple; Daily Tracker isn’t just a to-do app.
With Daily Tracker you can track almost anything you can think of. Miles jogged, books read, exercise, hours studied, really, the possibilities are nigh endless. It’s kind of like a replicator from Star Trek, you tell the app what you want to do and it let’s you set it up with ease. Ok, that may be a weak comparison, you can’t just tell Daily Tracker you want some hot tea and wait for it to materialize on your desk, although now that I mention it I haven’t actually tried that…
Daily Tracker is a to-do list, personal organizer, journal, spending tracker, and time clock all rolled into one app. And you can even keep track of all your favorite RSS feeds with it, though I feel this function is a little clunky; not nearly as smooth as with a dedicated feed reader, but hey you can’t be great at everything can you? The app comes with several built in trackers like a Sleep Tracker to help you monitor your sleeping habits, which I didn’t care for because it bascially requires you to just set a Daily Tracker timer just before you go to bed and stop it when you wake up. I made a new Sleep Tracker for myself where I just input the hours and minutes I slept the night before and any relevant notes. For instance, I awoke at exactly 3:45am this morning for no apparent reason and was unable to go back to sleep for a solid hour or so; I hate it when that happens, but now with Daily Tracker I can keep an eye on it and see if any patterns pop up.
The to-do list itself is actually kind of bland and simple. There are no bells and whistles here. Sorting by, or even assigning priority to a task is missing which is a shame, but I’m OK with that because, oddly enough, I probably wouldn’t use Daily Tracker for my to-do listing anyway. This minimalist to-do function might, however, appeal to many who are tired of overly complex GTD-style systems.
Daily Tracker has the potential to replace several apps with its versatility and customizability, and that is its appeal. It supports adding voice notes, maps, and pictures to notes, but I will say that it is kind of fussy to do these things on the fly as opposed to the quick, one-two punch action of capturing a hurried voice note with, say, Evernote. I know, I know, Daily Tracker is not Evernote, it’s more actually.
I stand by my earlier Swiss Army knife analogy for Daily Tracker. When you buy a Swiss Army knife you look at it, bristling with all its nifty little concealed…things, and you probably say to yourself that you’re never going to use even half of those tools. But, carry that knife with you for a while and you might begin to notice that you actually rely on it more than you thought. That’s how I feel about Daily Tracker; it might not excel at any one of the many things it does, but it does so many things it manages to make itself pretty dang useful.
I guess all that usefulness doesn’t come cheap; Daily Tracker is available from the App Store for a cringe-inducing $9.99. You can download a fully functional Lite version to try it out before you take that leap. The lite version limits you to a certain amount of daily entries, but other than that you get all of Daily Tracker’s functions. From there you’ll have to decide for yourself whether that versatility is worth the cost.
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