> The goal is to capture information passively enough
This is my top one issue, because most logging apps require constant manual inputs and commitment, but not all.
Recently, I have been using Journey [0], an app that is helping me in the difficult task to write entries nearly every day. Problem: those are free-form, so it's only a good old journal, not a tracking app for custom metrics.
I have tried using another app to track my food habits [1] but that required way too much effort to get it right (finding the right food for every intake is just too much, I'd rather wait for something more automated like computer vision accurately seeing what I am eating, and how much of it).
I passively track my spendings, cross accounts with an bank aggregator called Bankin [2] (EU focused). From it, I can export the normalized data. You should look into similar services.
> a general purpose app for the iPhone to write new records to a database
I don't like it, but Notion [3] does that.
In the end, if you're committed, a spreadsheet is not that bad to start prototyping and checking what your really need.
Don't forget passive tracking with apps such as Google Fit, Swarm (Foursquare), Google Location, etc.
These are great suggestions, thank you! I think you're probably right that a spreadsheet is a good place to start, perhaps with IFTTT / Zapier / Shortcuts / etc to try to start plugging in some of the automation. I put a custom function in a google sheet that captures the current time when writing in a cell, and that platform has cell-specific edit history now as well.
It's a shame that there isn't a bigger player in the space for user friendly custom metrics like this
This is my top one issue, because most logging apps require constant manual inputs and commitment, but not all.
Recently, I have been using Journey [0], an app that is helping me in the difficult task to write entries nearly every day. Problem: those are free-form, so it's only a good old journal, not a tracking app for custom metrics.
I have tried using another app to track my food habits [1] but that required way too much effort to get it right (finding the right food for every intake is just too much, I'd rather wait for something more automated like computer vision accurately seeing what I am eating, and how much of it).
I passively track my spendings, cross accounts with an bank aggregator called Bankin [2] (EU focused). From it, I can export the normalized data. You should look into similar services.
> a general purpose app for the iPhone to write new records to a database
I don't like it, but Notion [3] does that.
In the end, if you're committed, a spreadsheet is not that bad to start prototyping and checking what your really need.
Don't forget passive tracking with apps such as Google Fit, Swarm (Foursquare), Google Location, etc.
[0] https://2appstudio.com/journey/
[1] https://lifesum.com/
[2] https://bankin.com/en/home.html
[3] https://www.notion.so/