Apps Our Community Uses

Apps Our Community Uses to Help with Pacing and general Illness Management

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Apps that measure or track heart rate (and usually Heart Rate Variability or HRV)

Visible
(Apple and Android)

Probably the most popular app designed specifically for energy-limiting illnesses. Helps patients monitor and manage their condition.

Tracks your symptoms, fatigue, medication, crashes, and more.
Uses your phone’s camera to measure heart rate (and heart rate variability).
Provides graphical reports and trends over time.
You can contribute your data to global research studies on ME/CFS and Long COVID.
There is a free membership (limited functionality) and a paid membership.
Visible Plus, not available in Canada yet, (they say it’s coming soon), is a combination of a membership and a wearable armband.
- You sign up and they send the Polar Verity Sense armband for continuous heart rate and activity tracking. It streams data in real time, enabling instant pacing notifications.

WatchME
(works on iPhone/App)

An app intended for people with ME/CFS that helps you pace and stay within your energy envelope.

Uses your phone and watch to monitor your daily heart rate, steps and distance.
Does not include Heart Rate Variability (HRV) calculations or tracking.

Welltory
(Apple and Android)

This app focuses on stress and wellness, but is not specifically designed for people with chronic illnesses: “No kidding my “body doesn’t handle stress well!’” said one Long COVID user, who did, however, like the app overall.

This app uses your iPhone’s rear camera or an external heart rate monitor to measure your HRV and provide personalized feedback on your performance, energy, and stress levels. It also integrates with other health and fitness apps to give you a comprehensive overview of your well-being.

Elite HRV
(Apple and Android)

This app is a popular choice for tracking HRV and gaining insights into your health, stress, and nervous system balance. The “coaching and education programs” it offers are, however, geared to healthy individuals and are likely not to apply to an ME or Long-COVID patient.

It uses an external heart rate monitor to measure your HRV and provide live biofeedback, trending, and analytics.

Apps that allow you to track symptoms, energy, activity, mood, sleep and/or medications but do not integrate biometrics

Symple

(apple; free and Premium versions) and

Bearable

(Apple and Android; free and subscription versions)

2 well-reviewed symptom tracker and health diary apps.

These apps help you track factors that influence your symptoms (like energy, mood, medication, sleep, and activities) and provide a way to visualize your data over time, which can be useful for identifying triggers and effective treatments.

ME/CFS Pacing

This app, specifically for ME/CFS, is similar to Symple and Bearable in that it is a journaling/tracking style app.

This app allows you to track energy levels, activity and energy drains.

General Health and Fitness Apps

Apps meant for everyone to track biometrics and health usually focus on increasing exercise, rewarding higher effort, and seeing health improvements.

For people with ME/CFS or Long COVID, these can be helpful apps if used appropriately (to pace and manage your illness). However, because they are designed for healthy people, they are often difficult to apply well and can be disheartening for people with significant energy limits.