Human for iOS helps users to track 30 minutes of daily activity.
As we enter the holiday season, people become increasingly more aware of their fitness and well-being choices. There are more and more apps and fitness wearables that help to track daily habits and fitness goals. We’ve reviewed several here on MacSources. One that we are particularly interested in is Human.
Human is an all-day activity tracker that has a standard goal to keep people moving 30 minutes or more every day. It works with many different devices and doesn’t require any additional hardware other than your mobile device. Human automatically picks up walking, running, biking and other activities of a minute or longer. Then, it reports back to you when you have met your ‘Daily 30.’ Some of the features include:
Automatically tracks how many minutes you move and measures the distance of your outdoor walks, runs, and bike rides.- Detects all indoor activity as ‘Active’ minutes and measures intensity to estimate active Calories.
- Get notified when you reach your Daily 30, 60 or even 90.
- Build up a streak for every Daily 30 of the week.
- Get an estimate of calories burnt with all your activities, including walking, running, and cycling.
- Store your activities in iOS Health as “Active Calories”, “Walking + Running Distance”, “Cycling Distance” and “Workouts” (not visible in the Health app, but available to other apps).
- Use our Today widget to see at a glance how much you moved on the today screen.
- See all your individual activities including maps and details.
Human, like many activity trackers, works to help people develop new, healthier habits. Studies show that 30 minutes of activity every day is the best form of preventative medicine. Because Human is designed around this goal, it will help users stay healthy in the long run. On average, users move 75% more after 6 weeks.
Because Human runs in the background, there is the chance that it will decrease your battery life. I have noticed since running it that my battery doesn’t last quite as long as it did prior to installing and running Human. The developer recommends that users definitely charge their phones at night or during periods of inactivity.
In my opinion, Human’s most redeeming quality is that it works with HealthKit. Human transfer Active Calories, Cycling Distance, Walking + Running Distance and workouts to the iOS native app, Health. This helps to give you the most accurate picture of your personal health and fitness through the apps you are using.
At first, I had some issues with Human. I found that in order for Human to work properly, a user must have Location Services turned on all the time. When I first opened Human and went through those steps, I mistakenly selected ‘no’ for Location Services. So, for the first couple of days of my testing process, I didn’t have any data. As soon as that functionality was turned on, I didn’t have any issues with it tracking me. Since I have acquired a wearable fitness device, I haven’t been so concerned with carrying my phone around as my fitness tracker. Now, Human is requiring me to do that again. For me, I would rather utilize the step tracker on my wearable than use Human. That being said, I think that anyone without a wearable would benefit from using Human. It’s a solid app and is free to download and use. It doesn’t take up much disk space (20.9MB).
For more information, visit http://human.co.
