Serenity Reviews

Serenity was one of my favorites (5 star) and then they updated it for iOS 13 and although it got appearance modifications it went drastically down hill related to usability. What happened? I cant change the names of parts of my routine without having to delete them. And then this morning my favorite of all morning routines that I had saved just totally disappeared. I also created a mourning routine yesterday that is somehow not here okay. This is crazy. I think somehow its sinking between my iPhone and iPad older versions of my routines and deleting my new ones, but either way it needs to be refreshed to its old way before iOS 13 and it would be awesome again.

And on a random, but true note the iPad app wont turn sideways which is a bummer.

I love Serenity, a lot actually. It helps me to plan my day and be on time to work and calculate how early I should wake. However, only one routine is free which is a bummer since I would like one for when I get back and one for night. So I purchased the premium package but STILL can’t add new routines it takes me back to the ad for premium package, the restore button doesn’t work if I click subscribe apple notes to me that I already paid for it yet I don’t have access to add routines.
There’s no direct contact info for support and I had to find email of the developer through another website
I deleted and re-downloaded Serenity thinking it’ll fix the problem yet I’m still getting the same problem . I don’t want to leave a bad review but sadly this is the only way I can get a response as it seems. This is the second time I’m experiencing a bug (the last one was updated and fixed).

I LOVED Serenity. Now I do not. The latest update has caused so many issues. Wish it had the option to go back to an older version.
1. It’s now so wide I can’t see the edges of Serenity so words are cut off.
2. When I view my tasks, it only shows the 1st one…MULTIPLE TIMES (Ex: For one day of the week, I have my whole day laid out in specific steps so if it’s 61 for the day, only the 1st one will show…61 TIMES! :-(
3. Can’t reorder any steps/tasks because it’s only showing the 1st one multiple times. The others still exist (they will happen if I actually start Serenity ), but I can’t see the rest to edit them.

Likes:
1) It tells me what task is coming next which is great for smooth transitions.
2) It didn’t lose my data during the update so at least that’s a plus. (I want to uninstall it and reinstall to see if that would fix but afraid I will lose 5 yrs of great routines I’ve created for work, certain days of the week, certain occasions like when school is in session, etc).

Note for developers: Please don’t “fix” things that were never broken.

I’ve been looking for a routine cueing app for ages and was super excited about this one, but there’s a significant oversight in the function of the watch app that makes it borderline useless for anyone wanting to use their watch to cue them through a morning routine (which feels odd, as the watch seems like a perfect way to deliver such an app). The issue: when the watch goes to sleep, which it does seconds after the user puts their wrist down, the timers stop until the watch is woken up again—meaning that ones progress stops. Essentially, holding ones wrist up for the duration of one’s routine would be the only way to have Serenity function as intended.
I hope the developers take a closer look at the watch app, I thought the routine setting functions were very well thought out—most apps have you set times for each activity, which quickly becomes a problem if one doesn’t wake up and roll out of bed at precisely the same time every morning. The cascading timers look like a wonderful way to provide flexibility along with structure, if only the timers would continue to run on my watch!

I generally like the user experience. But one thing that bothers me is that if you move on to the next task before the time runs out on the current task, then the current tasks won’t be marked as “completed”.

So if you give yourself 15 minutes to eat breakfast, but finish eating in just 10 minutes, then you have to sit around and do nothing for 5 minutes if you want the “eat breakfast” task to be marked as complete.

If you skip ahead to the next task before the time is up, it doesn’t get marked as competed. So weird!

You also don’t have an option of completing tasks out of order. So if your next task is “take a shower” but your partner is using the bathroom, you can’t just move on to another task and come back to the current one later.

The Routinist app has really figured out all these little details. But their UI isn’t very good. I think the Morning Routine app developers should try to duplicate all of Routinist’s features, but keep the good UI that Morning Routine has. That would make a truly killer app.

Let me just start out by saying that Serenity when I saw it on Serenity Store, I was like THIS IS WHAT IM LOOKING FOR. But immediately, I found 3 big flaws...

• the “quote of the day” is always awful and just seems like an excuse to seem mindful while being copyright-free.

• the second I opened Serenity , it said, “it might be a good idea to have more than one schedule.” And I was like... well, duh, that’s why I downloaded this! But I have to pay 12$ JUST to serve the purpose of Serenity . And I’m sure that’s not the only purchase. It’s worth it if you like Serenity , but in the beginning it seems frivolous.

• this one just annoys me, but the “get inspired” tab is 100% pointless. Why can’t you just categorize the workouts in sections I can easily understand? I don’t want to have to go searching for someone among a bunch of strangers to see who seems the most mindful or whatever to get a half hour of yoga.

~suggestions~
• link this with the health app or the calm app.

• notifications center checklist (that I can interact with the notification to check off items without opening Serenity )

• link with Siri

Thank you for reading.

I love Serenity and I use it basically everyday to help me make sure i do everything i need before school. But I am also very busy after school and it’s nice to have everything organized without having to forget what i need to do because with a very busy schedule it’s hard to keep your times and tasks organized. I also am not doing the same things every morning. I just wish instead of only being able to have one routine without having to pay you should at least be able to have 2, maybe 3 at most without needing the in app purchase. If you think about it a lot of people use this to have their, work outs, morning routines and night routines organized. As i know you do this to make more money but it’s also nice to not have to pay just to have one extra routine or two extras. Other then not being able to have more then one routine i by far love Serenity and love how after you finish you get a quote which is awesome but again at least allow 2 routines without having to pay because not all people can have in app purchases or have enough money to be paying for app purchases

Overall Serenity is great! I've created routines for my morning, when I first get into the office, when I get home from work, and before bed and they're really helping me stay organized and productive.

I do have a few minor quibbles and feature requests though:
* The Get Inspired tab isn't very useful after you've looked at it once but takes up 25% of the main navigation bar; a way to toggle it off would be nice. Similarly, the Daily Quote isn't something I use and the ability to disable it would be nice.
* Give more options around moving from current task to next task. Currently, if I click next task it marks current task as not done. If I have 5 minutes allocated for "Do the Dishes" and finish the task in 3 minutes, let me mark the task as done and move on to the next one. Maybe have 2 options at the bottom "Mark as done" and "Skip"?
* Pause behavior seems weird? Like it keeps moving through tasks in the background while paused? Again, if I have a 5 minutes "Dishes" task but it actually takes 8 minutes, let me pause it before the 5 minutes is up, unpause it when I actually finish the task, and have the routine pick back up without "stealing" the extra 3 minutes from the next task.

Again, great app overall but I'd like to see more features around managing and interacting with routines and tasks, less inspirational/motivational stuff, and the UI either more minimal or more customizable.

I like Serenity and it seems like the developers are actively improving it. Serenity has a nice UI, but it does lag behind some of the other prominent apps in the saturated habit/routine app space. If the dev studies their competitors’ premium feature sets, I’m confident they will get Serenity up to par… they clearly have the talent to do so. Also, I recommend removing the share requirement to unlock H2O tracking. It’s a perfectly reasonable request for non-premium users, but lame to have a requirement for premium users.

Lastly, I commend this developer for offering a single payment IAP for lifetime premium as an alternative to a perpetual subscription. With the growing distaste for ‘forever’ subscriptions, the lifetime premium option stands out. Serenity has a stellar UI and is well worth checking out!

UPDATE 4/22: I have the newest version of Serenity on an iPhone X. It is still a bit slower than the previous version before the interface was changed, but I am used to it now. I like Serenity a lot even with it being a little slower. Still worth it for sure! It’s a great app to keep your daily routine organized :) thanks!

UPDATE 1/6: thanks for the response from the developers. I figured out how to check the tasks off one by one with the new update. However it is slower than it was in the previous version on my iPhone. Thanks for looking into this!

Hi guys, I have been looking for an app like this for years, thank you so much. There is only one thing that bothers me though, which is the inability to see my whole routine without the picture at the top of the screen. There is no way to see all of my tasks at once and edit them except in that tiny window, but if the picture would scroll with the list then it would be fine. Personally, it is just a small thing that I can work with, but it is still very frustrating and distracting for me and if we could have that option to keep or freeze the top status picture, that would be awesome. Again, thank you so much for creating this tool!

I bought Serenity maybe a year ago and it wasn’t a 1,000 doing what I needed. But I just recently re-opened and there are a lot of changes and improvements. I think I’ll start using this again! I am extremely impressed.

My feedback:
(1) I can’t figure out how to delete a routine. How is that done? Or do I just have to override it?
(2) Also, I would like a condensed view of all routines. I think I’ll be building out a handful such as morning routine, getting ready (w/makeup application, which is a lot), morning and evening skincare with variations, etc. If you have a lot of routines the view of them can be quite bulky.

This is the routine-planning and creation tool I have always needed. Scheduling and time management are two significant challenges I grapple with chronically as someone with ADD. Serenity is like the answer to a prayer: being able to reorder tasks within my routines with the amount of time I've allotted them remaining intact is the perfect way for me to work through the process of figuring out the best way to structure my time. And the VoiceOver accessibility is nearly perfect, too. I can't thank the developer(s) of Serenity enough for doing such an outstanding job on the design and creation of such a valuable tool.

If you're the type that mills around idly in the morning and wastes precious time this is Serenity for you. I used to use a checklist app to make myself stick to a schedule - now they make routine apps for it. Of the ones I've tried, this is the prettiest app, the most usable in "free" version (you get one full routine with unlimited entries) and also the most economical ($2.50 unlocks all features). There's a couple bugs (like sometimes when you pause it picks up in a random entry) but you can easily work around them without any issues. All in all an "essential" app for me. 5/5

I use Serenity for every moment... from waking up to my yoga flow routine to my lazy days.. Serenity reminds me even when I have a lazy day that it is ok, it’s on my list too... chores days... all my moments. It keeps me focused, and helps me to remember the sequence of things I want to do and helps me start new good habits.

The only thing I would change is the celebrity tab... it takes up a quarter of the menu bar and is not very enriched. I would add it someplace not so dominant as the menu bar, it’s a bit distracting... to replace it, I might have a diary log... or another stats graph maybe showing progression. I think a diary log would be great!

In all, Serenity is wonderful and has helped me achieve what I most often cannot.

Serenity is so helpful and is really keeping me on task. I feel like I’m accomplishing my goals so much more easily. I have more mental space without decision fatigue or overwhelm throughout the day since everything I need and want to do has its own spot in my day now.

I do wish I not have to assign a day for special routines that aren’t regular-like a shortened routine for a special event, emergency or just needing extra sleep. Pretty much every day in my week has a slight difference and I’d love to be able to see my week at a glance with my different routines on each day. I also wish there was some more excitement when the timer goes to the next task. It’d be nice if I could click “done” or “skip” instead of the timer just moving on to the next task. It would be awesome if it played music and went to the next song for each task. I wouldn’t mind if the voice command gave some kind of encouragement along the way too..like “you’re very focused today! Keep going!” Etc.

Even without those, it’s a great app and has made a very big positive difference for me and my family! Thank you!!

Day 1 and I’m absolutely loving Serenity. I haven’t had a good routine since quarantine and find myself with a lot of wasted time, especially as a student with a lot of studying and work to do. Serenity really made the decision fatigue I had every morning go away. The ability to set up a morning routine with Siri was great as well because I have it set so Serenity starts as soon as I turn my alarm off, great for a techy person like me!

Some things I wish it would have:
- ability to change the title of a task when you press it to change the duration
- keeping dark mode on

Overall love Serenity. Will probably have some more suggestions in the following days but great! I may even look into paying for it, although it is a little much. As a student I would have preferred to pay a small one-time fee. Subscriptions are heinous but that’s just me!

Update: they clearly listen to suggestions and have now enabled changing habit names when you go to change the duration of the task!

Another thing I’d like to see in an update is what time it would be alongside each task. That way I know if I should make a task shorter or longer depending how much time I have.

Love Serenity mostly, has really helped keep me on track in the morning and getting ready for work. I have morning routines for workout days and rest days, and a routine for Sunday to get ready for the work week!

One thing I wish, is I made a “quick morning routine” that I plan to use if I ever stay up too late and need to get more sleep than my normal morning routines. I wish I didn’t have to assign it a day of the week because I don’t usually have to use it. I save it for emergencies like if I had a late night or I oversleep or something and can’t do my normal morning routine. I want to have it saved so I have it planned already if that were to happen, but I don’t want to assign it to a particular day of the week because they come up last minute.

I had similar complaints as someone else who reviewed Serenity. I was irritated that the tasks were automatically switching to the next one because sometimes I didn’t finish in the time I set it for; however I learned you can change this in the settings. Another thing I was irritated by was that if you selected the next task because you finished one early, it would mark it as complete. For a while I thought you had to let the time run out before it would cross out the task and mark it complete, but I learned you can swipe left and mark it as done.

I’m big on routines and Serenity has me motivated to wake up in the morning when my alarm goes off! I love all of the task options that are available as well as the option to customize your own tasks.

Positive app actually helps me get on task!! It functions as promised however I would like a dark mode. His app keeps the entire screen on which keeps you locked in to that task but the entire screen is on, consuming lots of battery life. I think a apple is implementing a dark mode this year. 2019.
Currently Serenity is not completely compatible with smart invert. (Please don’t remind me about low power mode or switching off my screen)
At least a good improvement to the smart invert would be nice.

And when purchasing Serenity it is said that you will get routines from celebs. There’s is only 10 and I haven’t seen any new additions since I purchased, so essentially you are just paying to add more self made routines.
Just saying... not much to complain about

Thanks for Serenity love the minimal approach and easy to use functions.
I hope you guys find new features to add.
Like maybe notes and headers for small reminders