Life Cycle - Track Your Time Reviews

by Miak811

I have used Life Cycle (and Northcube’s linked app, Sleep Cycle) for roughly three years as a premium subscriber. Over that time, I have found the information useful and LifeCycle itself fairly intuitive.

However, last week, my app stopped logging location changes or recognizing that I had left a location. After deleting and restoring LifeCycle , I was unable to restore my premium account or recover my data. In the time since, I have been corresponding with the developer’s customer service team who seem determined to misunderstand my requests for help. After four rounds of unhelpful suggestions, I was told to follow the exact steps I outlined in my original request—the fact that those steps did not work the several times I tried them was what prompted me to reach out for help in the first place!

I am wildly dissatisfied with the way my request for support has been managed; I am frustrated that the developer has taken this long to understand a simple issue. Unfortunately, while LifeCycle has been very insightful up to this point, I would strongly recommend not logging this kind of data in a system that crashes and, apparently, will not allow you to recover your data.

by AndreHarbo

I’ve used LifeCycle for several weeks now in conjunction with Sleep Cycle (which I’ve used off and on since 2009 and which has only gotten worse and worse with each “improvement”) and I still don’t understand what I’m supposed to get out of this. I have to manually add or correct almost every activity which is tedious and time consuming. It gets basically every location and amount of time spent there wrong, and somehow despite being linked with Sleep Cycle which I’ve been using every day along with this, it has totally different info about time spent sleeping. This last week it said my average time spent sleeping was more than any individual day in Sleep Cycle (and about three times as much as I actually slept on average. Now that it is finally giving me trends they’re extremely simplistic and uninteresting. Even worse, the much touted journal feature has an extremely short character limit that renders it essentially useless. I know I’m kind of wordy but there wasn’t a single event that I could even fully describe, let alone reflect on. Give this one a hard pass, it’s a total waste of time (and a lot of time, at that).

by LizzHalf1267

I’ve been using LifeCycle for a few months, and then out of the blue earlier this week, it stopped tracking my location. I went into my settings and checked, and it still showed that my location was enabled. I tried deleting and redownloading and it did it again. I’ve tried one more time, but every time I open it while it syncs with my life, it pops up saying that it needs to have the location services changed. I really want it to work because no other app does what I like that this one does, but if I can’t get this fixed, I’ll be forced to leave an even worse review.

EDIT: after waiting and waiting for it find my location and restarting the initial location-finding many times, I’m giving up on it, at least for now. I throughly loved LifeCycle, and will be attempting it again in the future, but for now, given the fact that it seems to no longer be able to track my location for NO REASON, I’m being forced off out of frustration. Please update and fix.

by Tiffany Fuchsia

I want to like LifeCycle, but it keeps getting “stuck” at locations. Right now it tells me I have been at the pharmacy for the last 21 hours and counting. I stopped there yesterday for 5 minutes and then went home, where I have been ever since. The pharmacy is 2 miles from my house. I can try to fix this once LifeCycle decides I’ve left the pharmacy, but I will lose my auto-logged sleep. This happens at least once a week. At least 3 times I have become “stuck” at stoplights or other random points on roads.

The first time this happened I got “stuck” at a gas station for 72 hours. I emailed for help, and I was told to update LifeCycle and iOS. Both were already up to date. So they told me to reset ALL Location & Privacy Settings on my phone. No. Not happening. I have similar tracking apps and they are just fine. The second time I emailed about the problem I didn’t receive a response.

I’m really surprised, I’d expect better from the creators of Sleep Cycle.

by Kaimax18

I have been using this for a number of years now. At first I understood that I needed to tell it what I was doing as it learned the locations and many times it was just unable to get it close. After years of it having inaccurate location data I finally decided to raise a case with support just to find out if I can manually move the map pin to the correct location. I was told that it is unable to change the pin as it just pulls the data from the built in location services that the phone does automatically. Upon learning how it does it, I was able to look up the data from the most recent inaccurate map pin only to find that the phone had the location correct. I also noticed that the times on the in built data was more accurate than life cycle. I wrote back to support saying that the phone had the correct location and asked how can I get LifeCycle to use it. The response I got back that it wasn’t possible and just to create an event manually. When you do that though it doesn’t let you pick an address or location on a map so if you return you have to hope it gets it right when you go back. Would have given a higher rating if they showed some effort at improving it. But since there has been hardly any changes to LifeCycle since it started I shouldn’t expect them to start it now.

by Ms.Owen

I enjoy the idea of LifeCycle. However it really needs the Apple Watch part be able to record activities. You could open it, select what activity you’re about to start and then have a stop watch essentially going while you started this “activity”. This would make it not only so I could easily track and figure out my day better but help me keep on task, if I look down at my watch with the ticker going I can remember what I’m doing. Would be even better if you could somehow map your house and you could mark what rooms are what do you can see how much time you spend in each room, and take advantage of the time you’re in that room to do more things within the time you spend there. Like if I was in the kitchen, maybe baking and it could help me remember to do the things I need to do while in that room - wash dishes, put dishes away, take recycles out and so on. This maybe far fetched but it would be a dream for me and I do think LifeCycle could some day be awesome. For now I just find it interesting to know about the activities it can track.

by Klkaplan

It tracks time and location, but of course it relies on you to tell it what you’re doing at each time and location. The ads lead you to think LifeCycle learns your habits, but really it’s just relying on you to tell it everything you’re doing on a regular basis. I have used it over a week and I do not see how it will be helpful yet.

I was hoping it would have a more intelligent algorithm for behaviors but it is pretty plain overall. It shows that I had 8-14 hrs at home daily, but has no clue as to what I was doing during that time. So that is about half of my time overall where there is really no data to analyze or gain any insight from. It just says I spent 75 hrs at home this week.

The travel part is potentially the most helpful as it tells me my time on the road but doesn’t tell me how many miles of course. It’s not for the business consumer I do not think. More for the curious person with some time to spare. IMO

by Kokokaylee

I’ve had LifeCycle since late 2016 and I’ve loved it. It’s great to see all sorts of trends and to keep track of my work hours or how often I end up at Target. For the last month or two, my locations are getting stuck, like others have mentioned. It logged my location from 11pm-730am as the Tim Hortons I go to every morning on my way to work (for months). I didn’t get there til 730, yet I slept there? It’s incredibly frustrating to go in and manually change this, and THEN, I’m going to have a “home” location at the Tim Hortons it’ll pick up every morning that’ll I’ll inevitably have to change. And it knew I got home last night at 11pm, yet didn’t log my location til the next day? I’m irritated by this. It’s been getting stuck on random roads for hours and, when that happens, I have an inaccurate day. I thought maybe it was because I wasn’t using my phone for it to “pick up” my location. Well, I checked the weather this morning at home, so I know gps knew where I was. Please fix this!!

by Pepe's Child

I’ve been trying out the free trail for a few weeks, and I love the idea behind LifeCycle so far. However, I will not be paying for premium and don’t see myself sticking even to the free version because of a few small bugs that irritate me. First, there are some bugs with LifeCycle tracking location. It can sometimes take a couple days for it to pop up that I was in an area or it won’t show up at all, then I have to enter it manually (which is both annoying and inaccurate). Second, why can’t I edit the activities already in LifeCycle ? I don’t need a lunch and dinner option, just a “food” option. I could create my own, but it still irritates me to see the other options cluttering up my activities. Third, an activity at a uncategorized location will have a general area on a map tagged to it. But once I put in a custom name for the location, sometimes the location is untagged? Fourth, I’d like to be able to start an activity in LifeCycle somehow and stop it manually. Rather than having to remember my start and stop times and enter it after I finish if I want to manually create an activity. Finally, it would be nice to have more color options and be able to view my day in chronological order as well as by category. Overall the concept behind LifeCycle is great but I’m going to delete it because the execution makes LifeCycle more difficult to use than it’s insights are worth.

by Account4this

I use LifeCycle on a daily basis to help me track my time spent on activities in a week. There are 168 hours in a week, and by using LifeCycle, I can see how that time is allocated. In doing so, it helps me keep a balanced life, and I'm currently subscribed for the premium features. I love the structure and aesthetics of LifeCycle , and it's very user-friendly.

However, it is absolutely ridiculous to require a $30 annual subscription from Sleep Cycle in order to access some of the sleep trend data charts. It's clearly unnecessary as the two options unavailable are "activities affecting your sleep quality" and "location effecting your sleep quality." Since Life Cycle continuously tracks your location & the sleep recorded by Sleep Cycle is synced, then there is absolutely no reason for the Sleep Cycle online backup subscription to be required. And how can Sleep Cycle selectively transfer data to Life Cycle by requiring online backup for some data, but not all data in the Life Cycle trends? I will gladly pay $10 a year for many years, but to quadruple that expense for access to two "additional" sleep trend data charts is ludicrous.

I've recommended LifeCycle to several friends, but this limitation has really turned them away.

by Billramo

I’ve been using for an entire year now and consider it indispensable. I’ve setup categories to track my project work, use my iWatch fitness app to track different workouts, use the notes to annotate places I visit.

The downside with LifeCycle has to do with the lack of integration with iPhone automation. There is no way to use automation to quickly log an Activity from my Home screen shortcut. Also, there is no easy way to automate filtering activities for a day and then say copy to the clipboard to create a status email. So, to get 5 stars, automation is a must criteria.

One minor pet peeve, with COVID-19 and having to stay home, it’s very annoying to see the message that my location hasn’t changed. Duh! I’m staying home. Please have an option to disable the warnings!

by Souljaboi05

I highly recommend LifeCycle if you’re looking for a free chance to see snapshots of how your time is utilized on a large scale over time. I would like to see some more features incorporated to make LifeCycle truly great.

Most importantly, I’d love to have the option of customizing which smaller activities will be rolled into commute/transportation activities. My ~1 hour at the the gym shouldn’t always get rolled in to my drive home from work. However, it makes perfect sense that stopping to pick the kids up from daycare or getting gas on the way is rolled in. I’d also like to see a larger selection of thumbnails for activities, as well as a total color palette option for activity icons.

Conceptually, this is a great app, especially for being free. But, it needs some more polishing before I’ll purchase the premium service.

by Pianoplayah

LifeCycle is super cool! It’s really interesting to see your life mapped out and how you’re spending your time. The only problem is, for those of us that do most activities at home (especially during this pandemic) it has a big gap in its tracking ability. If you work out at home, work from home, especially working from home on different projects as a freelancer, or have different video chat meetings or appointments while at home, it would be awesome to have those activities tracked. Maybe it could access your screen time app or see what apps you are using to guess whether you are working, working out, or I could program it to know that when I open certain apps I’m working on certain things? At the very least, I think the easiest thing would be for it to access your calendar and cross-reference your location with what you had planned. That would be super neat.

by PhelineCat

I know I reviewed this before and always with the same comments. It's great, even when we don't go anywhere- I sometimes grab a screenshot or photo to mark a transition from one activity to another and add so many in manually later. There's not enough resolution to know from my inside office to outside Ballet Barre, Nia or Yoga. I wouldn't expect it, don't know why other reviewers did and why they dropped 🌟 because of it. 🙄 My only (only?) issues are the colors and icons. Why so few? I've re-useds icons but they've often not been appropriate for any category. The same goes for the colors; the dreary, dreary colors. A color wheel could make us happy and how thrilling it would be if you bought or designed as many icons as there are now! What if even half of those had the subtle, sneaky movement some of the original have? Imagine how amazing your app would be!

by FUTUREpilot267

I love LifeCycle, I've been working two jobs over the summer and it's helped me keep track of how many hours I've been working and how much time I've spent driving or sitting at home. There are still a few areas that can be improved however. The weekly view would be way better if it updated each day instead of at the end of every week. The statistics can sometimes be really stupid, it'll tell me I've slept 6% more on a Sunday or something like that, who gives a crap about 6%? it's tiny. I think it would also be a good idea for there to be a map that shows your daily activities like the google maps timeline. Lastly I think it should track the routes you take each day.

Update: After recent updates the weekly view now gets updated automatically, the statistics are much better, but I really think the map showing your activities would be a really good idea. I also think that the donut should be more like a timeline, in order, rather than chunks of different activities throughout your day.

by Mikie Swart

I mostly use it to keep track of my time spent doing things because I have a terrible memory, and it works really well... For the most part.
I have spotty reception at my work and it’s also a fairly large facility, so often times my tracked work day times will be a mess that I have to fix manually almost every day. I understand that this is mostly reception and gps, and the fact there’s no wifi there, but perhaps if I could just set a large area to be “Work” and whenever I’m there it just sets it as that.
Also sometimes it completely ignores commutes to work or home, sometimes just adding to my “work” or under “transportation.” I can’t directly change or add commute times either, which is a pain.
Overall a solid app, would definitely recommend to anyone looking to keep track of their day to day business.
Ps I have to agree with another review that the pricing is a little on the high side for what it is!

by ThisGuyDaEngineer

It’s a dope app. It’s pretty good at tracking your day if your day is repetitive. As a over the road truck driver my day is far from repetitive, now the parts that are it logs effortlessly. Now to the but...so like when I stop at a truck stop and walk across the street to eat (breakfast, lunch, dinner) the tracker will not log the new entry. Now LifeCycle says it doesn’t log movement under 5 minutes (as to not log my every bathroom trip); but to stop and move as randomly as I do, I would imagine that the tracker would track this. If the truck stop has a place to eat and that’s where I’m staying the night, the process to log this information manually is setup for inaccurate logs. Now I’ve only been using for a month now maybe it hasn’t learned me enough yet to log in this fashion. Outside of that though I really like LifeCycle!!!

by AnnMarie1621

I absolutely adore LifeCycle. I told a couple friends about it and they love it, too. Some people I’ve talked to think it’s creepy that I use an app that tracks my every move, but I’m the only one with access to this information and it doesn’t use my locations and activities to give me those “targeted ads” you see on Facebook and Google. I have a really bad memory, and for a long time it bothered me that I couldn’t remember what I did or where I went on a certain day. LifeCycle solves that problem for me and I honestly think it’s the most useful app I’ve ever had. Now I can easily access dates of Doctor’s appointments, weekend trips, events, and other things that are important for me to know. I like to add notes to describe what I did when I was at a certain location or doing a certain activity like hanging out with my friends - that way I can go back whenever I want and reminisce about a really fun night that I had, even if I’d forgotten about it.

by Meowsers696969

I downloaded LifeCycle not really sure I would end up keeping it, but after trying it out, it’s super interesting. It logs all your locations and activities and makes sense of them. Then daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly, gives you insight on the locations and activities you’ve spent your time on. It’s cool to see that new restaurants and places you visit are automatically logged.

I kept showing it off to my boyfriend every now and then until he finally made me download it to his phone too. I like how there is plenty to do without a premium subscription but premium does give you more specific insight and statistics which are cool.

I almost always have a suggestion when reviewing apps but I really can’t think of one. They even have an Apple Watch app!

by Shill1986

I had begun using their other app, sleep cycle, shorty after acquiring my iWatch. Having recently changed careers, and entering a much more physically demanding field, I found myself short on a few things; most importantly TIME and SLEEP.

While Sleep Cycle really helped me nail down a few problem areas in my night time habits, Life Cycle allowed me to see where I was spending most of my waking time, and plan out a better way about to help reign in my night time habits and, hopefully, gain a better night’s sleep because of it! It’s quite circular, and they help each other help me understand my habits.

I used Sleep Cycle for about a week before purchasing the year subscription. I’m glad I was able to help fund a good developer, especially for something with genuine values. Also, while it’s not always 100% accurate (multitude of reasons, many or most of which are out of control of the devs) it’s a great tool for tracking time spent on different jobs or just overall hours worked that week. I don’t use it for billing, we’re a bit more stringent on that, but for calculating or guesstimating my weeks pay it works remarkably well also!

Exceptionally useful app! Can’t wait to see what else is implemented into both Life and Sleep Cycle - as well as whatever they choose to launch next! Great job devs, these two apps are nearly essential for me anymore!

-Steven H.

by Jayfic

I’ve been using LifeCycle going on almost 3 full years (August will be the end of year 3), and I have to say it’s pretty legit! It’s not crazy fancy, and there aren’t so many bells and whistles that I don’t know what to do with it. It’s simple to understand, and once it gets your daily habits and rituals down it’s pretty self-sufficient. I don’t live an exciting life, so I don’t have to go in and update uncategorized locations very often, but even doing that is simple. All in all, if you’re interested in tracking where you go and what you do, and seeing your trends, I’d say get it! What can you lose?
As a side note, I don’t have the sleep cycle app. I’ve used it, but I’m just bad at keeping a smart alarm set and/or near me, but I imagine using that could also be helpful for LifeCycle!