Hydrawise Reviews

This is the first app I ever felt the desperation to read the user manual. It is so unintuitive, it’s depressing. I actually feel like I have less control over my irrigation system with Hydrawise than I did with the manual control box. Apps usually make system management easier but I was shocked by how incredibly bad the user experience is on Hydrawise. One glaring issue is the ability to mass-toggle-off system settings. It would be nice to just simply toggle off a program, zone, or the whole system like on the manual box without having to go through a million clicks to toggle off every single adjustment setting on each program or zone. Navigating is so confusing and seems to lead you in circles and then when you final reach the feature you need, its nothing like you’d expect.

The old app allowed us as contractor or technicians and users to run all zones for two minutes or three minutes with 3 quick steps. New one doesn’t allow this without preprogramming every zone individually 2 or 3 minutes before running. Old app had a great calendar to see history for whole month what days system ran and what didn’t and why. New app has no calendar for month. Old app showed all my customers and who was connected or was not connected. Need to add these important features to new app.

I manage a large system in our HOA that uses a 48-zone this app controller that includes a master valve and flow sensor. With this latest app upgrade from the previous app, you can no longer check the flow graph history. It has been removed from Hydrawise . Previously I could check to see how much water each zone put out in gallons per minute and compare that to the previous day. The old graph is still available if I pull up the old app or the website, but it has been severely compromised as the gpm numbers are an order of magnitude too low. One of the biggest selling features for this system was how powerful the flow sensing was, but for some reason the developer decided to severely compromise the feature. Now I can only see flow data when a zone is running, and all the fancy new reports are pretty useless for me in trying to determine if a head on a zone has sprung a leak.

Thanks for quick recent bug fixes.
We really need the ability to pause. They currently running program such as when needing to test a zone, but you do not want to interrupt the current schedule which as of now gets canceled if you pause or stop it. Also, we really need a “playlist” of current and upcoming zones such as when starting a list of zones to be watered manually. Also, when a program is running, we need the ability to skip to the next zone, again this would be solved by having a “playlist” or run list much like when playing music. These are key missing features that would really improve usability.

I can no longer see my week of reports in the reports>watering screen. Only the present day and the days to come. Annoying. I operate a greenhouse and seeing when I last operated zone manually is important to me.

The weather prediction ability is still not determined day of, instead it makes decisions days ahead, watering on days when the forecast should dictate no watering. And not watering on days when it is needed. But since the machine decides days ahead, I get water on rainy days and no water on sunny days. And I have ZERO ability to override the system and run my zones if the weather changes day of. For instance, today we had a prediction of 50% or higher of rain early in the week making the switch decline water service today. However, the weather changed to evening arrival for rain and my greenhouse will now receive a full day of sun in 90degree heat. If I do not intervene and MANUALLY start my humidity system, my plants will ROAST and die. I would LOVE to override my system and tell it to irrigate(run program) today regardless because the forecast changed at the last minute…but low and behold this option does not exist. I have to start it every time I get a low humidity notification……..
Loading time takes longer. The aesthetic is better, that is it.

I struggle with this new app. It is not as easy to use as the older version. There are certain functions that have been removed, like remove all suspension from all zones which exists in the older version. Also the home screen, while "prettier" than the previous one is less useful to manage my system. Basically the new version is less user friendly and less intuitive - whereas the older one made it simple to manage and change irrigation times and length of watering. I stopped using the new one in favor of using the older version. Having worked for a software company, I know that sometimes a program designer can ruin a good app in attempting to update it.

You cannot know from this new this app app what irrigation actually took place, because unlike the vastly superior and feature rich previous app (unimaginable words just a few months ago), this new version does not distinguish between scheduled and successfully completed programs in its singular reporting interface.

After using the new app for the past few weeks, it started to struggle to connect to the controller a few days ago, claiming to last have successfully connected to the controller a mere seconds or minutes earlier. It also struggled to directly connect to the controller via Bluetooth.

Perhaps related to this connectivity issue, and despite having downloaded the this app app schedule onto the controller, I began to suspect that programs were not run as expected.

This suspicion was immediately confirmed after reinstalling the old app which differentiates between scheduled and completed programs.
Specifically, this new version of the this app app showed two programs run the previous day: the scheduled but never run program as well as my manual override to make up for it. The old app accurately showed only my manual override watering having actually taken place.

this app dev team, please review the new app’s connectivity issues and consider replicating the reporting functionality of the previous app. At the very least, the new app should accurately report on the programs that were run.

App is fine for basic users who set it up and forget it, but as a irrigation technician it is a nightmare to use. One of the most important features the Zone tester is absolute garbage. It randomly switches all over the place and makes starting up a system take 3 times longer. You took one of the greatest things in irrigation, the old this app app, and turned it to garbage which is truly impressive! Needs fixed and more rigorous testing by your customers who use it every day for a living. Between that, taking the old app down and seeming to put something on the old app that kills my phone battery now you have a very frustrated irrigation installation company.

The new application can’t hold a candle to the old one. If there is truly an “improved performance and usability”, it’s invisible.
The new application is bulky, less informative and far from being detailed or visually appealing. As a home owner, the old application was perfect. It performed great and was easy to use.
Sorry Hunter, what you came out with is far from being an improvement. It’s not “well baked” (not even close to being even half baked) and it was not ready to be launched. The old application had great bones and structure and if it needed any tweaks, they were minor.
You have a long road ahead of you before making the new application as good as the old one.

The new version of Hydrawise has some new features helpful for the average consumer, but the previous version provided much more information that is necessary if you need to troubleshoot your system. For example, the old app would let you look at actual water usage (if you have a flow sensor) by each zone, for each time it was turned on. Now you can only get water usage for the entire month. If a drip irrigation zone is leaking but not obviously, it could take a month to notice it - which is a lot of water (easily $100 worth in California) to waste.

Also the old app let you see all your zones at a glance, on a single screen. Now you have to swipe swipe swipe to see a few zones at a time.

Granted the old app was not always intuitive to use. The new app addresses this problem by eliminating data access and keeping it dumbed down. Not an improvement.

At first, the 2024 release seemed a big step down from the old app. Large icons. Missing data. But I’ve grown accustomed to it…mostly. There are a couple of bugs that could be easily corrected.

The watering history detail screen scrolls forward but not backward, and it omits length of time, showing only start and end. Start time and length are the critical data. History on the old app was more feature-rich. I miss the view of an entire week.

Font size is sensitive to system settings, which is great. However, this causes the Save button to disappear off the edge of the screen. More testing should have been performed across Hydrawise at larger font sizes.

As for the large icons, I think the intent is to use the space for a photo of the zone.

Previous versions remembered my last manual length of time while current version doesn’t.

Another wish is for the zone number to always precede the zone. I’ve labeled my zones with the number but seems I shouldn’t have to.

The new app has a prettier UI and has made a few improvements over the old app, but I still find myself preferring (and using, while it’s still available) the old app for the thing I do most often in Hydrawise , which is to check my Watering Report. The Watering Report in the old app has separate tabs for ‘Schedule’ and ‘Reported’ that makes it very easy to see what ran, was scheduled to run, and was scheduled but got cancelled. The new app has a single Watering Report, and while it’s much easier to scroll through it now (yay!), it’s not easy to understand. There are icons (raindrop, sunburst) that I’m assuming are supposed to mean something, but what they mean I couldn’t tell you as clicking on the Help tab dumps you out of Hydrawise and into the support website for their controllers (vs. a way to search for answers to your questions about Hydrawise ). I’d love to see the Watering Report improved in the new app. If so, I think it would become a worthy replacement for the old app. Until then, I’ll keep using the old app and hope that it never gets removed from Hydrawise Store.

One of the most basic functions is full manual control. This seems to be eliminated from the new app. I water every zone of my property manually. I don't need Hydrawise telling me how much sunlight or humidity or rain we had. I'm right here on site at home. I might want to water at 6 AM or noon or 4 PM or 11 PM.
Setting each zones watering time in old app you could simply tap the zones you want to run and hit, run. The run times you had each zone set to applied.
In the new app you have to re-enter the time for the zones you want to run every single time. It's a nightmare. And you can't create a program because it has to have an exact time of day attached to it to run. Example: 6 AM run these certain zones. But if you want to do them manually, you cannot defeat the time setting. I want to tap the zones I want watered, have the amount of run time that I have it set to, and the system starts.
This is a classic example of design change for the worse.
The info cards on the home page are entirely too large also. I hope you're listening to all of these complaints this app. We are in 2024, apps can be updated quickly now. It doesn't take a years worth of development to implement.

I would give the old version 5 stars. But the latest version, not so much. Some background: residential user of this app for many years. Pump start most zones, drip with pump, drip with gravity, lawns, raised beds, soil variables, hillsides get the picture. The new version is not as user friendly. A plus might be the ability to replace icons with photos. I don’t use reports much but others seem to have valid concerns. Now I often get error message “unable to connect” never had that happen before. Who sat down with the beta version? Hunter employees? Don’t feel bad Hunter, I can list others that have done the same from solar to email. Don’t listen to Marketing - listen to your customers please.

I forgot to mention I do not use the new app. Furthermore taking functionality away from the old app does not compel me to stop using it. Does anyone from Hunter monitor these reviews? I have had excellent support from Hunter when asked for. It is surprising why they don’t fix this awful app or just drop it. Bring back the old app or make this one great.

After many months the latest version of the new app does not improve its appeal. Why want it just tell me how much if rained last week in a simple line of text? Too slick for no real reason and does not make it easier to use. The new app does not allow you to see all zones at once. Utilizing the swipe features are irritating. You had a great app.

I've followed the instructions to the letter, but I see no "Watering Type" after adding a new start time. So I can't set "Low priority watering time." This morning I added a second start time for 6 pm and it worked today. But I cannot find any way to make 6 pm low priority so it will only run on hot days. The lack of phone support for a VERY EXPENSIVE controller is ridiculous. You should be ashamed. I had a grow-in program in the old app on my "Lawn Front" program. It expired over a year ago. So I thought all would be well when I upgraded to the new app. Somehow "grow-in" got resurrected in the new app and, since it had expired, my lawn zones were not running. My wife had to start zones manually! I did trouble-shooting today and found the phantom grow-in program. I deleted it and it appears to have gotten the controller Lawn Front program working. I'll see if watering starts tomorrow at 5:30 am. How can you emphasize Water Savings but not provide a baseline for the comparison? Is it same week last year? This week vs last week? This YTD vs YTD a year ago? Your designer understands NOTHING about data! Pathetic.

I keep having different zones stop due to overcurrent according Hydrawise . When I investigate, the output mA is around 310…for each of the stopped zones. Manually checked field wiring and solenoids to make sure all is well on that end. The math aint mathing. New app…click on the overcurrent zone in question, tells me 310ish mA. Good. Old app…pull an electrical monitoring report which I used to rely on. It shows all good. The electrical report used to be spot on for y’all. Now, either the electrical monitoring is wrong or the controller is buggy. More to come…

I was able to setup the new app. But after using it for few days, now Hydrawise just wont open. It would crash immediately upon clicking on Hydrawise icon. It gives me no way to even look at anything before crashing. I don’t want to uninstall and re-setup everything as it was not very easy to do and took repeated failed attempts to make Hydrawise recognize my profile.
Also some of the new features on starting a zone takes too many extra steps than previous app and is not intuitive. I want to go back to the old app for these reasons.

All in all, I like Hydrawise much less than the previous version. The layout is a bit fancier, and better for beginners I suppose, but there is much less information available per square inch of my phone screen. And some features are simply missing - for starters I will identity the system flow report, electrical monitoring report, and forecast report. There are more that are missing.

The system flow report in the previous app shows me when and how much water is flowing through my cistern meter and my city water meter, particularly when I do not have any zones active. It helps diagnose leaks, monitor patterns of hose bib and pool autofill usage, etc.

The electrical monitoring report shows the power consumed by individual solenoids in the system and can alert you to problems with your valves.

The forecast report provides a history of the predictive forecasts used by the system to make decisions about watering adjustments, useful to look at when I am trying to improve any of that.

All of these features work well enough on the previous app. I don’t understand why they have not been implemented in this glossy “new and improved” version. Hydrawise is unusable for my purposes.

The old this app app had a flow rate feature with a graph under Reports -> Observations & Sensor -> System Flow. This was very valuable to quickly look and see if a sprinkler head got damaged as you’d see a zone with a much higher flow rate. Unfortunately a bug was introduced that caused my flow meter to show 1.5-2 gpm for all zones whereas it should be 9-11 gpm depending on zone. I went looking for Hydrawise and found it’s been replaced by this one. Hydrawise doesn’t offer this feature at all. Best I can get is just dividing a zone’s usage by its run time to get an average flow rate in gpm. Would love if you brought back the graphed flow rate.

I’ve been using Hydrawise and controller for over a year now and found it easy enough to use. However the most recent new version seems unnecessary and more bloated, I much prefer the previous version and thankfully can continue to use it since the new version did not wipe out the old one! 👍
Perhaps my main gripe with the new version is that it increased the size of the zone icons on the home page meaning I need to scroll now to see my 15 zones. I loved being able to see all my zones in one view before; I could also tap on each zone and see when it was next scheduled and start or stop it easily; the new version launches a whole new page to do the same things that were in a simple box before. I played with the new version pretty thoroughly and see no real new features or functions added, just unnecessary changes to perfectly fine previous functions. Lastly, I much preferred the simple reports offered in the old version over the new version. All in all this new version feels more like a downgrade than an improvement.

I don’t know what the point of the entire new app is, it’s worse than the old app! Visually it is awful, more zoomed in and not as intuitive. The reports now seem to only show what is scheduled in the future, and again it is this super zoomed in view that does not give a good overview of the situation. I keep having to go to the old app so I can actually see what is supposed to happen, and then also what actually happened, which is kind of the point of a report - to compare and assess. It also helps to be able to see the day, week, or full month like in the old app. The new overview is interesting data, but put the old reports back so I can get the info that in want/need instead of making assumptions and only giving me access to that info.

Basically I’ll just continue to use the old app because it’s just better.

This version of Hydrawise lacks features that are basic to managing the irrigation. The controller status is hidden and does not present network status. The pretty icons for the zones are far too large, forcing one to scroll around. Weather forecast block is cute but too large. Irrigation operation history is merely a list of events rather than a calendar view, and is missing a schedule report. There is no way to download or print the irrigation settings and schedule in a spreadsheet format.

The prior app was more helpful, even as it aged. This version appears to be designed by a graphic artist who has no experience managing an irrigation system. The dumbed-down user experience suggests a corporate management that looks down its nose on the residential user.

I’ve been using the previous this app app for a few years now. I thought the graphing feature was a great way to review your zone water consumption, though I complained that this feature was crudely displayed in the software, with so much potential to be better.

Now, to my surprise, I discover that this app has released this totally new app, without notifying me that the old one was no longer supported. Ok?! And now I switch to the new app, only to discover that the report graphs, instead of becoming better, have been eliminated all together! What is wrong with this development team? Why can’t you just take my daily water consumption from each zone and feed it into a nice user friendly graph that lets me quickly discover anamolies? This is simple high school level programming. I hope it’s on the way

Just tried this new app and not impressed. The old app had more information on the home screen. You have to move around Hydrawise to get information that was available on the home screen in the old app. The help only demonstrates how this new app allows you to use pictures of your zones and does not go into other features. I have no interest in pretty pictures of my zones. The only added feature is a watering progress bar of the zone. That is a nice improvement IMO.

Missing on the home screen is Observations, Sensors, and Controller Status that was displayed on the right side of the old app. I also prefer the previous menu on the left side of the home screen instead at the bottom.

I prefer the simple old app and will continue to use it until this one is improved.

As far as I can tell, Hydrawise lacks the ability to activate / suspend individual programs. The use case I envision for this capability is to have one program (“Normal”) that runs 1x per day in use most of the time. Another program (“Fall Overseed”) that runs 3x per day. Both are saved but only one is active at any given time. Is enablement of this use case possible or is it on any roadmap?

I like the older version of Hydrawise . You took away the color graphics that made it easy to see my upcoming watering schedule. You also didn’t improve the way you suspend a zone or program for watering. It’s confusing to me. I could use an alert telling me when a suspension is coming to an end date as well. A better explanation of what the 2 different watering types would be helpful and why not add a third to just let the program water the time I’ve set?? I don’t need my irrigation to be smart lol. I’m pretty sure I can handle it.

The this app app tells you what it thinks it watered, but there’s nothing that actually determines the water came out of the nozzles. So things in my yard are dying, even though it says it’s been watering every night. Information on reports can be very deceiving.
The good thing is, I can run the system zones from my phone and that’s how I have determined the system is not working.
Would be great if there was either a flow meter feeding back to Hydrawise or some other way of knowing that water was actually coming out of the nozzles.
I am on Wellwater, so there are no meters.

I’m going to keep using the old controller app and web portal to manager my controllers. The new app looks nice but still needs a lot of refinement. For example, suspending a zone takes several extra steps and needs lots of searching to get to it. Then the calendar cannot be viewed unless you blindly touch the screen and then the dates appear. I’ll keep an eye out for updates.

This irrigation system from this company is good but Hydrawise really needs work. It’s not a modern user interface and you can just tell that they never really did too much user testing to try to figure out what people really need. Doing simple things like figuring out when was last watered is actually quite difficult to achieve. Duplicating a program isn’t possible so I need to re-build one from scratch for 11 different zones. Its stuff like this—simple features aren’t there. So yea, UI/UX could be more modern.

There is no way to have certain zones run at certain times in a program. This is a major, major omission on Hunter’s part. When you create a program and choose which zones to run and their watering durations, these will apply to all of the start times you choose for the program. There is no further customization of individual zones within that program.

For example:

If you want only zone XYZ to run a couple extra times during the day, you have to create another program for these. Same thing if you want zone XYZ to run for different durations during the day - 20 minutes at noon, but 10 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening. You’d need to create two, possibly three new programs for these waterings.

Oddly enough, the non-WiFi Pro-C controller with the analog dial worked exactly the same way, so it appears as though Hunter just took the same functionality and made it digital and WiFi compatible. And now it can react to the weather - which is helpful.

Also, the layout of Hydrawise - while reasonably easy to use - is pretty poor. Way too many button presses to operate a zone or activate the program. I guess they designed it for you to set the watering schedule and never interact with Hydrawise again.

The old app seems to be no longer available, and while this version is cool, there are things I miss. Specifically, the “tiles” which represent each zone on the Home Screen are now so large that the text/names often get cut off. I wish Hydrawise had a “settings” tab in which the size of the tiles and text could be altered, so you could see more tiles at once on the Home Screen. I have an elderly parent who relies upon Hydrawise, and it’s going to be difficult for her to make the switch with such a drastic user-interface overhaul.

Hydrawise was upgraded over the past year. However it’s impossible to find a report of when my system watered. I have to go to the website on a larger monitor to see this. This is the most important report that I want to know especially when traveling. Please add it back. I want to see week by week of when my system watered.

This has made life much easier test and operating our home watering system. Hydrawise is user friendly and it’s easy to set up right out of the box. The features within Hydrawise allows you to set weather parameters and customize each zone according to your landscape features and needs. Not sure why it took me so long to buy this relatively cheap upgrade to our X2, but sure glad I did.

I have had the original this app app for 5 years and just moved over to the new app. I just logged in and my controller was ready to adjust. The dashboard is intuitive and looks much cleaner. It is simple to understand and run zones. I did find that taking new zone images made Hydrawise look cleaner, now that images are in a rectangular format. This is a nice modern update to this app. It is great to see that Hunter is continuing to improve their software.

Hi,
Hydrawise works great for me I used the older version of Hydrawise this newer version is much cleaner looking and follows more of the iPhone selection process.
It would help alot if the option Don't water if 80% chance of rain is configurable instead of just on or off. Having the choice to select 60 or 70 % as an example of choices would help maybe even a slide bar where the user can pick the percentage.
Where I live there are many times where the chance of rain is 60% and it does rain. As an example so having a slider to change the percentage number will give the user more flexibility.

Thank you for you help,
Bryan

After multiple disconnects from my Wi-Fi network, that could easily be resolved by unplugging and plugging the system back in, the issue seems to be resolved with the assigning of a static IP address. Also, when setting up a program, please note the default settings do not include turning on the master valve. If your system does not work with the default settings, it might be worthwhile to check that setting and try turning it on.

SIMPLE FIX IS TO REBOOT YOUR CONTROLLER - The new app caused me to be unable to do anything manually from within Hydrawise . The only thing that would work was a program that we created years ago on the old app. Customer Support told me that rebooting the controller would fix the issues. And that was it! Took 5 seconds to reboot the controller, and everything has worked perfectly since. It seems most of the complaints are specific to this. I suggested that they should put a chyron at the top of Hydrawise to say “if you are encountering issues since switching to the new app, please reboot your controller.”

Really appreciate Hunter‘s tech support. Those guys are very helpful. Not in a rush walk you through the entire system and give you their best advice. Really appreciate that. Helps my installation and jobs. Much easier there when you need them.