Manything Reviews

UPDATE 6/1/20 - Manything does not work for me at all. There is no live video at all. There are recordings in my feed but no live video. The recordings are capturing intermittent 8 - 9 second videos even though I have it set to continuously record. I have contacted Manything support several times and have received no response. I have been a subscriber of this app for two years and now I am discontinuing my subscription and uninstalling Manything . It's useless at this point and they aren't helping.

Manything no longer works for me since my phone has been updated. The videos frequently go black. There is much lag and sometimes it gets jerky and speeds up. I also have 9s videos even though I have continuous recording set. There was an issue in front of my home I needed on camera and ask the thing caught was 8s of action even though 4 people were in front of the camera moving. Right now on iPhone 11 I cannot contact my other camera to see live footage. It continuously says contacting camera, although the video is still actively recording actions. I cannot see live footage at all. I emailed support and so far have not heard anything in the past four days. It's pointless to have a subscription with no support and unusable video

UPDATE: on iOS 11.0

App has deteriorated even further with release of iOS 11.0. Clips often turn to black now in addition to even worse levels of jerkiness as described below.

App is virtually unusable now. What an utter waste of time. Reducing to 1 star and cancelled subscription.

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ORIGINAL: on 10.3.3

Latest version of Manything is EXTREMELY jerky when scrubbing through clips. This occurs on both iPhone 7 and iPad Air 2, both on 10.3.3, even after deleting and reinstalling Manything .

Prior to this update, when scrubbing through a clip Manything was always silky smooth. But now scrubbing through a clip constantly results in random jerkiness and hang-ups, inevitably causing inadvertent skips to the next or previous clip as Manything hangs and your gesture turns into a swipe. Once or twice of this nonsense is ok, but when you're reviewing hundreds of clips and this is repeated hundreds of times, it quickly becomes a frustrating and colossal waste of time.

Another needed change is clear functional distinctions in the ui between scrubbing and swiping. Far too often (especially in this latest version as described) it is way too easy to turn a scrub into a swipe. This is poor design resulting in unacceptable performance.

I will not renew my subscription and start looking for alternatives if the jerkiness is not fixed. If fixed, I'll stick around as well as change my rating.

Hello all,

I’ve been a paying customer of this app for years now. Sometimes I don’t have any cameras setup but I keep paying the subscription so that a company that I like survives. I’ve left my home unattended and my camera went offline but I did not receive any push notification on my phone. That’s fine because I got an email. However, I tried to look at the cloud recorded videos but couldn’t see anything that my camera saw before it went offline. I’ve emailed support yesterday but they haven’t responded. Now I’m left with no information about whats going on at home while I’m traveling abroad. I will never use this app again and take back all the recommendations I made to my friends. I hope you guys struggle real hard as I’m struggling right now.

There are A TON of options for cloud security cameras these days. I do like the ease of using an extra iphone for this, but the problem is You must be logged into icloud as a result and so my phone constantly has issue where it wants to update or notify some system thing which causes problems for the camera recording consistently. i have to routinely check the display and close all the modal alerts out or the phone overheats with the display on full bright which it automatically does. I know Manything doesn’t really have any say in this, but it’s a downside of using only an Idevice

Amazingly, this appears to be the only app on the entire iOS platform that allows you to trigger Video recording with sound… I was looking for something to document noisy neighbors that I could leave running and would only record the loud noises. Well, that part of it worked perfectly.

And then I tried to listen to what I recorded.

You have to have a subscription to even listen to video where you record it on your own phone. They do not allow you to store it locally, you MUST upload it to their server, so they’re justified in charging you a subscription, which you then must cancel when you decide you don’t want it, you can’t just buy a fixed number of days. Therefore Manything costs close to $100 a year to use.

I would happily pay a couple bucks, even more than a couple bucks, as a one time payment, to be able to record video triggered by noise and document my noisy neighbors. But there’s no reason for me to have to sign up for an account and upload my private video to the cloud, let alone pay a recurring subscription charge over and over again, for something that I just need to be able to play back on my phone. That’s absurd and greedy, and makes this almost-useful app completely useless to me.

Purchased the subscription for home monitoring but wanted to use it for monitoring my indoor garden. I will start to say that Manything did not perform its function and has inconsistent motion detection. I have a 4 year old night shade that was going to bloom for its first time so I pointed the camera in its direction. If you know night shades only bloom once very briefly and then wilt. The camera did not detect and motion of the flower despite being 14 inches from the plant, however in the distance of the window the camera went off once to detect a person. I had the camera up for 3 days to catch the event. So not only did it not detect the flower, but in all that time it only caught one person walking down a relatively busy city street. So it’s not even reliable for what it is designed to do which is home monitoring. I cannot recommend this product.

Great when it works! It would be great if someone could actually tell me what TS steps I should try vs using my TS experience to isolate the issue on my own. It won’t even allow me to access my account and cameras from the website. Going on 4 mos as of today. I’m sorry I’ve recommended their app to so many people at this point. Deleted & re-downloaded to all devices, deleted my subscription, deleted and re-added my account, worked until I added a second viewer to the account and now I’m back to square one telling me everything is “offline” showing blank viewers, yet sending me motion alerts! You would think that they would want to resolve this bug, but all I’ve gotten is inaccurate statements about my devices, & my connection, and a snarky comment about me not using their platform so there was nothing to TS! lol What is there to use?! I’ve emailed for months that it’s not working… lol accounts are deleted again- I’ll try again another day when I have more time to waste…

Manything is a great idea. Turning any old phone or tablet into a ho e security camera. Very nice idea. Manything does have a few problems though.
1. Manything kinda lied about the supported devices. For instance, I wanted to use my very nice iPhone 3GS as a home security camera and it was running iOS 6.1 and it should be supported with Manything. Turns out, it’s not. In Manything description it says that you can use any device with iOS 6 or later but when trying to download Manything , a notification said that I needed iOS 8. Very disappointing.
2. Payment. At first I thought this was the greatest thing ever. I thought Manything was free or you would make a one time payment when you buy Manything . But I was wrong. You actually need to pay for how many days you want to use Manything. (Sort of like a phone bill) it’s very annoying.
So that’s why Manything deserves a 2 Star Review. It’s a good app idea, but it’s also terrible.

Up until my last one month subscription expired, you had a few hours to review recorded video without upgrading. No more! Now you must pay to see any video, even of it was recorded one second prior. And at $3.99 for just one device, that gets expensive. May be time to get a real camera that can record in the dark, which is something this can’t do.

The user interface is easy to use and navigate. Manything is excellent at picking up motion and recording clips. There are however issues that I encountered both software and hardware issues. One drawback is the phone needs to stay on at all times with the screen illuminated. I found with my old spare iphone4 it would get hot and then the battery would drain despite being plugged in. While this may not be a app issue, it would be fair to say many users use old phones with Manything. I would constantly get emails that phone lost wifi signal or battery draining. My wifi signal is constant and does not cut out. It was frustrating when I left for vacation and a few days in the recording stops for various reasons. I have since bought a webcam with cloud backup and found it to much more reliable.

I got Manything so that I can keep an eye on my 3D printer to make sure the print is coming out well. The remote flashlight function is great so that I don’t have to keep a light on all the time, and the clarity is good enough so that I know what’s going on.

My main complaint (which is pretty minor) is that the recording disconnects every few minutes, even on the continuous recording mode (both when connected and not connected) which means if I want to download a video longer than just a few minutes (like for a time lapse) then I’d have to figure out how to combine multiple clips. I was hoping that paying for a subscription would improve the quality, but I just have to do any time lapses separate from Manything . Again, not a big deal, Manything is great for what I was looking for

[Update] When I last tried this app on my 3GS in November, it would not work, however it appears to be working fine now, not sure what changed. Manything has worked well in the past and because of the developers quick response I changed my review to 5 stars.

Original review: I have two iPhone 3GSs that I used as cameras for awhile, but it seems that something has broken it on them. They will still send alerts when they detect motion, but I cannot view live video from them anymore. Manything can't be updated on iOS 6 anymore, so it's not like an update broke it, it must be a problem on their end. If they can fix it on older phones I will change the review to 4 stars

I have been using this for close to a year on two iPhones (5c & 5s) I have the 5c disguised outside on a covered porch and the 5s is inside. I have been very impressed with everything.

Manything is stable. I have only had to reboot the phones maybe 3 times each. I have not had any issues checking footage from another app or PC.

I have contacted customer service once or twice and they were responsive and helpful.

For the money the 2-cam, 2-day subscription is worth every penny. More days are saved and available online if needed which is a little added peace of mind.

Alerts work well, though I've turned them off. Motion detection is consistent, I have or pointed towards the street and it captures every car in the exact same spot each time.

Plays well with IFTTT so you can do custom things like "turn of the inside camera when I get home", "turn in the smart porch light when motion is detected", "turn on all cameras when I leave home", etc..

All in all 7/7 would buy again, is a good use of old phones. Requires some thought and setup to get the phones mounted and charging where you might want them.

I have been using this app for quite awhile to monitor my driveway for arriving guests and to make use of old iPhone.
I was recently robbed and this app video captured the car used by the thieves. To retain the video, I was able to upgrade easily where my Apple iTunes account will be charged. In moment of crisis, I didn’t even have to get up to get a credit card. I was able to easily email video to sheriff when he requested it. A few days later I had some login problems which were user error (password protected password list was on stolen computer). At 1:30 in morning I received email from this app support person, which solved my problem. Manything is a fantastic use of old iPhone.

I'm back from my trip to the U.S. Even though I'm back, this app worked so well keeping an eye on Monta, my java sparrow, and even letting me talk to him (!) that I will keep the subscription going. When I'm out I can still check on him, and my partner can check on him from work.

Plus I've been able to download a lot of cute clips to upload for FaceBook.

The 2nd day I was gone it stopped working for some reason, but my partner was able to get it working again. Other than that one incident, it's been working flawlessly since April 1. I've recommended it to friends.

We’ve been using Manything to help train our puppy when we leave the house. It’s so much more effective to be able to correct bad behavior when it happens instead of when we get home some 5 hours later. The ability with Manything to talk to wherever your camera is set up is invaluable. When our puppy starts to tug at the roll of toilet paper, we see it and immediately tell her no. Our puppy stops and finds one of her toys to play with. Thanks to Manything, our puppy is on her way to becoming a wonderful, well behaved dog. Thank you!

I’ve only been using Manything for 5 days but so far it’s been great. I needed a way to keep an eye on my foster dogs while I’m out of the house and I needed an app that would work on the old iOS on my iPad 2. Manything is perfect for my needs. Video is clear and it does a great job at picking up sound and motion events. No issues running it on an old slow device. I use the free version so I can’t watch all the past event recordings but that hasn’t been necessary for me. Manything gives me a lot of peace of mind!

Manything has been a life saver! I set up an old iPhone 6+ in my back yard during a very scary time as a forest fire was closing in on my neighborhood. I was able to watch from a safe distance with my family and able to give the whole neighborhood updates through the next few days. When all was said an done the neighborhood and our house were fine but it sure took the stress of not knowing what was going on off of us.

I have used Manything in my business and have found people on camera doing things like damaging my property, when you have someone on film you don’t have a he said she said problem. The pictures are clear and leave no questions as to what you are seeing. I also have inferred cameras and the pictures don’t even compare to what I get from my iPhones connected to this app. Thanks this app you have saved my businesses property on more then one occasion!

I am using the free plan and set up my iPod as a camera facing my bedroom door and it sends me an email every time something moves included with a picture. I downloaded Manything because I like to go to my dads office during the summer but my sister likes to stay home and constantly goes in my room and leaves her trash and takes my stuff so I set this camera up so I could bust her. Thanks this app.