Foursquare Swarm: Check-in App Reviews

I was a Foursquare user for a long time, then got moved to Swarm when they were forcing people to switch.
It has been a great way to keep a history of my check-ins, and I like to have it linked to my twitter. I have two huge problems though and they have persisted for years and I have emailed and tweeted support multiple times and they either ignore me or tell me they are “working on it.” Well, they’ve been “working on it” for years now and nothing has changed.
First, FoursquareSwarm is hit-or-miss in whether it recognizes an event is taking place at the location of your check in. For example, checking in at a music venue and it doesn’t recognize a concert is taking place, or at an arena and it doesn’t recognize the pro sporting event that’s happening. This has gotten worse the last few years and it only recognizes maybe 60% of the events I’m attending. And these are huge events with anywhere from 1K-20k people.
Secondly, if you have FoursquareSwarm linked to twitter, it tweets your check-in, then ruins it by sticking an ad in the tweet with a pic of their logo and link to the Swarm website. It makes your timeline ugly as hell and you can’t change it.
I wish to hell there was a different app I could use for check ins but unfortunately Swarm is the only one, so I’m stuck. I would pay $$$ for an app that fixed these issues, but oh well.

I’ve been a long time user, but went away for a while sure to these problems, which have only gotten worse. Although I check in more than others, I've lost all mayorships I ever had and cannot get them back anywhere. When I look at my profile it says I have 7 mayorships, but when I look at what they are, it says I have none. And now this week, on Saturday I had over 2000 coin points for the week but come Sunday morning, I'm at zero, going from first place to last in my group of friends and every subsequent check in shows for a few seconds then goes back to zero. And what can you do with these coins anyway. They get you nothing; no discounts or perks with vendors or anything. I've reported mayorship thing, but it seems there isn't anyone at home at Swarm/Foursquare corporate anymore because there has been no response. Plus it's way too easy to game the system by checking into nearby things you aren't actuality at or while driving by. Don't expect much from FoursquareSwarm. I used to have tons of my friends on here, mostly via Facebook, but I'm down to just 8 friends now and one is my wife. Not much of an app, game or useful system. Skip it.

One of my favorite apps to use regularly. I’ve been using it since 2010 (just Foursquare back then). The motivation then was to get deals companies would have for “mayors,” etc., and to be “mayor” of places for the fun of it. Since then, I haven’t seen any deals for years. I basically keep using it to have a “journal” of where I go. I cannot say how many times this has come in handy, to be able to search history and see where I was on a certain day in the past 9 ½+ years, which is a huge chunk (25%) of my lifetime, at present. The mayorships are still fun. I love looking back on the daily history scroll, even though sometimes it involves sad memories. Overall I really enjoy using Swarm and am glad it exists!

It’s excellent application but it needs some enhancements like :

1- the main issue is that the application is very slow

2- in the inbox the messages font its toooooo small, sometimes I couldn’t read correctly and there is no way to enlarge it from inside the application,,, you should give the user the ability to make the font bigger.

3- there is no way to delete the notifications from the inbox. I need to delete some notifications like the friendship and the like notifications. You should give the user the ability to delete these notifications.

4- messages history, if i start a conversation with somebody and after 4 or 5 days i sent him something new, the application will start a new conversation without bringing the old history specially if i opened his profile and sent the message from inside his profile.

I wish you fix these important issues quickly and update your excellent application.

Best Regards

I’ve been tracking with Swarm since 2011. I use FoursquareSwarm daily. My husband and I travel a lot and it’s hard to remember, let’s say, every brewery or coffee shop you’ve ever been too. Inevitably at some point someone will say hey what’s that coffee shop we were at 6 years ago in Texas.. I know bc of Swarm. Also I can see my daily activity at a glance. This makes it easier when I’m like.. was that 2 days ago or a week ago that I went to the diner for breakfast? The map function is awesome. I can see all of the places I haven’t visited yet at a glance... looks like I need to explore the Dakotas :)

I’ve been using FoursquareSwarm for years. It started out like more of a game - checking in to places, becoming Mayor, maintaining Mayorship, etc. After a while, most of everyone got all ‘privacy paranoid’ and stopped playing. I’ve kept using it. Flash forward a couple of years- now I’m a busy sports mom and 1/2 the time I can’t remember what I did last week. So... now we have this Coronavirus deal. Do you remember every single place you’ve been for the past 30 days? Thanks to FoursquareSwarm - I can pretty much tell you every place I’ve been and what time I got there.

I LOVE Swarm! FoursquareSwarm is not just about checking into places but connecting with people! Of course, I’m a sucker for gamification & love gaining mayorships, but even more I love seeing where my friends are in the world! How awesome to keep up with your communities in a simplified & specific app like Swarm!

If you’re an intentional community builder, you’ll love this. If you travel often, download this & immediately see what your friends are doing when you arrive. Community is what makes anything & everything last. Swarm is the perfect place to help build community everywhere you are in the world!

This has been an ongoing bug for a few months now. Every time I try to view my monthly recap, Swarm asks me to log in even though I’m already logged in. When I input my login info, FoursquareSwarm crashes. I open FoursquareSwarm and try again but the cycle continues. I even logged out and logged back in and it still asks me to log in again when I try to view the monthly recap and then crashes. It’s a shame because I enjoy seeing my checkin stats. It’s part of the fun of using FoursquareSwarm and checking in to every place I go. Idk if it’s because my account was originally from Foursquare but if you’ve rebranded FoursquareSwarm , I feel like that shouldn’t be a problem. It didn’t happen before so it’s worked before. Someone please fix this!

I have belonged to Swarm since its breakaway as a separate app from Foursquare. But I have never cared whether I was Mayor or won points in either app. It was a way for me to keep track of my habits, rate enterprises, and see how others felt. By not allowing us to input a visit to a restaurant that we failed to input because we were too busy enjoying life than to take out our cellphones is foolish and accentuates the juvenile orientation of FoursquareSwarm . When I complained the developer said to allow late postings that didn’t themselves show in FoursquareSwarm would facilitate cheating. Not if you’re over 25 in age, Swarm. Grow up. We have. Either make FoursquareSwarm help us record, remember and share or you will become irrelevant.

I was sure when I first downloaded FoursquareSwarm that it wouldn't last a day on my home screen. BOY WAS I WRONG! The interface is very simple and user friendly and the incorporation of awards (stickers) for visiting and checking in at different types of places really encourages you to get out and explore the world. Even if you don't have any friends or people that you know on FoursquareSwarm , it is still a very enjoyable experience with mayorships. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who brings their phone to essentially anywhere they go.

I love Swarm. Great for remembering all the spots I’ve been, easy to locate spots when my memory fails me as I can find the name again by either date or area, whatever I can recall at the time. I’ve used Swarm for years and would be sad without it. However, it is absolutely infuriating to me to still be earning coins with no way to spend them. What’s the point of winning first place/coins each week, if they have no benefit? Find a use for the coins or stop “gifting” them. It’s a useless feature.

Diary, connector, friend updates, game. You can use Swarm quickly and easily for whatever reason you choose. It’s fun to see where your friends have been & get some ideas about where to visit as well. The connection to Foursquare is handy for checking out new places. While the stickers & points are fun probably the most surprising thing is how often I use it as a past activity/itinerary reference. And if it’s important to post on the larger Social Media platforms you can do it directly from the Swarm app.

This used to be my favorite app to track travels, now it’s ridiculously inconsistent. All devices & other apps are on Wi-Fi or hotspot and working. Swarm is incapable of finding me ON WIFI. I would uninstall and reinstall, but too many reviews about being stuck at the agreement.
What’s the point of the coins anymore? We can no longer upgrade stickers faster, so what’s the point?
Users with less time and coins are Super Users. Nobody ever did address that.
Reported certain tips as harassment, never taken down. They’re fine with degrading certain nationalities on their platform.
What is the point of the updates, when FoursquareSwarm functionality severely DECREASES? The fun is being sucked out slowly but surely.

The thing I like about Swarm is the fact that you can use it to check in everywhere you go kind of like a safety measure. It doesn’t have to be public or go to Facebook. That is your option. But if you want to use it for your family and friends, in case something were to happen to you medically or any situation, you’ve created a timeline so that they can go back and check where you were last time you checked in. So I see it as a positive thing to have. 😊

Although I, like a lot of the others here, was disappointed about Foursquare splitting the checkin system into its own app, as well as taking away mayorships and points, I've gotten over it. It's still a fun app.

Edit: However, after that original decision they brought back mayorships and now use “coins” for points. It’s even MORE fun! Just wish ALL the peeps I used it with back then still used it. It’s a good way for me to personally log all the places I visit (even if it’s the typical fast food joint). 😬

I’m a long time fan of your app. I appreciate its support for checking my location and suggesting missed check-ins. However, I’ve recently noticed it showing up as having been active in the background for hours on end in my battery report. This has even happened when I’m asleep and the phone is sitting on my bedside table (both plugged and unplugged). Is this a bug? I thought it was only supposed to look for missed check-ins when the phone’s location changes.

I’m a software developer and have collected some screenshots and logs your team may find helpful. Also, I’m willing to join your beta testing team.

I’ve been using Swarm for over 10 years now. Back when it was just Foursquare. I wish I had it sooner to keep up white all the places I’ve visited. As someone who loves to travel I cant think of a better way to look back at all the places I’ve been. Being able to see the location, the day and who I was with is amazing. I only wish more people used it!

Looks like the latest version of FoursquareSwarm has a bug. When changing location privacy settings to “Only when using FoursquareSwarm ” and turning off background refresh, FoursquareSwarm continues to access the location when minimizes as the blue location indicator on the top left corner shows up on the iOS home screen. The only way to get rid of the location indicator is to kill FoursquareSwarm . This has never been an issue since past 10 years I have been Foursquare / Swarm app. Needs to be fixed as it is annoying to kill FoursquareSwarm after every time I open it

Been using Foursquare/ swarm for ages and I’m surprised it’s still being maintained for usability. It’s great to check back on all the places and countries I’ve visited. Although, at this point I’m probably the only person I know using it. It used to be better when places offered coupons for checking in, now it’s not much more than a travel log. Idk what the point of the coins are, I have about 50k.. wish it would make a comeback to be something more.

I did not like it when they split up Foursquare with Swarm so I left. But I came back and it's fun again, I'm still collecting all the stickers. But what to do with all the coins now?

My only problem is sometimes when posting to Facebook my pictures don't come through, and I have to go back and fix it later using the web version of Facebook with "Refresh share attachment". And that does not always work right away either. What's up with that?

I was sure when I first downloaded FoursquareSwarm that it wouldn't last a day on my home screen. BOY WAS I WRONG! The interface is very simple and user friendly and the incorporation of awards (stickers) for visiting and checking in at different types of places really encourages you to get out and explore the world. Even if you don't have any friends or people that you know on FoursquareSwarm , it is still a very enjoyable experience with mayorships. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who brings their phone to essentially anywhere they go.

I love Swarm. Great for remembering all the spots I’ve been, easy to locate spots when my memory fails me as I can find the name again by either date or area, whatever I can recall at the time. I’ve used Swarm for years and would be sad without it. However, it is absolutely infuriating to me to still be earning coins with no way to spend them. What’s the point of winning first place/coins each week, if they have no benefit? Find a use for the coins or stop “gifting” them. It’s a useless feature.

This used to be a good app when it first separated from Foursquare. It was easy to maintain mayorships. But the mayorship retainment is ridiculous with FoursquareSwarm. I've been checking to the same city for 8 years and retained the mayorship until recently when I see another member stole it. FoursquareSwarm is telling me that I only checkwd in 11 times this month when in fact, I checked in over 15 times (one check in a day is counted towards keeping your mayorship). Now all of a sudden, this person checks in a few times and is mayor? What's up with that? I followed all the rules but I've lost seven mayorships in the last week alone.

I love this, it's so much fun, I got a five dollar Dunkin' Donuts gift card a very long time ago which I did not use unfortunately which is my fault and I wish we can get more stuff like that. I wrote this message along time ago and now I am writing a new one, which is that I go days without getting points which means I should put it from a five-star to a less star rating. Still not getting points and on my map it shows that I am 40 feet away

Great design meets great concept. I was a fan of Foursquare (still am) when it was first released as it gave me the ability to check in to a venue, event or location and see if friends were there as well. Occasionally I’d see friends had just checked in around the corner and be able to join them. Swarm took it to a new level with a great new fun interface. Love the ability to turn check-ins to Facebook or Twitter posts on and off.