myCircadianClock Reviews

I struggle to use myCircadianClock. It's very slow and often freezes not allowing the camera feature or other logging features to work. Its slowness doesn't allow me to log my food in the moment. Overall taking pictures of my food has been the challenge because of myCircadianClock crashing or not having an easy way to open the camera feature which works unreliably. More recently since the recent update, myCircadianClock only allows me to log my food without taking a picture. After I save my food or beverage, the camera activates and I take a picture of my food that I just logged but it is not clear to me if myCircadianClock is double logging my food or not or if this is the new way to log food in the recently updated app! Very frustrating. I will continue to use myCircadianClock because I believe there is value in this study. I am a firm believer in healthy lifestyle choices and aim to fine tune my efforts to fast by using the feedback (although not accurate) logged here. I already eat quite healthy. I just want a record of my habits in one app. I know it's not 100% accurate, but for my needs at this time, myCircadianClock seems to be the best choice. I hope the developers continue to improve myCircadianClock . It has so much potential.

myCircadianClock acts like it’s operating, but it’s not. All the food entries ended up as pending items even though the message was received that synch was successful. The days counted up to 15 but the Clock and Reports didn’t generate. Instead a message was received that the information wouldn’t be available until the baseline history was entered. The baseline is supposed to be 14 days so that’s a bug. I don’t know how other people have gotten any value from myCircadianClock. I read the book and thought as much effort went into the software as the book itself. There’s no value to myCircadianClock at all because you can’t even review your entries for the baseline period. It’s a complete waste of time. You’re better off with a pen and paper.

I really want to use myCircadianClock consistently but the slow performance and overall poor design make it difficult. myCircadianClock is laggy and I’ll frequently tap on something several times before it finally loads. Often it’s so bad or frustrating that I’ll move on to other tasks and forget about logging a meal until later (at which time I cannot capture a photo and I may misremember all the things I ate). That doesn’t make for very reliable data. A skim of other reviews of myCircadianClock shows I’m not alone. It’s such a disappointment, as the research is exciting and if only I could contribute (and learn something about my habits in the process!) I would love to do so.

I so want to like myCircadianClock and contribute to the research but it is a total piece of garbage. Embarrassing really. Everything from the UI to CX to the performance to the behavior is completely pathetic. It has a counterintuitive layout and while you’re starting out in the confusing interface and need to view and modify your entries most it doesn’t actually allow you to do so. Blatant bugs in sleep entry recording the wrong day is mindboggling for an app that’s supposed to track you activity for research. It’s basically just prone to error and thus making the quality of the research poor as well. While I’ll try to continue to use it myCircadianClock itself creates constant friction.

I really wanted to like myCircadianClock because I was Dr Panda’s book and it’s fantastic so I wanted to participate in the research. However, myCircadianClock is clunky. It didn’t connect with my Apple health app even though I gave it permission. When I tried to manually input the sleep time it did not work. I also attempted to contact the developers via the contact us form in myCircadianClock and it kept saying…try again later. I also think it may have messed with my Apple health sleep tracking because that app recorded me as asleep and I didn’t even have it my Apple Watch on at the time plus it was 8 pm. I didn’t go to bed until about midnight. If they fix all these issues I’d love to try again.

I was so excited to participate in the research, but after completing the two week baseline I discovered that much of my data was not recorded. Only five or so foods are able to be annotated with a single entry, so much of my data were lost because it took me a week to realize I had to do a new entry just to log an entire meal. Additionally, there were no instructions stating that you couldn’t log food, beverages and meds with a single entry. So if I went sequentially through the tabs, the only thing recorded was the medication; all the food and beverages I annotated were lost. The vast majority of photos I took are not in the history. I wanted so badly to participate in this because it sounded fun and I’m doing time restricted feeding because of Dr. Panda’s research findings. If the technical kinks get worked out, I would be happy to begin again, but right now the data collected for me will just demonstrate a glitchy app and not a picture of my dedication to fully participating.

In addition to fiddling with the bug I describe below, I also took the time to write the following report from the apps built in “contact us” method. When I tried to submit it, I repeatedly got an error message saying to try again later. In general myCircadianClock has been frustrating to navigate. As a personal developer myself, it feels thrown together. Here’s the bug description I tired to submit:

“myCircadianClock has a bug on iPhone were we cannot always log sleep in arrears. Even for correctly entered dates and times, myCircadianClock incorrectly reports that the start time must be before the end time. We also cannot use the circular slider on myCircadianClock to input time in arrears, as myCircadianClock will wildly jump 3-4 days ahead if the start slider passes over 12 AM. Very annoying bug! Also, is there a good reason the text boxes in this application don’t allow for the typical aids, such as automatically starting sentences with capital letters, etc?”

I expected more as I know Dr. Pandas lab behind the research is widely acclaimed.

The interface seems to get cuter and less usable over time, and it doesn’t help to have grammar errors in the survey questions. One imagines the Salk Institute folks as highly intelligent, and I’ve been quite impressed by Dr. Panda’s research as he describes it in podcast interviews. It’s a mystery why his team lets obvious problems with myCircadianClock degrade public perception of Salk’s general competence. Sufficient specifics have been cited by other reviewers so that Salk should realize their app developers need help— and not to further polish myCircadianClock ’s appearance, but to fix its functionality. When a person activates myCircadianClock to input a moment’s data, their experience should be brief, reliable and smooth.

myCircadianClock is very primitive. Even the how to videos sound like a kid just talking into a recorder and the pics are so small. I used myCircadianClock for 10 days and then it just stopped working. It was a lot of effort to log food and sleep. Also, the picture taking and food logging just seems so antiquated. There are so many apps already that can log things like food, sleep and water intake, there is no need to try and reinvent the wheel. If you need good data collection, see what is already out there and team up with a company that already has the ability to track this type of information and already has millions of users.

Incorrect sleep times. If I go to bed after midnight and wake up 5 hour later, it’s says I slept more than 12 hours. Trying to correct it is almost impossible. I will reel-enter data, then It will change yesterday’s total. Very frustrating. How can you collect in proper data? App is not user friendly. Needs a lot of work. App glitches when trying to enter any data. You have to push the buttons 5 times to get it into the data entry mode. And it is infuriating. Doing this for 2 weeks is difficult due to glitches in app. Not sure I want to deal with this for another 14 weeks.

I hate deleting myCircadianClock before the 14 weeks they want for their data, but it’s SO hard to use! The lag makes it hard to take photos & record sleep or activity. The ability to edit data is CRAP. E.g. when I wake up & try to record my sleep for the night, I’ll often press the wrong button *because I just woke up!!*. But then I can’t correct it because it won’t let you change sleep satisfaction after you make an entry. Also the way it tracks a night’s sleep between days makes NO sense!!! I don’t like leaving a study in the middle of things, but I couldn’t supply accurate data.

But myCircadianClock is far from smooth, and gets stuck often. I signed up for the study, but in just the first day, myCircadianClock locked up in photo mode, and I needed to add things I had consumed earlier. I got so frustrated that I gave up. I’m super-busy, and if I can’t log things very quickly, I cannot participate. Now I can’t figure out how to let them know I am no longer participating...

I will keep myCircadianClock for now, and try it again in a couple of months; hopefully it will stop freezing up. The features and such are good, just don’t work as they should. Keep working on it!

Initially I had no problem using myCircadianClock, but after the baseline period, it’s almost impossible to record everything. myCircadianClock loads really slowly and saving data is nearly impossible. Even data that I save seems to disappear. My eating window was completely gone today even though I changed nothing. When I went to add it back in, the settings menu wouldn’t allow me in. I can’t seem to figure out how to fix it, so my data is very incorrect. I may as well discontinue the study.

So I loved the idea of this ap like everyone else. I did notice if I tracked my timing I kept the eating intervals quit consistent. But since myCircadianClock was so slow, I never took pictures, ever; I just typed my food/bev and that was the extent. I didnt bother logging water intake. I logged exercise and eating times pretty much. It doesn’t let you go back 2 + hours so if you forget to log your out of luck and then it’s just not accurate. Great research but myCircadianClock is terrible which I think will contribute to bad-incorrect-inaccurate data for his study.

I find the work that Dr. Panda is doing incredibly interesting and very valuable. I was thrilled to find out that I could contribute to the research effort around sleep, nutrition, and circadian rhythms. However myCircadianClock is lacking some essential functionality. For me, it doesn’t seem like the (+) button even works to be able to add any exercise or sleep. I can only take a picture and log as food/beverage/water. Hopefully further updates will increase the ease of use! I’m looking forward to using myCircadianClock in the coming weeks :)

I am in week three of 14 and so far, I am enjoying myCircadianClock . I love the picture feature. However, if you are just recording a food item manually, it records the present time by default and doesn’t let you change it afterwards. This has messed up my food diary (and your research data, by the way!!) so many times!! I can understand that you cannot erase past items, but you should allow people to change the time of a food item. Since this is all about the right timing, it is essential to record the correct time and it shouldn’t be that difficult to add this option to myCircadianClock !!

Logging food is a challenge with the current interface. There is a very tiny area for scrolling and the foods are not in alphabetical order. That means the more you add the more you have to scroll through to find your food. There is a lot of empty space on that page that I think would be better used if we could look at the food at a glance and in alphabetical order. Because of the tiny scrolling area many times my finger rests too long and it asks if I want to delete that food, which I don’t. Also when I take a picture of my food and want to tag later, I wish it would specify if it is capturing that exact time as the eating time or allow us to modify the time on it later.

myCircadianClock does well at tracking food and water intake. You can now add your weight and other health data. Before the update, I couldn’t add any health data. However when I add my weight in lbs it graphs the same number in kg, basically showing 2.2 times the recorded weight. I know that I put it in lbs cause it shows my weight in lbs in the window to add more “vitals” (“health data”)
The sleep function is ok but somewhat glitchy. If you use the sleep now button when you wake up and try to write comments there is no way to exit the comment box so you just have to cancel the entry and remember your start and end sleep times and enter it manually. Also myCircadianClock before the update let you start sleep after a 5, 10, 15, or 30 minute delay which I found more accurate because it takes me at least 10 minutes to fall asleep.

In 2015 I was still teaching and my weight was 151 pounds ( I am 5’3”) I listened to an interview of Dr Panda and decided to get myCircadianClock and give it a try.
I went from 151 to 114 just by eating within the time I set. No effort, no hunger, I took a picture of everything I ate.
Fast forward to 2020, the pandemic and other things going on in my life, and I started eating later, and later. The pounds started to add up.
I just hit the reset button and I am back on track, and I started loosing the weight again 6 pounds so far!
I also love that I am contributing to scientific research.

Since I started using myCircadianClock I can honestly say I have been thoroughly enjoying it. There are reviews that talk about the lag of myCircadianClock but, since they seem to be a bit older I thought I’d give up updated claim: IT WORKS GREAT!! I love knowing that I’m contributing to an active research project aimed to enrich lives of everyone in the world. I definitely would recommend myCircadianClock for anyone that is interested in leading healthier lifestyle AND learning why it improves health outcomes.