Lap Swim 4+

Works as advertised, unlike Apple Fitness app

This app accurately counts the laps and correctly calculates the distance. The Apple Fitness app counts less than half my laps and it equates lap distance with pool length instead of twice the pool length.

The UI takes a bit to get used to. It deviates from other watch apps because the touchscreen doesn’t work when wet.

One suggestion is to keep the app in the foreground when the watch face is dimmed instead of being replace with a clock.

Great potential not yet achieved

If it did well all the things it tries to do, this would be an excellent app well worth the modest price to unlock lap counts after the first 250.

Unfortunately in my use of it to date, it simply has not worked. The problems started with the setting screen, accessed by force touch. You would think that when it shows a lock symbol that it must be in locked mode to prevent accidental "taps" as the watch enters the water. Nope. In that mode it accepted taps. You had to set it to show an unlocked symbol to make it actually lock. That looks as if it may have been fixed in the today’s new version which I have not yet tried in the pool. But it is still true that in locked mode, where you use the crown to select buttons, it is nearly impossible to select anything other than Swim. The only practical way to select anything else is to force tap, unlock the screen, and tap on the button.

At this point it shows my lap total as 150, but in my uses of the app I actually swam at least twice as many laps. The low count may have been because I had it set so it was showing Auto Start/Stop. Maybe that feature also had its status display backwards. And maybe now it is right. It’s hard to test until I get in the water again.

After fighting with it for a week or so, I gave up and switched to Pool Swim in Apple's Workout app. It has very few features, but within its limitations it works well. It is not great at counting kickboard laps or one-arm drills (hardly surprising) but otherwise it gives a pretty accurate record of the length and intensity of each workout.

So my challenge to Peter Kramer is to get this excellent concept to actually work as described. At that point I will gladly switch to it, and pay for the unlocking.

Developer Response ,

Great input. Thanks. The new version shows "the current state" not "the action" so "Lock" means "it is locked" not "it will be locked" - sorry. Also a "lap" is "there (up arrow) and back (down arrow)" so maybe the factor if two is in the definition. And now it counts kick board laps. Please try it again!