Swim.com: Swim Tracker 4+

After using this app for two years on a Pebble watch, it was hit or miss. Moving on to an Apple Watch 2, the interface was better but motion tracking and distance recording was only slightly better. Recent updates under iOS 12 and WatchOS 5 give much better tracking in the pool. I still get occasional phantom laps added but overall, length tracking is very good.

The app still cannot distinguish my breaststroke from freestyle. So frustrating.

I wish the app allowed better data analysis of multiple workouts over a period of months, like being able to chart swolf for all of my swims. I’m not a competitive swimmer so many of the apps features don't appeal to me. I just don't understand why I cant look at the pace of all my freestyle sessions over time and see if I’m improving.

Thank you for your feedback. We recently released version 2.3.2 which fixed the tracking issue for Apple Watch users. In addition, we recently (Friday of last week) completed revision of our technology roadmap and feature set. Expect to see several changes implemented over the next 60 days. These changes will significantly enhance our analytics capabilities including more detailed breakdown by different parameters.

Please keep sharing your feedback and ideas for enhancement. We are listening and engaging with our users to help develop our roadmap and beta test changes.

Strictly from an App Design standpoint, it breaks several of Apple’s UI Design Recommendations. For instance, when searching for a location, the “X” should clear out the text in the search field, because that is the standard for this UI, but in this case, it closed the location settings all together. There are lots of other clunky and unpolished UI decisions that make it hard for me to want to engage with the app as well.

In functionality, my pool isn’t listed so all of the leaderboard functionality is not going to work for me. I’m surprised that it asked to read my health data, but didn’t go ahead and import all of the swims that are already recorded into their application, especially when it claims that breaststroke is my least swam stroke (it’s actually fly).

Lastly, this has a very social media feel to it in some places, especially as I was going through the privacy settings, so if that isn’t your thing (like it isn’t for me), make sure you turn your profile to private.

Thanks for the critical feedback. We are always looking to improve the app and make it a better experience for our users. Here are some quick replies:

- Search design issue: great point and it's something we've discussed. Your input has prompted us to move this to 'top of the stack' so it will be addressed in our next sprint.

- Pool: we have tens of thousands of pools but we do occasionally miss some. You can add your pool by going to the Swim.com (desktop version), clicking on pools and then "Add a Pool".

- Health Data: can you drop us a line at support@swim.com so we can looking into what's going on?

- Privacy: we take our user's privacy very seriously and provide those settings so that users can control the visibility of their profile, participation on leaderboards and more. Let us know if you feel something is off here.

They’ve made some good improvements to the app over the last few years. I like the drill setting, and how it’s easy to edit workouts. However, stroke detection needs work. I’m a pretty experienced swimmer, with really good form, but it still thinks my butterfly is freestyle, and sometimes thinks my backstroke is breaststroke. I’m not sure if this is a bug with Apple Watch 8 (stroke detection was better on my series 5). It is good with lap count, but could be improved in recognizing sets better…even tho I do flip turns and long sets, it still divides sets into smaller sets.

Still, I do like the improvements they’ve made in the last few years. Keep working on it.

Hello Boymom4367. We appreciate your feedback and would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused by Swim.com's stroke detection feature. It is possible that the algorithm may incorrectly identify a butterfly stroke as freestyle due to differences in individual stroke technique and arm movements.
We are actively investigating this issue and working to enhance the accuracy of our stroke detection system. We recommend trying alternative wrist placement and adjusting your stroke technique to determine if it results in better detection accuracy. Thank you for using Swim.com, and please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any additional questions or concerns.