I have been searching for an app, or any solution, that would allow me to compare my activity to the resultant ME/CFS symptoms that appear. It is difficult because symptoms are often delayed and so it can be hard to judge an obvious cause for what happens the next day or a couple of days after.

By pure chance I found Chronicling which can break down what you do and then show the resultant symptoms whenever they occur. Crucially, all of the data is displayed visually in an obvious UI and this will build over time to give you a sense of what is really happening.

I have tried a few solutions so far including Visible which requires the purchase of a tracker and Bearable which can be somewhat overbearing on the data it presents. Neither offers an obvious visual on what is happening over time and I ended up dropping both and tried pen and paper for a while. Pen and paper in 2026!

Chronicling works as a decent and clear habit tracker if you want it to, it can be a chronic illness tracker and you can also use it for all sorts of other things such as annual leave tracking or whatever else you need. It cleverly allows you to group your data so you could, for example, have one set for symptoms, another for daily activities and another one for work. Set up as many as you like to keep a track on everything- just try not to go over the top because it could become addictive.

I’m already seeing from the above image that work is a big problem for me. I am working part time, but the lack of symptoms when there is no grey in the graph is apparent. I worked last Friday and had a major crash Saturday morning which is displaying after the screenshot was taken, but a pattern is already appearing. At no point would I have seen work as the main problem, but clarity has come from the colours and the columns.

This app highlights one of the major problems I see with iOS and Android apps which is discoverability. There are simply too many apps to find what you need now and the search facility, especially in iOS, is poor. It requires searching outside of the app stores to find what you need and I cannot see a way to improve this because it has gotten too big to control, but I suspect that whatever you need there will be a suitable tool for it. You just need to somehow find it.

Categories: Apps, Articles, Health