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Setting up trackers that tell you something
A few small choices when you create a tracker make a big difference to what Patterns can notice later. Here's what we've learned.
A tracker in Patterns is anything you want to keep an eye on: a feeling, a symptom, a habit, a cup of coffee. Each one can have details: a scale, a number, a yes/no, a choice, a duration, a time, a place or some text.
You can set them up however you like. But if you’d like Patterns to find links, a few habits help.
1. Prefer choices over free text
Free text is wonderful for remembering, and Patterns keeps every word. But it doesn’t analyse it, because sentences are hard to compare fairly.
Choices are different. Each option is checked for patterns on its own. So if your Feeling tracker has “Anxious”, “Tired” and “Calm” as options, Patterns can notice that “Anxious” tends to follow late nights while “Calm” tends to follow walks.
A good rule: if you find yourself typing the same few words again and again, they probably want to be choices.
2. Keep options distinct
“Sad” and “Down” are probably the same thing for most people. Splitting them makes each one rarer, which makes patterns harder to spot. A shorter list of clearly different options usually works better.
3. Use a scale for “how much”
If something varies in strength, like pain, energy or stress, add a 1–10 or 1–5 scale. The first scale on a tracker also sets the size of its dots in the Timeline, so heavier days stand out.
4. Let the automatic things be automatic
If you’re curious about sleep, steps, heart rate or the weather, consider turning on the Apple Health or Weather connection instead of logging them by hand. They import into your encrypted journal as their own trackers, and you can delete the imported data at any time.
5. Start small
Two or three trackers you’ll actually use are better than ten you’ll abandon. You can always add more. And if you’d like to see what’s possible first, Settings › Load demo data fills a journal with four months of example entries.
For more ideas, see how people use Patterns.