> If you have a regular period, why do you need an app at all?
You probably don't need to use it if your cycle is completely regular and it doesn't really impact your daily life, but it's not as common as you might think: about 10% of women have PCOS, which is the leading cause of oligomenorrhea; about 10% have endometriosis, which often causes debilitating pain and irregular periods (with a small overlap with PCOS population); 20% to 30% live with PMS - and that's only the portion that has clinically significant symptoms. Even if you were lucky enough to avoid all of these, your cycle length will change as you age, gain or lose weight, and inevitably reach menopause.
Still, you'll have to at least mark the dates. Someone here in the comments compared it to tracking completely optional fitness metrics like sleep or steps, but period data is not really in the same bucket. Just as an illustration: it's hard to see a doctor without being asked "when was your last period?" or "any chance you might be pregnant?", no matter what brought you into the office. In fact, it is such a common experience that it became a subject of many jokes [1]. Also, if you only rely on your memory, you might not notice if/when you do experience changes, some of which might be medically significant.
But let's say you've already decided to track your data somehow.
> what does the app give [...] does it do anything you can't do with a simple notebook app?
Valid question. Some people do just use notes, especially when they don't experience any problems and don't care much about when their next period is coming. But for many others, there are plenty of valid use cases:
1. Reminders for ovulation and next periods. The app can also remind you to enter the data if it thinks you should've had a period but you didn't enter anything.
2. Sharing with your partner. You could, theoretically, write it in a shared document or hand over your paper notebook in person, but it's much easier to see this type of data in a calendar rather than do mental math every time. Having this option gets even more important if you are trying to conceive and track fertility windows.
3. Not having to do the aforementioned mental math is also convenient for the woman herself. A lot of women, even completely healthy ones, experience an array of various unpleasant symptoms in the luteal phase, as well as changes in mood, physical and even cognitive performance during the cycle. It's just really useful to be able to quickly see the calendar and have an idea of what to expect while making your plans (for example, people might want to adjust their workout routines, book a vacation on a more convenient date, or avoid taking extra responsibilities when they know they are going to feel shitty).
And now for those who were not as lucky.
> If you have an irregular period, does this app help "guess" when it's going to start/end?
It does! Though surprisingly, a lot of apps, including Flo, are still abysmally bad at this: they either give you a median of past cycles, at best unhelpfully telling you that your periods are "late," or require you to enter lots of sensitive and subjective data daily to get useful predictions. It is well-known in medical literature that there are other metrics like resting heart rate and skin temperature that are predictive of different phases, especially when they are combined with other data. I've always wondered why the integration with consumer wearables that track a lot of those indicators with good-enough precision is not commonplace. As far as I know, only Apple Health's cycle tracking feature, Samsung Health, and Oura Ring do that among the major players. A few others like Natural Cycles use temperature, but they are all focused on fertility & conception.
That said, using an app like Drip that allows you to export data freely in a universal format can be incredibly valuable for personal analysis. You can find patterns in your data to make your own "predictor" or determine whether certain medications or lifestyle changes were effective. It can also be helpful at your next doctor visit.
I know articles don't have to be technical to belong to this site, but I'm still not sure whether this one should be here. It seems to be a U.S. centric, paywalled article about some unremarkable economic news. Did I miss something? /gen
P.S. Here, "unremarkable" doesn't mean insignificant, rather "not extraordinary, peculiar, or curiosity-sparking."
If there is a jump of inflation in the US it might very well spread to my place (EU), as well. It is interesting for me, as I am interested in economics and finance. So it sparked my curiosity, at least.
I love this! Both creative and practical, in my opinion. Perhaps additional information (humidity, UV levels, etc.) could be optionally added as additional color-coded rings with numbers, like the temperature?
It often tells me I will not survive with a sarcastic tone for reasons that don't fit the described scenario. In one case, I got tangled in a fish net in the middle of a lake, and there was an "angry fisherman with a torch" on the shore that thought I'm a sea monster. I said I will scream for help, and AI responded that the fisherman put the net on the fire and I burned alive. How did the fisherman put the net in the middle of a lake on fire?..
In one easy scenario, I woke up in a hotel and there was a fire alarm and smoke coming from under the door. I replied that I will look at the evacuation map and exit the building immediately following the indicated path, which will most likely go through the stairs. It made fun of me and said that "compliance doesn't save from engulfing fires." So was there a smoke from under the door or engulfing fires? I'm not sure what else I was supposed to say, and this doesn't feel hard in a fun way that make you think creatively, rather "hard" in a sense that you have to guess what specific combination of words the text predicting machine wants to hear from you.
If remarkable's writing experience appeals to you, but you don't want to lock yourself in their walled garden, check out Supernote. They have a much easier file transfer, sync with calendars, and most importantly no subscription. You still have to do some hacking to download certain apps, but overall they are much more tinkering-friendly. Writing feels a bit different, but not in a bad way — it's just a matter of personal preference (I personally like both). There are plenty of reviews online explaining the difference if that's important to you.
For members in the EU, EEA, Switzerland, Canada, and Hong Kong: On November 3, 2025, we started to use some data from members in these regions to train content-generating AI models that enhance your experience and better connect our members to opportunities. This includes data like details from your profile, and public content you post on LinkedIn; it does not include your private messages. We rely on legitimate interest to process your data for this purpose. You can opt out anytime in your settings if you’d prefer not to have your data used in this way.
You probably don't need to use it if your cycle is completely regular and it doesn't really impact your daily life, but it's not as common as you might think: about 10% of women have PCOS, which is the leading cause of oligomenorrhea; about 10% have endometriosis, which often causes debilitating pain and irregular periods (with a small overlap with PCOS population); 20% to 30% live with PMS - and that's only the portion that has clinically significant symptoms. Even if you were lucky enough to avoid all of these, your cycle length will change as you age, gain or lose weight, and inevitably reach menopause.
Still, you'll have to at least mark the dates. Someone here in the comments compared it to tracking completely optional fitness metrics like sleep or steps, but period data is not really in the same bucket. Just as an illustration: it's hard to see a doctor without being asked "when was your last period?" or "any chance you might be pregnant?", no matter what brought you into the office. In fact, it is such a common experience that it became a subject of many jokes [1]. Also, if you only rely on your memory, you might not notice if/when you do experience changes, some of which might be medically significant.
But let's say you've already decided to track your data somehow.
> what does the app give [...] does it do anything you can't do with a simple notebook app?
Valid question. Some people do just use notes, especially when they don't experience any problems and don't care much about when their next period is coming. But for many others, there are plenty of valid use cases:
1. Reminders for ovulation and next periods. The app can also remind you to enter the data if it thinks you should've had a period but you didn't enter anything. 2. Sharing with your partner. You could, theoretically, write it in a shared document or hand over your paper notebook in person, but it's much easier to see this type of data in a calendar rather than do mental math every time. Having this option gets even more important if you are trying to conceive and track fertility windows. 3. Not having to do the aforementioned mental math is also convenient for the woman herself. A lot of women, even completely healthy ones, experience an array of various unpleasant symptoms in the luteal phase, as well as changes in mood, physical and even cognitive performance during the cycle. It's just really useful to be able to quickly see the calendar and have an idea of what to expect while making your plans (for example, people might want to adjust their workout routines, book a vacation on a more convenient date, or avoid taking extra responsibilities when they know they are going to feel shitty).
And now for those who were not as lucky.
> If you have an irregular period, does this app help "guess" when it's going to start/end?
It does! Though surprisingly, a lot of apps, including Flo, are still abysmally bad at this: they either give you a median of past cycles, at best unhelpfully telling you that your periods are "late," or require you to enter lots of sensitive and subjective data daily to get useful predictions. It is well-known in medical literature that there are other metrics like resting heart rate and skin temperature that are predictive of different phases, especially when they are combined with other data. I've always wondered why the integration with consumer wearables that track a lot of those indicators with good-enough precision is not commonplace. As far as I know, only Apple Health's cycle tracking feature, Samsung Health, and Oura Ring do that among the major players. A few others like Natural Cycles use temperature, but they are all focused on fertility & conception.
That said, using an app like Drip that allows you to export data freely in a universal format can be incredibly valuable for personal analysis. You can find patterns in your data to make your own "predictor" or determine whether certain medications or lifestyle changes were effective. It can also be helpful at your next doctor visit.
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/thefemalelead_wendi-aarons-a-...
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