As someone who works in “tech” and is obsessed with watches, the Instagram Story Robert-Jan Broer posted about the WristTrack app last month immediately caught my attention. The notion that some are both so deep down the watch rabbit hole and geeky enough to want statistical data about their rotation may surprise a few readers, but I’d already seen – and tried – a few such apps in the past. It had been a while though, and the seal of approval of the first person I ever interviewed for this blog made me want to know more.
I tested the app and loved it for its simplicity and more importantly its speed. Lightning fast, which makes all the difference for something you’re supposed to use daily. I looked up the developer behind it – as a side project from Glasgow, Grant Hutchison, and reached out over Instagram. Interestingly, while Grant is an IT manager by day, he’s not an actual software developer – until after hours. Alongside spending time with his wife, two kids and pets, Grant writes the code for the WristTrack app on evenings and weekends. In the conversation below, we go behind the scenes of the app that quickly earned its spot on my phone’s home screen.
How would you best describe WristTrack to someone who’s never heard of it?
My quick elevator pitch for WristTrack would be “it’s like Fitbit for watch enthusiasts” – which probably sounds far more grand than the reality, given it’s built by one guy in his bedroom! Where Fitbit lets you track your step count, heart rate and sleep data to help you make better fitness choices, WristTrack lets you track your watch collection – what you own, orders you’re waiting for, what you want to buy in future… and perhaps its biggest feature, what you’re wearing. Allowing you to then visualize and use this data to hopefully gain insights into your collection and your interactions with it. It can provide a reminder every day to update what’s on your wrist and will then draw charts giving insight into what you’re wearing the most, and what’s not getting the love it deserves. You can even extract the data into a spreadsheet if you want to dig deeper into the data.
What gave you the idea? When did you launch?
I’ve always enjoyed wearing a watch and feel lost without one ever since I was around 12 and my Dad gave me his ani-digi Lorus to wear when I went away for a weekend camping trip with the Scouts. Like many though, I jumped on the smartwatch bandwagon in the 2010’s, and spent a decade with computers on my wrist instead of a real timepiece.
When the Covid lockdowns hit and I started working from home permanently, I found the constant ping of notifications from my watch was more of an annoyance than a help, so I started to look for a new analogue watch, and found myself sinking into the rabbit hole of watch enthusiasm… I bought my first mechanical watch in November 2021, and my second a month later… I was hooked!
At the time I had joined the Christopher Ward Forum to investigate their watches and join in some of the conversation around them, and as the end of the year drew close, members started sharing charts of what had received the most wrist time that year… and as a self- confessed nerd, I was intrigued! I also knew that if I wanted to continue buying new watches then at some point I’d need to start selling some – I don’t have a huge budget and the thought of having a huge collection made me anxious!
I found that some members used a spreadsheet to track what they wore and others used an iOS app – but searching I couldn’t find anything on Android that seemed to do the same thing. So I started tracking what I was wearing on my own spreadsheet, and started to form a picture in my head of what I’d like an app for tracking wrist time to look like…
For a while I just tinkered and played around, resulting in a proof of concept app that I could sideload onto my own phone. In the beginning it just let you add in the watch make and model, click a ‘wear today’ button and then draw a simple chart of every wear that had been tracked.Version 1.0 initially launched in September 2022.
From day one I’ve focused on performance – I read lots of complaints of users stopping using apps as they slowed down over time, or were slow to respond – so WristTrack was built to be lean and fast (even now, with a large amount of watch records tracked it can still do all its calculations near instantly without lag!).
Originally I just thought it would be cool to be able to draw some charts of my wearing habits, but as the app has grown and new features have been added I’d love to think that it has the potential to be The Best App for watch enthusiasts… perhaps one day!
Who are your typical users?
At its core WristTrack is an app for Watch Nerds – whilst it now does more than just letting you track what you’re wearing, I think its main appeal still lies with those people who sit in that intersection where watch enthusiast meets stats geek!
I’ve been surprised how many people tell me that they had been tracking their collections in a spreadsheet already before finding the app, and so much feedback starts with “this is exactly what I was looking for” – so it’s very nice to know I’m not alone when it comes to an interest in my watch data!
What are some insights about your own relationship to watches, and your collection, gained through the app?
This is a very interesting question – I’ve noticed that new users either love the app instantly, or just can’t wrap their heads around why it even exists (which is ok! I fully appreciate not everyone wants to nerd out on charts!). When I started to track my watches and wearing habits it was for two reasons.
Firstly, and I make no apologies, charts are cool – there’s something I find quite fun about being able to look at a chart and see what my top three watches worn in a year are, or if I’m more likely to wear my G-Shock on a Sunday vs a Friday (spoiler alert, yes I am!)
But secondly, I know I both have a very limited budget for watches and that I have an aversion to having a huge collection – a watch box (or two) is fine. I know collectors who count their watches in the hundreds/I I couldn’t do that, the thought makes me nervous! Which means making clear decisions on what to potentially sell to buy something new.
My first mechanical watch was a dress watch, which I loved, but as I bought more watches I realised that I’m not a dressy person – you’re more likely to find me in a T-Shirt than a suit! Every time I put it on I fell back in love with it, but I seldom found myself reaching for it when I opened the watch box, so I had considered selling it for a long time. Eventually being able to objectively look and quantify that I had worn it only 36 times in 853 days of ownership convinced me that no matter how nice it was, it deserved a more loving home (and its replacement turned out to be my second most worn watch last year!).
I recently added the ability to track case dimensions, and gather some insights based on those. I often see discussion when a new watch launches that it’s either ‘too big’ or ‘too small’ based purely on the case diameter, which always surprises me as that’s just one of the dimensions of a watch that matters – and whilst I could tell you that I’m comfortable with a watch in the 37mm – 43mm range (I’m blessed with a versatile wrist size!) until I put all the stats side by side I couldn’t have told you how the case thicknesses and lug-to-lug measurements varied across my collection! I now have a far easier frame of reference next time I’m looking at the stats of a new release and wondering if it will fit me!
Same question but from other users who have told you about their experience...
Most people that have reached out talk more in terms of how they enjoy using the app rather than how it has changed or supported their habits as collectors. It’s interesting to read the feature requests that come in though (many of which I have either already added, or intend to add soon – the best ideas come from the people using it!).
In the latest release for example I added a moon phase calculator to the ‘Time Setting’ tab on the request of a user who now regularly used the app to set his watches, but wanted to also be able to set his moon phase complication without having to go elsewhere for the information In a similar vein I’m currently working on a gallery view to let you use the app to show off watch collection to others, because someone asked for it.
How much work does it represent for you?
WristTrack is very much a hobby project – it’s something that I love to work on, but doesn’t pay the bills so its development time is limited to when I can grab some free time to work on it – not always easy with a demanding day job and two young kids! It’s taken hundreds of hours of work to get it to where it is today, I’d estimate each update takes somewhere from ten to thirty hours (including planning, building, testing and release activity). It’s all worthwhile though whenever someone posts an app review or drops me an email or Instagram message letting me know that they’re enjoying it!
What are additional features you’d like to add in the future?
As mentioned I regularly get requests from users, and I keep a note of all of them – I think the app has grown into something great thanks to the input of the watch enthusiast community!
I’ve already mentioned some upcoming changes like the gallery view, but some other highlights that I’d really like to add in are watch accuracy checks . I’m adding more data points to the model already (such as case dimensions and water resistance ratings) but keen to expand this further to include notes such as watch winder settings.
I’d also love to translate the app into other languages (I’ve had requests for French, German and Russian so far!) – there’s a significant amount of up front work to do this, but once in place it should be relatively easy to maintain and expand. I appear to have users all over the world, which I didn’t expect! So I’m sure putting the effort in to let as many people as possible use the app in their native language is the least I can do!
Finally, I’ve always taken the approach that the data in the app belongs to the user – it’s stored locally and there are already mechanisms to both back-up the data, and to fully extract it, but so far there’s no quick way to upload a lot of data quickly. I know I’ve got many users, or potential users, who maintain their own spreadsheets, so I’d like to give them a simple way to add that data to WristTrack easily.
Tempted? You can visit wristtrack.app to find links to the app stores, or look up Grant on Instagram under @wristtrack.app.
