What the Tech? App of the Day: Waterllama
By JAMIE TUCKER Consumer Technology Reporter
Anytime we’re sick with a cold or the flu, doctors say it’s vital to drink “lots and lots of water”. You’ve probably read that the human body is made up of about 60% water, yet most people don’t drink enough of it.
If it isn’t already a habit, the reason we don’t drink enough water is that we’re too busy to think about it. We forget. There is no stock water tracker on iPhones, and for that, you’ll need a third-party app, and one of the best is called “Waterllama”.
Named one of Apple’s Apps of the Year in 2022, Waterllama is guaranteed to get you drinking enough water if you pay attention to it.
The app sends notifications to your iPhone and Apple Watch several times a day to remind you to drink. It also tracks your intake to make sure you get enough water by the time you go to bed at night. It’s effective according to people leaving reviews in the App Store.
You’ll enter your age, gender, height, and weight in the app and Waterllama calculates how many ounces of water you should consume daily. When you drink water or any other beverage, you simply log it in within the app.
Rather than just showing progress on a chart, Waterllama uses animated characters on the screen that fills up with different colors as you log how much you drink.
If you start the day with a tall glass of water you simply open the app and log how much you drank. You should also track other beverage intakes. Waterllama shows how much hydration other liquids provide as well. There’s educational information within the app too.
For example, did you know that while water has a hydration level of 100%, milk provides roughly 30% more hydration?
At the end of the day, you’ll get a visual of how much you drank, or how much more you need to drink.
Waterllama syncs with the Apple Health App automatically so you don’t have to enter the information twice.
Also helpful are fun games and streaks which really help people to develop a habit of drinking water during the day.
The free version of Waterllama is very basic. If you want all of the features (and that depends upon how serious you are about drinking enough water), an annual subscription is $7.
