Tuesday 29 November 2016

Weight Tracker v1.18 and Pro v2.02

At long last a new version of Weight Tracker and Weight Tracker Pro is now available for Android on the Google Play Store.

The main new feature here, and the most requested, is the ability to sync your data across devices, quickly and easily. To do this, the app now backs up your data to your Google Drive account which most Android users will have by default.

If you are an existing user, the app will ask you to Connect to Google Drive:


Before starting, make sure you have an internet connection as Google Drive is a cloud based service. Press CONNECT and wait a few moments as the app attempts to connect you to Google Drive. Once connected you will be asked to choose an account and to give permission for the app to use Google Drive:


Select the Google Drive account you would like to sync your data to. Next the app will make its first back up of your readings to Google Drive,  from then on it will make weekly back ups automatically.

Save -Success, your readings have been saved to Google Drive
Press the back arrow on the top left to return to the main menu.


If you are a new user, the app will help you get set up on Google Drive in the Welcome Wizard:


Before starting, make sure you have an internet connection as Google Drive is a cloud based service. Press CONNECT and wait a few moments as the app attempts to connect you to Google Drive. Once connected you will be asked to choose an account and to give permission for the app to use Google Drive:


Select the Google Drive account you would like to sync your data to. If you are upgrading to the Pro version of the App, or may already have existing readings, press the Restore Readings button



Previous readings successfully retrieved.





On the main menu, the help button has now been replaced with a Sync button



 Press the Sync button to go to the new Sync Readings screen




This screen allows you to save readings to and retrieve readings from your Google Drive account.
To transfer your readings to another device, say from your Phone to your tablet:

  1. On your phone press SAVE
  2. Wait a few minutes for Google Drive to upload your data
  3. On your tablet, press the REFRESH button, check the date and time reported is when you did your save. You may need to press a few times as G Drive will take a few moments to load any new files.
  4. On your tablet, press RESTORE, the app will load all readings and sync them to your existing readings. New readings will be added and updated readings will overwrite your current existing ones.
  5. That's it, press back!

Other New Features

The Pro version of the app now lets you print out your reports:




If you don't have a printer, the report can be saved as a PDF file.


A few extra BMI stats have been added, so if you're BMI is 31.4, the report will show you the weight you need to be to achieve a BMI of 31, 30 and 29. This is handy when you need to set yourself a new weight goal.

Note the print icon, top right


The app has had a lick of paint and now uses Material Design, so buttons are now borderless. The Pro version of the app has a sky blue color scheme and the standard apple blossom. You can still change the background color but not the toolbar colors.

The app no longer uses the SD-Card to back-up or transfer your readings, the reasons are:

  1. The app now uses Google Drive
  2. Android 6 (Marshmallow) requires explicit user permission to read/write to the sd-card
  3. Some devices do not have sd-cards
  4. The app now longer requires the permission to access your photos / music
  5. Transferring readings was a pain, I get a lot of emails asking for help.


Ads

Good news the banner ad now only appears on the chart. I've also placed a native ad in the middle of the report, these ads will scroll with the screen content and are less intrusive and harder to accidentally click. All ads are provided by Admob, a Google owned company. The pro version of the app is completely ad free.


Hope the diet goes well in 2017
Happy New Year
PDB