Thumsters: Chores Tracker

The latest update breaks the app for me. It locks up after awarding a thumb. Closing the app doesn’t always resolve the issue. Also, even when it works, there are too many steps involved in just awarding or penalizing that it is distracting and inconvenient.

Too many clicks required to award a thumb. And too many notifications. The notification of how many days in a row I've awarded thumbs is infuriating. Also annoyed that the app description said it could be used on apple watch when I purchased last school year. That's still not possible. Also there's no quick way to view progress toward goal, which is very motivating to see for my kids. You can get to it, but a glitch makes it hard to toggle between kid profiles. Also liked the old graphics much better. The beauty of the original app was it's ease of use. Please revert and add apple watch functionality. We loved the original version and have recommended over and over again!

The new version is meant to look flashy but is so many clicks. I just want to easily go over thumbs up behaviors with the kids before bed but this new version is an unwelcome change.

It was fine the way it was- the new version is such a nuisance. You’re supposed to simplify- not complicate.

The concept of this app is fantastic, and it’s fairly easy to use. However, it would be much better with a child-specific version that I could install on my kids' iPads. Currently, they can give themselves thumbs up or down, which defeats the purpose of a parent or caregiver managing the rewards. The child view should only allow them to see their report, points, and reasons behind the rewards. I added my child as a 'family member' using the family code and selected 'child,' he still had the ability to give himself thumbs up, which defeats the purpose. I assumed that selecting adding a family member as 'child' would remove this option. Because of this, I also enabled 'Access Protection' on my side with a parent password THINKING doing that would disable his ability to give himself points, but after inviting my child to the family on his iPad,again as a “child”, he could still give himself points even with Access Protection turned on. If I turn on 'Access Protection' on his device, he won’t be able to use the app at all because he won't have the parent code which I obviously wouldn’t give him. Additionally, there should be an option to edit entries. I accidentally selected the wrong goal and now can't go back to correct it, which is frustrating. Additionally, if a child logs out by accident (which happened several times), they can't log back into the family without requesting to be added again as a child in the family, but once I granted the same child access again, my app shows him duplicated! There are definitely some kinks that need to be worked out for a smoother experience. The reporting feature is not very helpful to see points broken down by hour and color code. Instead, the report should show details of the behavior and goals, the points awarded, and what they were awarded for. For example, if my child got a thumbs up at 8 a.m. for 'Getting Ready for School' and earned 2 points toward the 'Extra Screen Time' goal, the report he sees should display: 8 a.m. - 'Getting Ready for School' - 2 pts - Extra Screen Time Goal. This type of summary would be much more useful than just a color-coded hourly view for the WHOLE day as there are many hours they are away at school where there is NO activity. You should only see the hours when there is activity. With these improvements, the app would be much more effective. I put in a request through app support but figured it was good for other parents to know there are some kinks that you need to watch o

I started using this app with my 4-year-old about three weeks ago and the change in behavior has changed drastically. I knew I needed to change tactics and also show something concrete in goal setting / accountability, and this was the perfect thing. I think the smartest thing is that thumbs down can subtract from goals just as much as thumbs up can - I really struggled before to provide incentives / promises for good behavior when bad behavior was also there, which created a lot of confusion in expectations. I really wish I could get the pro version but it’s not as affordable as I would hope it would be. Understandable if the developer needs to establish a certain price frame to keep things going. Maybe in the future I’d be able to get the pro, but I’m not able to at this time. Note: there was an app upgrade and the design is a lot simpler but I do miss the furry monster hands 😅

The idea is to record thumbs up and thumbs down for child’s behavior and tie it to a goal or incentive. This is a tried and true method for kids behavior management. The app looks great and is fun to use but takes too long for a busy teacher or parent imo. For instance, to give a thumbs up, I have to open the app, click on the kid I want to record for (even if they’re the only kid registered btw), click on a cartoon icon of a monster’s thumbs up, click on my reason for the thumbs up, and then one more screen to choose some other useful options, that’s 5 clicks for one thumbs up if you skip all the extra options. It would be much better if once you opened the app there was a list down one side of thumbs up reasons and a list down the other side of thumbs down reasons, clicking a reason would bring you to the options page which allowed you to choose which child to assign to and anything else you wanted, and done. For 8/month 😳 I wish this app were a lot more streamlined.

Overall this is a great app. Makes it easy to keep track of points and rewards. It could use a couple of tweaks though. For instance, the reporting could be much better. I’d like to see details for each day on what thumbs were given and what was bought. I’d love to not have to hit send to bank every time. I don’t think most people are using the thumbs immediately. It would be great if the kid version could request thumbs from the adult. For instance when they’ve done a chore.

I want this to work since it’s a great concept, but the subscription features rarely work as designed. Support is responsive and quick to release patches, but I often find new bugs afterwards.

I mean. Any time my kid doesn’t good or bad he’s going to see me open my phone to log it. This is okay I guess though I was hoping he could use the app to log chores. Did he brush his teeth, put away his laundry, do his piano…. To me that would be more useful than me in the moment giving him a thumbs down for not listening. I can see that part used as a bonus/punishment on top of the chores but I’m not going to log all his chores for him and there’s no scheduling for them.