Choosing a baby tracker app in the UK
Search the app store for a baby tracker and you will find dozens. Most of them log feeds, sleep and nappies. Most of them have a timer. On the surface, they look much the same.
The differences are underneath: what the app does with your logs, what it tells you, where your data goes, and how it makes you feel at 2:47am.
This is a guide to the questions worth asking, written by a baby tracker, so read it with that in mind. We have tried to make it useful whichever app you choose.
Start with the basics
Before anything else, the app has to be easy to use when you are tired, holding a baby, and in the dark.
Can you log a feed with one hand? Ideally in a couple of taps.
Is there a proper night mode? A bright white screen at 3:15am wakes everyone up, including you.
Does the timer keep running if you lock your phone? You will lock your phone.
Does it log the things you actually do? Breast, bottle, pumping, sleep, nappies, and later solids. If you are combination feeding, check it handles both in one timeline.
Can two of you use it? If you share the nights, a shared record matters more than almost any other feature.
What prediction features actually do
This is the biggest difference between apps, and the one least explained in the listings.
Many trackers take your logs, run them through an algorithm, and hand back a prediction: when your baby should next sleep, how long the nap should be, when the next feed is due. Some add a score for your day.
Those predictions are built from population data, other people's babies, adjusted a little using your logs. They can feel helpful. They also hand you a clock to watch, and when your baby does something different, which babies do constantly, it can land as though you got something wrong.
Worth asking of any app with predictions:
Where do the numbers come from? Your baby's history, a population average, or a mix?
How does it feel when your baby does not match? Some parents find predictions reassuring. Others find they turn every normal deviation into a worry.
Can you turn it off? If you cannot switch off the predictions and notifications, you are living with them.
There is no AI in Littles. Nothing predicts, suggests or scores. That is a decision, not a missing feature, and there is more on the reasoning in why the sleep chart doesn't match your baby.
Where your data goes
A baby tracker holds a lot of information about your child: feeds, sleep, nappies, sometimes medication and reactions to foods. The Information Commissioner's Office explains that under UK data protection law, information about someone's health is treated as special category data, which needs extra protection.
Things worth checking in any app's privacy policy:
Who can see your baby's data? Just you and anyone you invite, or the company too, and for what?
Is it used to train anything? Some apps use pooled data to build their predictions.
Is it shared or sold to third parties? Including for advertising.
Can you delete it? And what happens to it if you stop using the app.
Who controls sharing? If you link a professional, such as a sleep consultant, can you remove their access whenever you want?
You should not need a law degree to get clear answers to these. If an app makes it hard to find out, that tells you something.
What the notifications feel like
A lot of apps send reminders by default: the nap is due, the feed is overdue, you have not logged anything for a while.
For some families that is helpful. For others it becomes a background hum of being slightly behind. Check whether reminders are on or off by default, and how easily you can change them. In Littles every reminder starts switched off, and you turn on only the ones you want.
Free and paid, clearly
Most trackers are free to download with a paid tier. That is reasonable. What matters is knowing what you are getting for free and what you are paying for, without surprises.
For Littles, it is this:
Free, for as long as you want it: logging feeds, sleep, nappies, solids, allergens and medication, night mode, the lock screen timer, and both parents on one account.
Premium: the analysis screens, including your baby's own 24 hour sleep needs worked out from their own week, personal notes on any entry, and linking to a sleep consultant.
The question underneath all of this
The most useful question is also the simplest. Does the app show you your baby's real days, or an average it expects them to match?
Both approaches have their fans. If you want an app that tells you what should happen next, there are plenty of those. If you would rather see what actually happened, clearly enough to read yourself, that is what Littles is for.
Whichever you choose, it should make your days easier, not add another thing to feel behind on. And for anything about your baby's health, feeding or sleep, your health visitor or GP is still the right person to ask.
Littles is free to download, and logging feeds, sleep and nappies stays free for as long as you want it.
Your baby's own 24 hour sleep needs, and the rest of the analysis screens, are part of premium. Two weeks free to try, then £6.99 a month or £50 a year.
Sources: Information Commissioner's Office guidance on special category data.
Related reading: What a week of tracking actually shows you
