Circadian: Your Natural Rhythm 4+

I love this app. Been using it nearly a year. It looks great, has a wealth of well researched information and actually makes a positive impact to your day to day life. I have offered feedback to the developers in the past and they are responsive and keen to hear from customers. I’m on the plus plan which gives me enough alarms and reminders for key elements to my day that adjust with the seasons - sunrise and sunset being the obvious ones, but others that you can set in relation to that are also extremely useful. I use it daily for when my eating window starts and ends, I have a reminder set to start cooking supper 90 mins before eating window stops, another to shut the chickens up 30 mins before sunset! More reminders to take a movement break for sedate work days. It’s massively improved my general health and energy levels. It has consistently helped through the seasons, most notably during the darker months to regulate blue light and to sleep well. This has impacted the rest of the family too, curiously, I guess just from me ensuring the house is dimly lit after sundown and we are eating in response to that too. Highly recommended for a big impact to your family’s wellbeing!

Thank you kindly for this extensive review! Wonderful to hear how Circadian is helping you and your family and is supporting you through the seasons. Fantastic that your health and energy have improved. Keep us posted on your Circadian journey. Best wishes from New Zealand. Mind your rhythm, mind your light ☀️

The app is based on following the sunlight cycle. I like how neatly it calculates everything and sets reminders for you. Potentially super useful BUT, and this is a deal-breaker for me, it takes no account of individual’s body clock giving the same recommendations to ALL people. Suggesting to wake up half an hour before sunrise might work perfectly for a lion chronotype, but is the worst recommendation imaginable for a wolf chronotype like myself, even with enough sleep I stay sleepy all morning if I wake up then. Equally, it doesn’t account for individual’s peak times making a generalised suggestion for all. Not good enough.
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Thanks for the informative reply from the developers. I will have to look into more data for this and perhaps experiment some more with my personal sleeping time. From my current understanding, there’s enough evidence to support the idea that chronotype is determined genetically, but I can see how external factors could play a large role in that too. In my case, I have been reducing most of blue light exposure after sunset even before being introduced to the app, which has had a great effect on my sleep, but I still feel much more energetic throughout the day when I fall asleep later and wake up after sunset, hence the trouble with app’s wake up suggestions. But I’ll give it another shot. Really enjoying the reminders about the breaks btw!

Thanks for your review, and apologies for any confusion. Circadian does shift the rhythm and peak times based on your wake time and can be used as an evening type.

The recommendations, however, are based on the optimal alignment with the local light & dark cycle, as the literature shows that morning types are much healthier, live longer, and have less overall disease risk than evening types. It is also interesting to note that late chronotypes seem to be largely driven by epigenetics (lifestyle, behavior, and environmental factors like artificial light at night), while true late chronotypes are rare.

Perhaps give Circadian another go to help improve the overall rhythmicity of your evening schedule. If you feel like it, you could experiment with a few suggestions, like blocking all blue light a few hours before bed, and see how that affects you. You might even get inspired to shift your schedule slightly earlier.

Thank you, and all the best!
Bastian | Team Circadian

Circadian is one of those apps that will come into your life and you won’t remember how you ever managed without it. I suffer with seasonal affective disorder (also known as winter depression or winter blues), so my circadian rhythm is very sensitive and gets easily upset when the days are very short or very long. This app is an incredibly useful tool in keeping me on a daily schedule without disregarding seasonal changes, which is what pretty much any other scheduling tool out there does. I love being able to set an alarm relative to sunrise. It makes it so much easier to plan my day in a way that I get enough daylight, that I eat and work at optimal times. This may sound trivial for people who aren’t much affected by the seasons, but it used to be a huge struggle for me. This winter so far has been much better than previous ones, and this app has made a substantial contribution. I cannot wait to see what new features you have planned!

Thank you very much for review. Fantastic to hear that Circadian supports in managing SAD and staying in touch with the seasonal changes. If you have any input, feedback or questions please do let us know. By the way, there is a great new full-spectrum light box available from SOLshine that can be super helpful when the days are short. You can find details in the products section of the app and on our website. Many thanks, Bastian | Team Circadian