KAYA: THE CLIMBER’S APP 4+

Love the direction this app is leading

Lots of potential but still room for improvement. I find myself using it frequently to find beta videos for more obscure problems in my area. I am using this app now as a log similar to 8a. I like Kaya better though, since it has beta videos. Maybe someday you guys can make a separate app for outdoor climbers, because I don’t like the fact that it logs indoor problems in the same place as outdoor problems. Everyone knows indoor problems don’t count.
The only improvements I could ask for are: There’s a bug when submitting older climbs, the scroll function for the date often refreshes and I have to reselect the month, date and year multiple times before it sticks. It also doesn’t save the date occasionally and I have to go back and edit the submission. I also don’t like that it opens the shortened drop down menu when submitting an ascent. I wish it would just open the larger one so I can change the date and add the difficulty without having to expand it every time. The final pet peeve is the extra pop up warning every time you change the date! How many extra steps do I need to do a simple task! I know what I’m doing.

One other thing I wish there was a function for is an option to see what the benchmarks of an area are. Hope this is helpful!

I love the app but it’s stopped working for iOS 17

Update: The issue got fixed a bit ago, and is running smoothly again. I’ve been using it more, even when I’m away from my gym that uses KAYA. I’ve found it really helpful for knowing when I should be projecting climbs at harder grades, work on volume, or work on my flash level. It’s great to go into a session targeting one of these points and in the past 3 months has improved my consistency within grades. It is a very statistical approach but it works and has given me more satisfaction out of my climbing, rather than aimlessly chasing a grade that is frankly too hard for me at this point. Thank you to the KAYA team, apps like this push climbing forward and keeps it up to date with changing times. So stoked to see the future of this app and hopefully areas overseas start getting guidebooks on this app.

After updating to iOS 17 on my iPhone 13 mini the KAYA app has been stuck on the logo opening screen. I’ve tried restarting, deleting and redownloading the app, but it still doesn’t work. Aside from that, this app is great, I’ve found it really useful for tracking my sessions, and looking at my ascents helps me to figure out where I need to improve. Hopefully they’re already working on this issue, but I’m excited to continue using it.

Developer Response ,

Hey Zac,

Thank you for your positive feedback! We're thrilled to hear that you're enjoying KAYA. If you ever have any suggestions or additional feedback, feel free to reach out to us at support@kayaclimb.com. Your support means a lot to us, and we appreciate you taking the time to share your experience.

Seeing Steady Improvement

As an indoor-only climber, I’ve found this app to be awesome for tracking projects at my home gym, for sharing videos of sends, and to explore a little of what others are doing. They converted the tracking feature to subscribers-only so I begrudgingly become one and I’ll be honest… Given how I use the app, it doesn’t feel worth it. It feels like the main audience is outdoor climbers so it doesn’t meet my expectations. For example, tracking climbs would be easier if I could minimize the list and focus solely on the gym map + whatever marker I’ve tapped. The visualizations are pretty useless because they rarely feel reflective of the quality of my workout. I feel like the copy often implies that I didn’t do the most simply because I’m not sending more and higher every time. In addition to taking a different approach with how the app reads our climbing data, maybe there should be “types” of sessions for determining how the data should be read (training? Projects? Repeats?). Speaking of, I wish starting a session meant more than just swiping to mark a send or attempt. Why doesn’t the app sync with my Apple watch and use that data in its charts? Why can’t I see my progress by set periods of time instead of by all time?… Focusing solely on the pieces of the app that meet my needs: It’s fine, it has noticeably improved since I joined a while back, and I do look forward to more progress.

Developer Response ,

Hey There! Thanks for your feedback, We’re happy to report that filters, sessions, and attempt tracking are all free. Make sure you’ve got the most recent version of KAYA and check it out. If you have any questions please reach out to us at support@kayaclimb.com. If you’re psyched on this change, we’d love it if you’d update your review!