Pond - Screen Time & Pomodoro

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1. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

   Down the drain. Once great app for simple time keeping and focus now turned into an overreaching subscription based bs. The dev team can pound sand.

2. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   What the heck?. Like others, I was surprised to see a once-great timer app completely change into something else with no warning. Originally it was the Focus Keeper app, and now it’s a garbage app that wants your data.

3. ★★★★★privacy and excessive permissions

   App changed fundamentally. This used to be a pomodoro timer and is now a spyware app (asked for screen time access?!?!).

4. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   What did you do. This used to be a simple, nonintrusive timer. Now it requires additional access. I don’t need all these stupid bells and whistles - I just want my pomodoro timer

5. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Rug pulled. This app was simple and great pomodoro timer and it appears to have been switched to slop that wants access to all my screen time data.

6. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Rebrand/redesign. I have no interest in this app now.. The developers have completely replaced the app that originally garnered the high reviews you see. This used to be a very simple and easy to use pomodoro app that was good for setting interval timers. That is what the 5 star ratings were from. The app developers have no idea what made their app successful in the past.

7. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Utterly ruined. This used to be an incredibly great app but now they’ve utterly ruined it and turned it into useless garbage. :(

8. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Ruined an excellent app. Requires data sync now. Deleting immediately, sorry. Focus Keeper was great as-is.

9. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   app ruined. decent app suddenly turned into something asking for a bunch of permissions; it took me awhile to even figure out what the app was, it seemingly appeared out of nowhere. this app is piss

10. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Updated and Is No Longer What It Used to Be. This was an amazing pomodoro timer app — and it was free and without a subscription. It was suddenly updated and is put behind a paywall. Absolute slop.

11. ★★★★★data, history or progress disappears

    Ruined a great app. I loved this app when it was a well-designed pomodoro timer. I used it for years. Now it’s asking me to access my data without offering anything of value. Delete! What a shame.

12. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Annoyingly Distracting. This app’s purpose is to limit screen time - while sending tons of notifications throughout the day. Do not use this app if you don’t want distractions! What a colossal waste of money and the opposite of what the purpose should be for the app. Is it possible to give negative stars??

13. ★★★★★ads disrupt the experience

    A former great app ruined in one 'update'. This app used to be a simple, free pomodoro timer. It was excellent and simple—its simplicity set it apart from a market full of bloated apps with too many tools and too many ads. There were not a lot of options and that was what I needed. Then one day my app updated to become Pond. Awful! Now its a bunch of faux productivity slop. The timer is there, but its just one tab of a bloated app. It is no longer unique. Very disappointing.

14. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    欺诈，本来的番茄时钟更新成了屏幕时间. 我会向Apple举报该公司，将原先的买断番茄时钟应用更新成完全不一样功能的屏幕时间应用，自己又另外上架番茄时钟应用，并且需内购订阅，严重侵害购买者权益。

15. ★★★★★crashes, freezes and errors

    PIXO SUCKS. What is this company’s obsession with changing products that already work brilliantly? First the Focus Keeper app got entirely destroyed and buggy, now this changed to “Pond”? Who asked for this?

16. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Completely different app. I had been loving this app, recommending it to everyone. It was easy to use, didn’t have ads or the need for a premium version. It was just a simple app to help with studying. Now there’s a whole new rebrand that forces me to block apps to use it (which I hate doing and why I loved the previous app). Stop trying to revolutionize apps, most of the time, simpler is better.

17. ★★★★★crashes, freezes and errors

    Crash. This app crash constantly especially when you click to change color them

18. ★★★★★crashes, freezes and errors

    Broken color selection. I purchased this after the free version for the sole purpose of changing that terrible red color to something better. It crashes the moment you attempt the change.

19. ★★★★★crashes, freezes and errors

    I loved this app but atm it’s broken to the point of uselessness. I loved this app and I religiously used the free version, I wanted to upgrade to support the developers but I’ll probably end up going back to the free because when the phone goes to sleep or the window is running in the background the timer pauses and it defeats the point of the app

20. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Doesn't Work In Background. The time doesn't elapse on it when it's in the background. I set the timer and a stopwatch on Google. After 2 minutes and 15 seconds had elapsed on the stopwatch, the timer had only passed 35 seconds.

21. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Used to be my go to Timer app for a long time. I’ve being waiting for a fix to this problem for months now, but so far all recent updates have not fixed it. This app for whatever reason don’t work in the background anymore. I would turn it on, and it would run in the background for a tiny bit and then it would stop. If this app. Can not run in the background, then it isn’t useable for me anymore. This is so upsetting as this was my favorite app. It was that good and still can be, but without the ability to have this app run in the background it is USELESS!!!

22. ★★★★★an update broke a familiar workflow

    update. i used to love this app but i’m not sure if there was a new update that changed things? now when i disable “prevent screen lock” to try and save my battery life on my devices it doesn’t accurately keep track of my time spent studying (i’ve timed it and it lags and it ends up documenting a lot less time than i actually have spent studying). it also no longer works when i decide to utilize another app which is super inconvenient. i don’t want to have my screen on for hours i would like to be able to have my screen lock and still keep track of my studying on this app! pls fix i do enjoy this app a lot!!

23. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Doesn’t work anymore. Used to love this app and have used it for a long time. Since most recent update, it doesn’t keep the time anymore, which makes it kind of useless as a Pomodoro timer. Can you fix this?? Update: After waiting a month, finally gave up and am deleting this app from my phone. Doesn’t keep the time anymore when screen locks. I found another app that actually works. Too bad, it was a great app until the developer stopped supporting it. I had gotten the pro version to get the “customizability”. Oh well, nothing lasts forever.

24. ★★★★★an update broke a familiar workflow

    Big issues with the new update. I have been using the app for years and my experience was nothing but great. This new update changes everything! The timer doesn’t work if the app is off screen which turns the app useless for tracking time. The charts new design isn’t as neat as before. In short the the app was great until this update came along.

25. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    used to be great now it doesn’t work. all the behaviors have changed and it no longer works well.

26. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    As of most recent update, timer stops running in background when I switch to a different app. This app was working perfectly for me for years until the most recent update. As of today, whenever I switch screens, the timer stops running. I’m resorting to posting this review because, as at least one other reviewer has pointed out, the app and “application support” link to a tumblr page, which displays a different email address than the contact address given in the app and its most recent posts were in 2014. I’ve tried contacting the other email address—the one given in the app (I can’t be sure that email address is even still in use)—but haven’t heard back.

27. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Over 2 years without updates. No iPhone X support and it appears to be abandoned by the developer.

28. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Bad User Experience. I simply downloaded this app to make myself more productive, but when I left this app for a while, it kept reminding me to use it. Uninstalled. I really hate this sort of thing that constantly happens on my phone, otherwise it's a great app.

29. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Nice idea but very buggy. I like the idea of this app and the features, but it would be nice if it worked a bit better. The active notifications banner stays wide so I can’t see the clock or battery indicator whenever a block period is going. The block scheduling also just doesn’t work reliably. I just had to play with the settings on a block to get the app to notice that it was scheduled and actually activate it. It’s also weird to market a nice simple, bug-free pomodoro timer app (which attracted lots of appropriately great reviews) and then suddenly replace it on everyone’s devices with this really heavy, kind of invasive app with paid features. I actually like what “Pond” is going for but… kinda skeevy tbh. And buggy.

30. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Can't have audio from other apps while using this, no good!. If I have my headphones on to listen to music or a podcast while using this app it will pause and often causes the music or podcast to not play via my headphones unless I disconnect them and reconnect. Super annoying and makes this app not helpful