Synopsis of the App Lark acts as a personal coach to help you move more, sleep better, eat healthier and stress less. Using sensors in select smartphones, Lark tracks your activity, sleep and eating data and discusses it with you via chat.
RDN Score
4 out of 5
Platform and Price
Free. iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S5.
Pros
Upon opening the app, Lark immediately greets you by name and tells you how much activity you’ve done for the day.
Uses an upbeat two-way chat that feels like a text message conversation.
Automatically creates charts and lists detailing your walking, running and sleep activity for the week with options to add other inputs for biking, workouts and sports.
Provides entertaining comparisons like “With your average activity per day, it will take you 1117 years to get to the moon.”
Encourages change with lines like “6 hours of sleep is a bit low, so think about nudging that amount up tonight.”
Adjusts to your schedule when you travel and provides coaching tips to help you overcome jet lag.
Let’s you compare your stats to the average Lark user.
Activate notifications to encourage activity and healthy reminders during the day.
Take notes to track how you feel after exercise or sleep.
Fully integrated with the iPhone Health app.
Primary activity tracking source can be automatic via iPhone’s Health app, Motion Sensors or the Human app.
Active social media community to track and encourage you to stick to your #LarkGoals.
No additional gadgets required.
Cons
Relies on your phone for motion and sleep data and is limited by the times you don’t have your phone with you.
Potential privacy concerns when linking personal, health and motion data to an outside app.
Bottom Line Lark acts as a sometimes snarky coach who interprets your health data and makes recommendations. The biggest selling point is the interactive conversational approach to coaching. You feel as if there’s a real person on the other end.
Marisa Moore, MBA, RDN, LD, is based in Atlanta and specializes in culinary nutrition, communications and consulting. She blogs at marisamoore.com. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
