Frequently asked questions

TrichoTrack is an app for iPhone and Apple Watch that helps with body-focused repetitive behaviours: hair pulling, eyebrow and beard pulling, nose picking and nail biting. The watch recognises the movement of your hand toward your head and taps your wrist, so the moment reaches your awareness while it is still happening. Over time you can see when those moments cluster.

The Apple Watch reads its own motion sensors. In a short training round you show the app what your movement looks like, and from then on it recognises that pattern on your wrist. Every check-in you answer teaches it a little more. Nothing is sent anywhere for this: the recognition runs on the watch itself.

A short tap on the wrist. No sound, no alarm, no banner anyone around you could read. You can answer with one tap whether it was right, and the app can offer you an alternative to do with your hands instead. You can also ignore it entirely.

No. TrichoTrack is a self-awareness tool. It is not a medical device, it makes no diagnosis, and it does not replace therapeutic treatment. If you are in treatment, it can sit alongside it; if you are looking for treatment, it is not a substitute for one.

Yes, for automatic detection. That is what reads the movement — an iPhone in your pocket cannot see what your hand is doing. Without a watch you can still record moments yourself with a tap and keep a journal, but the app will not notice anything on its own.

An Apple Watch with watchOS 10 or later, paired with an iPhone running iOS 17 or later.

No. TrichoTrack is built for the Apple Watch and iPhone, and there is no version for other platforms.

Your watch sits on one wrist, so it only notices what that hand does. When you catch yourself using the other hand, you record the moment yourself with a single tap. It counts in your patterns exactly like the ones the watch spots on its own.

More than normal use. Detection has to keep running while your wrist is down, which means the watch app runs as a workout session, and that is more demanding than an app sitting idle. You can pause detection whenever you want.

On your own devices. Detection, your sessions and your journal all stay on the iPhone and Apple Watch. There is no server of mine that receives them, and there is no account to sign into.

No. There are no analytics SDKs, no advertising identifiers and no third-party trackers in the app. Nobody is counting your moments but you.

Yes, at any time and directly in the app. Sessions and journal entries are yours to remove, and once removed they are gone. If you have turned on the iCloud backup, deleting them removes them there too.

Only if you ask for it. The app can keep a backup in your own iCloud so your history survives a lost phone. It asks before it does, and you can switch it off again. That is your Apple account, not mine — I have no access to it.

The closed beta is free. TrichoTrack is not on the App Store yet, so there is no price to quote for the released version — this page will say what it is once there is one.

Request access with your email address on the home page. The beta is limited to the first 100 testers, and you get one email with an invite link. No newsletter, and your address goes to no one else.

Today the watch recognises five: hair pulling, eyebrow pulling, beard pulling, nose picking and nail biting. Skin picking on the arms and others are in the works. If the one you need is missing, tell me and I will move it up the list.

I do — Tom, one developer in Germany. I built it because I pull at my beard myself and the only thing that ever helped was someone noticing. I use it every day, and every message about it lands with me.