I love my Apple Watch, even though the time that I spend using it every day pales in comparison to my iPhone and iPad. That is because some of its most useful features are the ones that just take a few seconds to use — such as being able to quickly look at what my next appointment is, quickly see how I am doing on my Activity circles for the day, quickly skip to the next music track, and of course glance to see the current time or date. This presents somewhat of a challenge to third party app developers, because some of the best apps will be those that don't do very much, but do it in a great way. I was pleased to see that Iconfactory released a free app this week called Clicker because it manages to be a great app by just doing one simple task well: it counts in increments of one.
Launch the Clicker app on your iPhone and you see a number — zero, the first time that you launch the app. Tap anywhere on the screen and the large number increases by one. Tap it again to increase by one again.
The only other feature of the app is that if you force-click, you can decrease by one (useful if you tapped by accident and didn't mean to increase the counter) and you can Reset (to clear and go back to zero).
The app also features a small complication. It serves two simple purposes. First, it displays the current number in the clicker app so that you can see the current number right next to the clock. Second, if you tap that number on the clock face, the Clicker app launches.
Clicker is a native app on the Apple Watch, so it launches quickly, plus you can use Clicker even if your iPhone is turned off, in Airplane Mode, or is not nearby.
As for why you would use the Clicker app, there are countless (ahem) reasons. The developer says that he uses Clicker to track how many days he swims laps. Watching the number increase gives him motivation to swim more often. Whatever your own personal goals are, you could tap once day every time that you achieve it for that day.
You could also use it for tasks that require tapping more frequently. How about the number of times that opposing counsel uses a certain word or phrase during opening or closing argument so that, when you stand up to give your response, you can point out that they said it too many times (or too few). Or perhaps you are figuring out how many items you have and want to avoid losing count half-way through.
The app worked great when I tested it yesterday, although I was just playing around with it and wasn't using it to keep track of anything real. I'm not even sure what task I will use this app for first, but I love knowing it is right there on my wrist, waiting for me. And since the app is free, there's no reason not to download it so that you have it handy the next time that you need to count.
Click here to get Clicker (free): 
