MyFitnessPal has become an ad-filled mess

I've been a big advocate of this app for a long time now. It is extremely helpful particularly when putting in food products from various companies because it has the ability to scan the barcodes of individual products rather that attempting to guess what sort of calories are in something. Take Greek yogurt for example: There are hundreds of different brands and types so you need more information than just "Greek Yogurt" to get an accurate readout. The bar code scanner is extremely helpful in this regard because most of the time, it gets the caloric values and serving size exactly right.

I've stood by this app for years because of this but lately, they updated the interface and instead of offering you incentives to want to pay for the upgraded version, they are trying to bully you into doing it by really awful methods that just makes me angry at them.

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I understand that the creators are not doing this app out of the goodness of their hearts and they need to make money but I am the type of consumer that believes that there is always a free or near free option that is just as good and I also think that $10 a month is too much for any app, regardless of what it does.

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For most people I think it is going to take them a while to figure out what is actually going on and what to click on and well, that is something that is going to happen when their food database has nearly every food product in the world stored in their memory. You have to look for a bit but if you are like me and spend a bunch of time eating the same things every day or have quite a limited "menu" then it saves all the stuff that you frequently eat. This is fantastic and I love the app for that reason.

However, I would imagine that over the years they haven't been getting enough people to subscribe to the paid content and they are attempting to kind of coerce you into doing so in a rather heavy-handed manor.

These are harmless enough but you are constantly bombarded with them and they do this thing where the banner moves to where you just happened to be putting your finger next. Other times, they have ads that are in the way of what you are trying to do and if you slip and press on them, it hijacks what the app was doing and I don't know about you, but when that happens to me I immediately hit the button that shows me what programs I have open and close the new window before it even has a chance to show me what they are trying to sell to me.

IT kind of reminded me of the ads that would appear on basically all websites in the past and how I never knew anyone that actually clicked on them or actually believed they were the 1 millionth visitor and had won a free Ipad.

They also are trying to offer too many services and while I guess someone is interested in having it link to multiple devices such as their Garmin, I am not so busy that I can't just enter that information on my own.

I still recommend MyFitnessPal but they have really stepped up their rather aggressive method of attempting users to sign up for the paid app. I am the kind of person that will pay for an app if it is 1) reasonably priced and 2) makes me want to get it for the premium service.

I have never, and will never, reward any company that attempts to inconvenience their users to the point where they eventually give in and hand over money. I go out of my way to make sure that they never get my money.

So just know that I still think this is a good app, but just be prepared to be constantly harassed by the app itself to spend money and I will admit that my disdain for the new interface is probably like how upset my Mom would get when they re-arranged the layout of the supermarket.

So if you have never used MyFitnessPal it probably wont bother you as much as it does me, so go ahead and check it out. It is excellent for tracking your food intake but not so great for tracking exercise. Your smartwatch can do that for you.