Is there a Browser or Desktop version of Bearable?

No. Currently, Bearable is only available on mobile and tablet devices. 

Whilst we do understand the potential benefits of a desktop or browser version of Bearable, our priority has to be focused on first making the features of the app as helpful as possible. 

As a small, essentially independent team, we make product decisions based on feedback and votes from our community and – whilst a desktop/browser version of Bearable is a popular request – it’s never the top request from within the community vs. for example, dedicated pain tracking tools, options for PDF export, improved medication and nutrition features, etc.

We do hope to be able to work on a desktop or browser-based version in the future. We’re likely to get there faster if you tell people about the app, leave positive reviews, and/or subscribe.

If you’re a MacBook user, it’s possible to download Bearable to your laptop/desktop via the Apple App Store, but this is still just the app as opposed to a dedicated desktop app. To view the app at a bigger size on your MacBook, open Bearable and then use the top navigation on your desktop to click on Window, and then click on Zoom.

👋 Still have questions?

Let us know by contacting support@bearable.app and a member of the Bearable team can help you with anything you need.

Are blank entries incorporated into insights?

If something is left blank, then it’s just not included in your correlations/reports. 

However, there is one exception to this: Binary Factors (but not variable Factors) that are left blank are assumed not to have happened, rather than being blank. That said, we are working on introducing a feature that lets you mark binary factors as either ‘blank’ or ‘none’. 

If you’re tracking over the long term, the odd missed data point also shouldn’t have too big of an impact on your correlations either.

👋 Still have questions?

Let us know by contacting support@bearable.app and a member of the Bearable team can help you with anything you need.

What does ‘marking day complete’ do?

The main goal of this feature is to improve insights by making it easier to understand when there were days where your data was incomplete. 

However, there are a couple of other reasons to use this feature, too:

    1. Sometimes you might forget to complete some information and want to know whether to go back to yesterday and fill something in, so you can quickly see on your calendar which days have missing info.

    2. You can use the Day Complete toggle to get an update on any emerging trends and new correlations.

👋 Still have questions?

Let us know by contacting support@bearable.app and a member of the Bearable team can help you with anything you need.

What are all the different scales used in Bearable?

The Mood & Energy sections use a 1 to 10 scale. Unlike the symptoms section, these are both single metrics, and so we felt it made sense to allow a greater range for them as the potential for overwhelm is much lower.

The Symptoms section uses a 0 to 4 scale (none, mild, moderate, severe, and unbearable). We chose this scale because for people with multiple health conditions, each with multiple symptoms, showing repeated 0 to 10 scales became overwhelming. 

The Health Measurements section uses customisable ratings which can incorporate anything from 0 to 20k steps, a 0 – 10 pain scale, blood pressure readings, heart rate measures, etc. 

The Bowel Movements section uses the Bristol Stool chart (type 1 to type 7), which is a widely used clinical scale that represents different types of Bowel Movement (e.g. lumpy, smooth, watery, etc.)

The Sleep Quality and Custom Ratings sections both use a 1 to 5 scale. For custom ratings, this was chosen so that, for someone with many custom ratings, the section wouldn’t become overwhelming. This is different to the severity scale used in the symptoms section, which only measures the worsening of a symptom, because custom ratings can be used for positive measures (e.g. Productivity). For sleep quality, this was chosen so as not to dominate the Sleep section with e.g. a 10-point scale or a clinical 28 question survey. 

Note. If you’d like to track Sleep Quality using a more granular scale, e.g. 0 to 10 or even 0 to 100, you can do so by creating a custom Health Measurement. Remember to select ‘next day’ in the Impacts tab if you want to view which factors correlate with changes in this metric.

Within the Other Factors section, it’s possible to create Binary factors, which you can select if the Factor happened vs. didn’t happen or Variable scales, which you can select if you want to log the amount that something happened. There are two types of Variable scale, ‘little to a lot’ and ‘low to high’. Variable scales allow you to view correlations between the amount by which a factor occurred (e.g. lots of coffee) and how it impacts changes in symptom severity. This is helpful when, for example, identifying your tolerance level for something such as the amount of caffeine you can consume before your sleep is negatively impacted.

👋 Still have questions?

Let us know by contacting support@bearable.app and a member of the Bearable team can help you with anything you need.

Change or customise Symptom scales e.g. 0 to 10


The default symptom severity scale in Bearable uses a 0 to 4 scale: None, Mild, Moderate, Severe, and Unbearable. This scale was chosen by Bearable founder James, as he found it quicker, easier, and less clinical to make entries this way when logging his migraine symptoms. 

Whilst it’s not possible to change the default symptom scale, you can create custom symptom rating scales using custom Health Measurements:

    1. Enable the ‘health measurements’ section on your home screen using the ‘customise homepage’ button at the foot of the home screen.
    2. Tap the … icon on the Health Measurements section
    3. Tap on ‘Add/edit’
    4. Tap on ‘Create custom measurement’
    5. Name your measurement, e.g. Back Pain
    6. Select a measurement, e.g. 0 – 10
    7. Select Average, Total, or Latest – this will also impact reports for these metrics, but can be changed at any time.
    8. Select decimal places e.g. 0 for round numbers or 2 for a more granular rating.
    9. Select an icon
    10. Tap the check mark to save this measurement

View different reports for custom Health measurements.

    1. You can view trends for these measurements by tapping on the … icon, then selecting ‘graphs’, and then selecting the specific metric from above the graph.

    2. You can view correlations with these metrics by tapping on the Impacts tab, tapping on Mood, and then selecting your custom Health measurement.

    3. You can compare them to other symptoms and factors by opening the Trends tab, rotating your device 90 degrees to landscape/horizontal mode, and then using the two menus below the chart (to plot symptoms, moods, energy, sleep, and health measurements) and the menu in the top right corner above the chart (to plot factors).

👋 Still have questions?

Let us know by contacting support@bearable.app and a member of the Bearable team can help you with anything you need.

Change when my day begins and ends?

It’s not currently possible to change the start and end times of your day. However, provided you’re using the time periods feature in the Symptoms and Other Factors sections of Bearable, this shouldn’t negatively impact your insights and reports.

Alternatively, if you’d prefer to log changes in your health outcomes (Mood, Symptoms, Energy, Sleep) using a time stamp to better reflect your day, you can do this by using custom Health Measurements. You can learn more about configuring these here: https://youtu.be/C6LpL-xPYI8?si=wz_XBOQuEYiAax3Q&t=3094

👋 Still have questions?

Let us know by contacting support@bearable.app and a member of the Bearable team can help you with anything you need.

How to enter data past midnight

It’s not currently possible to make entries past midnight. However, provided you’re using the time periods feature in your Symptoms and Other Factors section, this shouldn’t negatively impact your insights.

If you’d like to log something as having happened on a specific day but after midnight, we recommend logging this as an Extra Note, Symptom Note, or Mood Note at e.g. 11:59. You’ll be able to log notes of things that happened after midnight and refer back to these using the timeline.

If you’d like to log something after midnight that you think may impact your sleep, you should add this to your Sleep Factors section so that Bearable knows that this happened before you went to sleep.

👋 Still have questions?

Let us know by contacting support@bearable.app and a member of the Bearable team can help you with anything you need.

How to track or edit hydration?

It’s currently possible to track hydration by number of ‘cups’ in the Nutrition section. 

The unit of measurement can be edited from ‘fluid ounces (Oz)’ to ‘litres (L)’. To do so:

    1. Open the settings screen
    2. Scroll down to the ‘customise’ section
    3. Tap on Units
    4. In the ‘water’ section, select your preferred unit of measurement

If you’d like to track hydration differently, there are a number of options available using custom Nutrition Factors. For example, you could track:

    • Specific types of hydration, e.g. Juice, Water, Tea, Coffee, Protein shake, etc.
    • Specific quantities of hydration, e.g. >5 cups, >10 cups, >15 cups, etc.
    • Methods of hydration, e.g. 1 litre of water before midday, glass of water before sleep

To create a custom Nutrition Factors:

    1. Tap the … icon on the Nutrition section
    2. Tap the ‘add/edit’ button
    3. Type the name of your custom Factor in the ‘add factor’ section
    4. Select between binary (happened vs. didn’t happen) or variable (none, little, some, lots).
    5. Tap the check mark to save the factor

To log these Factors as having happened during a specific time period (am, mid, pm):

    1. Tap on the time period at the top of the nutrition section
    2. Then tap ‘factors’
    3. Then select your factor.

You may also find it helpful to track certain custom Nutrition factors in the Other Factors section, and this won’t change how these factors are incorporated into your insights.

👋 Still have questions?

Let us know by contacting support@bearable.app and a member of the Bearable team can help you with anything you need.

Can Bearable track my chronic illness?

Yes. Bearable was designed to make it possible to track any type of chronic, rare, or hard-to-diagnose physical, mental, or neurological health condition. However, due to the vast number of different health conditions, not all of them are default options within the app. 

If your health condition doesn’t appear in the app, you can add it by following these steps:

    1. Tap the … icon on the Symptoms section
    2. Tap on the Add/edit symptoms option
    3. Tap on the Add Symptom Group button
    4. Name the symptom group after your condition e.g. Depression
    5. Select an icon and save the symptom group
    6. Tap into the symptom group
    7. Type a symptom in the search bar at the top of the screen to add it to the group
    8. Where needed, you can move existing symptoms from one group to another
    9. If the symptom exists across multiple conditions, you can name it with the condition in parentheses, e.g. ‘Irritability (Depression)’

Note. Optionally, you can track your condition as a symptom by adding e.g. Depression to the existing ‘Mental Health’ Symptom group. This will allow you to just track your condition overall, which some people find less overwhelming than tracking all of their individual symptoms. 

What we’ve personally found most helpful is to track only the highest priority symptoms of any condition i.e. the symptoms that you’re most struggling with. For example, instead of tracking all of the traits of ADHD, you might choose to only track:

    • Mood swings
    • Task paralysis
    • Stimming

The Symptoms section is used for tracking changes in symptom severity score, but if you’d like to also track symptom frequency, duration, or use a different scale (e.g. 0 to 10), you can do so by using Custom Health Measurements. To learn more about creating custom Health Measurements you can view our guide to setting these up:

👋 Still have questions?

Let us know by contacting support@bearable.app and a member of the Bearable team can help you with anything you need.