What has changed, and when

• Care

  Every past visit is there, and you can correct one. Each thing on the care register now keeps a list of every visit you have recorded against it. Open one and you can change its date, its note and what you wrote down at the time, or take it off altogether. Correcting the most recent one moves the next date due with it, so a date typed in wrong no longer leaves the reminder wrong for good. A visit you ticked on a log entry says where it came from, and its date follows that entry.

• Care

  Hide what your horse does not have, and add what it does. A register full of things that are not yours is noise. Anything on it can be hidden, and everything you recorded against it is kept in case you want it back later. You can add your own care item too, with its own interval — whatever your horse actually has. One you added and never recorded anything against can be removed outright.

• Medication

  A dose can be every four weeks, or any other stretch. The schedule used to stop at weekly, which was no use for anything given monthly. There are now presets up to every four weeks, and a custom setting for any number of hours, days or weeks.

• Fixed

  Medication reminders were not arriving. Only the end of a course reminded you. A dose that repeats reminded you about nothing at all, quietly, whatever schedule you had set. It now reminds you on the day the next one is due.

• Log

  The log screen is far shorter. Questions with more answers than fit across the screen used to spread over two rows of buttons each, so a handful of them filled the page. They are now one line you tap to choose from. Anything with two or three answers keeps its buttons, so yes or no is still one tap.

• Throughout

  The editors look like the rest of the app. Opening an episode, editing a medication, recording a visit, settings, export, backup and the plan editors used to appear as plain grey system forms. They now match the app they belong to. The bar along the bottom is frosted glass with the page moving underneath it.

• Small

  Tidier care rows, and removing something asks first. Each row on the register keeps Record to hand and folds the rest into a menu. Removing a care item or a medication now asks before it does it.

• Speed

  The Report page no longer sits and thinks. On a journal with months of entries in it, opening Report used to hang for several seconds before anything appeared. It now comes up straight away. Nothing you have written was touched.

• Widgets

  The widget stopped naming somebody else's horse. Its buttons used to read “Log Hendrix Morning” — the name of the one horse the app was first built for. They now read “Log this morning”, whichever horse the journal is about, and however many there are.

• The name

  It is called HorseDex, everywhere you can see it. The app, its widgets and the privacy policy all say HorseDex now, and there is an address to write to: support@horsedex.co.uk.

• Widgets

  In the widget gallery they were still called Hendrix. The app had been renamed and its two widgets had not, so adding one to your home screen meant hunting for the old name — confusing on a phone that has both apps on it. They are HorseDex and HorseDex Daily now.

• Empty to start

  It starts completely empty. No demo horse, no sample entries. The first thing it asks is your horse's name and what you want to keep an eye on, and everything you write stays on your phone.

• It records

  It never diagnoses, and it never will. There is no laminitis score, no colic checker and no lameness grade anywhere in it. It shows you what you wrote, side by side, and leaves the conclusion to you and your vet.

The daily log

• The everyday six

  Appetite, drinking, droppings, urination, energy and behaviour. One shared scale across all of them, and they are the only things switched on to begin with. Everything else stays out of your way until something gives you a reason to watch it.

• Exercise

  Hacking, schooling, jumping, in-hand, long lines, lunge, hill work, gallops. A lesson is a tick on top rather than a type of its own, so a schooling lesson still counts as schooling, and the report can tell taught work from solo work.

• Which way is better

  You decide what counts as good news. Lying down more is a comfort for one horse and an early warning for another, so when you switch a field on you say which way is better — or that neither is. Nothing is assumed.

Care and appointments

• One register

  When each was last done, and when it comes round again. Farrier, physio, dentist, saddler, vaccinations, worming, plus the vet, massage, weighbridge and clip. The intervals belong to each horse, not to the app, and you can change any of them.

• Book it in time

  The reminder is to book, not to panic. A nudge a month ahead so you get in before they are full, then a chaser two weeks before it is due. Booking it silences both, because getting it booked was the whole point.

• Worming

  Which wormer you used, not just when. The register shows the product beside the date, so the rotation is something you can look at rather than something you have to remember.

• Vaccinations

  Batch numbers are kept with the date. Off the vial or the passport sticker — it is in front of you for about a minute and wanted for years.

• What happened

  A booking never turns itself into a visit. If the farrier is booked for the 5th and comes on the 12th, the next one counts from the 12th. Nothing is assumed to have happened just because it was in the diary.

When something goes wrong

• Episodes

  A colic, an abscess or a lameness keeps its own thread. One thing with a beginning, updates as it goes on, and an end — instead of scattered ticks across a fortnight that never quite tell you it was all the same problem. More than one can run at a time.

• The right questions

  Opening an episode switches on what is relevant. Start a foot episode and the feet questions turn up: digital pulse, hoof temperature, whether a shoe came off. Close it and the app asks whether you want to keep tracking them rather than deciding for you.

• Box rest and photos

  Box rest belongs to the episode that caused it. With a start and an end you can change. You can attach photographs or video to any of it — a wound healing over ten days reads better as pictures than as words.

Medication

• As prescribed

  Name, dose, how often, why, and a photograph of the label. Written down the way the vet wrote it. The app works out the next dose from the interval you enter and suggests nothing of its own.

• Courses that end

  A course with an end date reminds you on its last day. And then stays on the record. Finishing is not the same as disappearing.

Weight and other measurements

• Two kinds of weight

  Tape estimates and weighbridge readings are drawn as separate lines. A weighbridge is the truth when you have one; the tape shows the direction in between. Averaging the two together would have hidden both.

• Worm egg counts

  Counts are tracked over time in eggs per gram. Alongside weight. They are on nobody's schedule, so the app will never tell you one is due — when to count is your call.

Your horse's profile

• Standing facts

  The things that are true all the time, not just today. Previous laminitis, EMS, PPID, a cresty neck, fat pads, asthma, arthritis — tick what applies and add a note in your own words, such as which year it was. Add your own if something is missing.

• Never added up

  They sit on one screen and stay there. No score, no risk level, no traffic light. Leaving one unticked means you have not recorded it, not that the answer is no — and the app never works one out from anything it has seen.

Yours, and private

• No account, no server

  There is nothing to sign up for and nothing is sent anywhere. No analytics, no tracking, no advertising. What you write is on your phone and nobody else can read it, including us.

• Lock and backup

  Face ID or your passcode can lock it. And you can keep a copy in your own iCloud. Photographs travel in that copy; video never does, because one clip can outweigh years of writing. Anything left behind is named, so a restore tells you what did not come back.

• More than one horse

  Add a second and everything separates cleanly. Entries, weights, appointments, medication and the profile all belong to one horse, and the app stays out of your way while there is only one.

On your home screen

• Three sizes

  A widget that changes with its size. Small shows what you have logged today, medium the last fortnight as small charts, and large the week ahead. Tapping any of them opens the app at the matching screen rather than the front door.

• Daily

  A second widget for today and tomorrow. What is planned for both, today's counts, and a shortcut straight into the log.

• Already filled in

  Tapping through arrives with the right thing selected. If the plan says schooling this afternoon, the log opens on that afternoon with schooling already picked, so you confirm rather than retype. It never records anything on its own.

• Whole journal

  Export a full copy, not just a date range. Every entry, the weekly plans and their earlier versions, appointments, weights, and anything edited or deleted along the way — one file, which HorseDex reads. The older exports for the vet stayed where they were.

• Nothing is moved

  A copy is a copy. Exporting changed nothing in the app it came out of, and bringing the same file in twice added a second copy of nothing.

• Sundays

  Tomorrow said “Nothing planned” on a Sunday. The widget only ever looked at the week it was already showing, so on a Sunday a week that had been planned came up empty. It reads into next week now, and so does whatever it picks out as the next thing due.

• Daily

  Today on the left, tomorrow on the right. Each with its morning and evening plan, a tick against whichever half of the day was already written up, and one button that opened straight onto the log.

• Widget sizes

  All three sizes could be chosen again. Adding a widget offered small and large greyed out and refused to take them. Small, medium and large all worked after this.

• Small

  Has today been written up? Two ticks for morning and evening, the day's counts underneath, and a button onto whichever half was still missing.

• Medium

  The last fortnight as small charts. Exercise and the day-to-day counts drawn out, with the latest weight and how much it had moved.

• Large

  The whole week's plan. Every day with its morning and afternoon slot, colour coded the same way as the app, today's row picked out, and appointments listed underneath.

• Always current

  They kept themselves up to date. Writing an entry or changing the plan updated them; there was nothing to refresh.

• Colour coded

  Appointments red, extras green, exercise purple. So a glance at the week said what each day was actually asking of you. It applied to the week being planned and to every week already saved.

• More room

  The bar along the bottom and the title bar both shrank. The heavy strip behind the buttons went, and the title bar stopped leaving a large empty gap at the top of every screen.

• Social ride

  Social ride joined the weekly plan. As one of the fixed commitments, counted as a workout, so the planner would not stack another session onto the same day.

• Recent list

  Extras showed up in the log again. Massage, baths, appointments and the rest saved correctly but stayed invisible in the recent list. They appeared as small tags on each entry after this.

• Custom minutes

  The Custom duration button did nothing when tapped. It opened a box for any number of minutes after this.

• Weight chart

  “All time” cut off older readings. The chart ignored anything older than the first journal entry, so early weights never appeared. All of them showed after this.

• Log, report, track

  The journal, its charts and the care list, native on the phone. Written and read entirely on the device, with an undo bar for the entry just made, and entry editing by tap or swipe through one shared form.

• The weekly plan

  A plan that could be saved, reopened and rolled forward. Earlier versions were kept rather than overwritten, so a week could be restored as it had been, and any slot could be edited by hand.

• Exports

  A spreadsheet, a PDF or a plain summary, for the dates you chose. Shared out of the app the ordinary way, for taking to an appointment.

• Dark mode

  White text on white had made whole screens unreadable. The app settled on its light colours whatever the phone's appearance was set to.

• Retired

  The browser version stopped. Its records had already moved to the phone, and keeping two places to write the same thing down was the thing worth ending.

• Weight

  A target weight, drawn on the chart. With the readings joined up as a line so the direction was visible, and a plain marker of whether it was moving towards the target or away from it.

• Measurements

  Readings taken now and then got their own history. Rather than being lost among the daily entries.

• The plan

  The weekly plan fitted one phone screen. The plan came first with the week picker folded underneath it, and earlier versions of a plan were kept rather than replaced.

• Custom duration

  An exercise session could be any number of minutes. Instead of only the lengths on offer.

• Apply changes

  Suggested changes swapped individual slots. Rather than replacing the week you had already put together.

• Saving

  A failed save said so instead of failing silently. Both when writing something new and when removing it, and a page that had got itself into a mess recovered rather than refusing to start.

• Checks

  Entries were checked before they were stored. Dates, numbers and lengths, so a malformed entry was refused at the door rather than written down wrong.

• Offline

  The offline copy stopped serving the wrong thing. A missing picture or stylesheet used to come back as the page itself, which broke it in odd ways.

• Trends

  More lying down was being shown as a worsening. For this horse it was the opposite, so the trend was flipped to count it as an improvement. It is the reason HorseDex asks you which way is better rather than deciding for you.

• Errors

  A failed save came back as a broken page. It came back as a plain message after this.

• The journal

  Daily observations, exercise, appointments, weights and turnout kit. Written on the phone, in the yard, in the order the day happened.

• Reports

  The record read back as charts and summaries. Which was the point of writing it down in the first place.

• On the phone

  It could be kept on the home screen like an app. And it still opened when the signal did not. Records were kept in one place, so the same journal opened on whichever device you picked up.