Pedometer (PFA)

SECUSO Research Group

About this app

Privacy Friendly Pedometer can count your steps in background, provides you an overview about your walked steps and allows you to define custom walking modes and notifications if the achievement of your daily step goal is in danger. The app requires minimal permissions (Run at startup and prevent phone from sleeping). It belongs to the Privacy Friendly Apps group developed by the research group SECUSO at Technische Universität Darmstadt. More information can be found an secuso.org/pfa

Privacy Friendly Pedometer can count your daily walked steps while it runs in background. It gives you an overview about your walked steps, distance and about the calories you have burned while walking. You can add and choose different walking modes with different step lengths, such as walking or running, to improve the calculation of distance and calories.

In a special training mode you can track your training sessions. To each training session additional information, such as feeling or a description, can be added.

What makes Privacy Friendly Pedometer different from other pedometers?

1. Minimal amount of permissions:
* Run at startup: This permission is required to restart the step counting when your phone boots.
* prevent phone from sleeping: On some devices the processor falls asleep and prevents counting steps. With this permission the app can keep the processor awake while counting steps.

Most of Pedometer Apps in the Google Play Store require additional permissions. E.g. accessing the network or Internet which is mostly used to display advertisement. Some apps have access to GPS or telephony data.

2. No advertisement.
Many other free apps in the Google Play Store dazzle annoying advertising and also shortens battery life.

You can reach us via
Twitter - @SECUSOResearch (https://twitter.com/secusoresearch)
Mastodon - @SECUSO_Research@bawü.social (https://xn--baw-joa.social/@SECUSO_Research/)
Job opening - https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/Job_Offers_1557.php

Ratings and reviews

I've used this for a while because it's minimal and doesn't need a subscription. There is only a pedometer, no integrated maps, trackmaker, etc. It works best when your phone has a step tracker in its sensors; on a low-grade phone without the correct sensor, I had to turn up the accelerometer sensitivity to very high.

App is accurate, to calibrate it to your step length; you go to Settings - Walking Modes - then adjust the step length to match the distance you walked. If you don't have a measured mile somewhere, you can use your car to measure a mile or some shorter distance if you are not up to miles yet or possibly google maps and walk it. then adjust your steps to match the distance. Have a good time getting out.

This app is great! It does everything and maintains my data privacy. The only thing I would tweek is when I want to scroll backwards by weeks, days or months; if it was a dial function or something to make it easier to then scroll back to the present calendar. Ps. Do you make a calculator app? I swapped my broken phone for a replacement but the replacement was missing many of the usual apps ☹

What's new

- Update translations
- Bug fixes and improvements