Support

The camera can’t see me, or framing takes forever.

Put the phone on the floor and prop it against something so it is angled up a bit — a phone lying flat sees the ceiling. Stand about six feet (two metres) away, turned so the phone is off to one side of you rather than straight in front, unless the stretch says otherwise. The app will keep talking you through it, and it never gets stuck: every step gives up and moves on by itself.

It asked me to measure my range again.

The app needs to know your own comfortable range before it can build a corridor around it, and it measures that once per stretch, per side. It measures again when something has changed — you turned the other way, the phone moved, or the first reading did not agree with what your body then did. It is about ten seconds a side.

Why does it tell me to hold still instead of stretch further?

Because holding still is what it scores. The gap in the kelp sits at the depth you settled on yourself, and staying near that depth is the whole skill. Going deeper earns nothing, and going deeper than you can comfortably hold is the thing the app is built to avoid asking of you. It is also what the research finds: a gentle hold gains as much range over the weeks as a hard one. The sources are on the front page.

Where is my range number?

It appears after five sessions of the same stretch, and it is then refreshed every fortnight rather than after every session. A single day’s measurement swings by about ten percent on the same body, which is more than a fortnight of real improvement — so a number that changed every day would mostly be showing you noise, and it would sometimes show a fall that had not happened. Scores › a stretch has the reading and the chart.

My whiskers went up but my range did not.

They are two different numbers with two different jobs. Whiskers are for turning up: you earn some every session, they only ever go up, and they are what the streak is built on. The range reading is the slow one, and it is the one that is about your body.

I got a new phone. Where is my history?

If you set the new phone up from an encrypted iCloud or Finder backup, or with Quick Start, your history comes across with it. There is no account and no sync, by decision — which also means that using the app on an iPhone and an iPad gives you two separate histories rather than one shared one.

Can I use it without letting the camera run?

Not for a scored session — your body position is the controller, so there is nothing to play with. Free swim, which you steer with your finger, works with the camera switched off. Nothing the camera sees is ever recorded or sent anywhere; see the privacy policy.

A stretch hurts, or I can’t get into one.

Skip it. The app is not a physiotherapist and does not check your form — it can see roughly where your joints are and nothing more, which is why it never tells you your form is good. If you have an injury or a condition that stretching might affect, ask someone qualified before using it.

How do I delete everything?

Delete the app. Everything it stores is inside it; there is no copy anywhere else.

Something else.

Write to contact@otterstretch.com. Feature requests are welcome and are read.