footnotes

Footnotes is a pedometer for the Playdate. That's the whole thing. You put it in your pocket, you go for a walk, and it counts your steps. No account, no setup, no nonsense.

I made it small on purpose. It does one thing, it does it cheerfully, and it's on a little yellow gadget with a crank, which turns out to be a surprisingly nice way to check whether you moved today.

How it works: Steps add up the whole time the app is open, so there's nothing to start or stop. The home screen shows today's count and how close you are to your goal. Flip left and right for Week, Month, and Year, and give the crank a spin to scrub across the days and read any one of them.

Hold Ⓐ and footnotes goes full-screen: a big, glanceable count with the time, the date, and a goal bar.
Tap left or right to switch the number between steps, miles, and kilometers.
Hold Ⓑ to drop back to where you were. It's the view you want when the Playdate's riding in your pocket and you just want to sneak a peek.

Set your daily goal with the crank. Watch the good days add up. It's an honest, quiet little tracker, and honestly it's kind of relaxing.

It counts across your other apps too!

footnotes isn't the only place your steps add up. If you have Crankcaster (podcasts), lilmixtape (music), Pour Over (streaming radio), or Read Watch Listen Play (lil daily gifts)

Hold Ⓐ in any of them and you get the same pedometer while your audio keeps playing. Walk with your podcast, and both apps count the same steps into the same place. footnotes is just the app that's only about the walking.

(This works through stepshare, a tiny open standard for a shared step count on the Playdate. If you make Playdate apps and want yours to join in, it's free and on GitHub.)

One honest note

The Playdate only runs an app while it's awake and open, so footnotes counts during deliberate walks rather than quietly in the background all day. Pop it in your pocket when you head out and it'll do its thing. It won't tell you that you took 40 steps to the kitchen while it was asleep in a drawer, which, frankly, is fine.

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