Up Ahead
A beautiful, polished, Canadian-made countdown app has stolen my heart and transformed my relationship with my events.
Up Ahead is a countdown app for people who like nice things. The developer Dan Gauthier couldn't have done a finer job describing his latest application, Up Ahead, which hit the App Store in Late September. I've been using the application for the past month, and I wanted to share some thoughts on this terrific little application (tl;dr: I freakin' love it!).
The Problem
For a long time, I was searching for a beautiful & well-designed countdown application. It needed to look good, keep track of my past and future events, and I wanted it to be a standalone app rather than an app that was primarily designed around creating countdown widgets. Just those three things, should be simple, right?
Wrong. Countdown apps are a dime a dozen on the App Store, most are utterly hideous, and many are designed as apps primarily focused on creating countdown widgets. As a result, I could only find apps that did two of the three things I was looking for: maybe it looked good and was relatively well designed, but it was predominately geared towards creating widgets (Pretty Progress, for example). Or I found standalone apps that kept track of past & future events but weren't all that attractive. I sifted through and downloaded dozens upon dozens of apps that never entirely gave me the experience I was looking for. Then came Up Ahead.
Up Ahead
The main interface of Up Ahead shows current events, along with any upcoming plans, which in my case, involves lots of socializing and turkey.
Up Ahead is the first app I've come across that takes a relatively simple concept but wraps in a polished, unique, and charming application.
For starters, rather than showing upcoming dates as a list, which most apps do, Up Ahead presents the events you are counting down to on a continuous timeline, showing both the time to the event and the time between that event and its nearest neighbours. It's such an obvious implementation once you see it, yet I've yet to see another app present its data in this fashion.
Yes, Up Ahead has a range of customizable Lock Screen & Home Screen Widgets too!
Upon opening Up Ahead, you are shown the current date and any imminent events, and can scroll up or down to see past (completed) events or events further into the future. An arrow appears in the bottom right to instantly teleport you back to the current date if you've gone too far astray. And as events pile up, a menu on the top left gives you the ability to begin filtering events based on category icons. For example, I use the laptop icon for all Apple Events, and pressing that icon shows me any past and future Apple Events.
Adding an event is as easy as adding a name, date, category, and colour. In this example, you can see a start & end date for a trip I have coming up in November.
Event creation is also simple and beautiful. You add an event name, set a start and optional end date (great for trips), pick a category, colour, and optional pattern, and that's it! There's even the option for making events reoccur weekly, biweekly, monthly, or yearly.
Specific keywords, dates, categories, and milestones unlock new event patterns. But sometimes finding new patterns can be a bit tricky. For example, I added the "Super Bowl" to my timeline, but it wasn't until I added “Football” to the title that the new pattern unlocked. I hope future updates continue to expand the dictionary of phrases to unlock new designs.
But perhaps the most delightful addition to Up Ahead is the addition of patterns. These patterns serve as backgrounds for your events/widgets. They are unlocked as you use the app, either by creating many events, using specific keywords, or using different event categories. I've been using the app for a while, and my brain still explodes with dopamine each time I unlock a new pattern that I can then apply to any past or future events. I hope there are like a thousand of these, and I will do whatever it takes to find them all!
Changed Relationship with Events
With more traditional list-based countdown apps, I've tended to keep my event sparse (an upcoming trip, winter break, etc.), but Up Ahead has changed my relationship with how I look ahead to events. Now, I feel a desire to put many more significant events into the App, effectively creating a timeline of my life. I can see the dinners I went to, the events attended, and the trips taken, all as a single chronological representation that makes the app feel much more intimate. It's become more than a countdown app; it's a way of mapping my pathway through the year and the significant events that occur within it.
TidBits
Up Ahead launches with a number of alternate app icons and themes.
I also want to shout out a few other details that help make Up Ahead feel delightful. The subtle bobble animation when you touch an event or the way the settings icon in the upper right changes when you press on it adds to the app's splendour. Both are examples of the many little touches that help make Up Ahead feel like an app built with great care. Adding multiple colour themes and app icons is also a welcome addition to the app.
Future
I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I hope Up Ahead continues to see updates and a few more features moving forward. Specifically, I would like to see the ability to share an event with a user who also has Up Ahead installed. I'd also like the ability to add small notes inside an event for when I want to add a few more optional details. I'd like to see a search option added in the future, allowing me to narrow my search to specific phrases or names rather than scrolling through or performing a category filter. And finally, Up Ahead would be a perfect app for the Apple Watch, so I hope the developer consider translating Up Ahead into a companion for the Apple Watch in the future.
In Sum
I freakin' love Up Ahead. It's a beautiful, whimsical, intuitive countdown app that has changed my relationship with my events.
Up Ahead is available on the App Store for free with the option to subscribe for $1.49/month, $9.99/year, or $29.99 as a one-time purchase. The app's price for the value it provides me was a no-brainer, and I smashed the buy button so hard I nearly sprained my finger, but your mileage may vary. Give it a shot; you might end up loving it as much as I do.
