Caret: Automate your life with detailed statuses (app review)

Automation is seen in a negative light with most people. You read stories all the time about how automation is eventually going to replace everyone’s job. There is no question that automation is already replacing a lot of routine jobs but we shouldn’t hate automation because of one negative aspect. At its core, automation is used to make our lives easier by making us more efficient and taking over the tedious parts of our lives. For example, I work at a biotech where we have various automated liquid handlers that transfer liquids to different locations so that the scientist doesn’t have to manually transfer it by hand.

Caret is a unique app that lets you automate custom statuses so that your contacts know when you are available or busy. Think AIM away messages but much more sophisticated.

Caret is powerful because it uses your device’s built-in sensors to detect environmental changes which can trigger an automated status. For example, if you are driving your phone’s sensor will pick up the movement and trigger a status saying you are “In Vehicle”. You can also pre-define your sleeping time so that your phone will trigger a “Sleeping” status when it is at a certain time. There a ton of options that you can connect to Caret that will allow you to trigger an automated status. You can even use Caret’s public API to integrate third-party apps so that when you use that app, it will trigger its own unique status.

You can also control what your contacts can see about your statuses. You can switch between default contacts, trusted contacts, VIP contacts, and blocked contacts that have differing levels of access to your statuses.

Caret has its own messaging platform where you can send free messages to other Caret users. These messages are end-to-end encrypted by ZeroKit so that only you and your contact will be able to view the message. Caret also allows you to make phone calls to other Caret users so you can talk to your friends for free.

 

Overall

Caret is an incredibly powerful app that lets you provide detailed information to your contacts through automated statuses. The ability of Caret to leverage your phone’s sensors to trigger specific statuses is genius and super useful. Caret has the ability to know if you’re in a meeting by checking your synced calendar which you can set a unique status. This provides timely information for your friends so that they can refrain from blowing up your phone with texts.

The biggest hurdle with Caret isn’t functioning, but user adoption. To enjoy all the great features of Caret, you need to get your contacts to download the app. There are tons and tons of messaging-based apps in the App Store and Google Play Store. I had difficulty getting my friends to download the app because they wanted to use iMessage instead. Caret is also geared towards the more tech-savvy folk. I would be pretty confident in saying that my mom would have no idea how to use this app or even figure out how it could be beneficial to her life. If Caret was easier to understand and explained how it could benefit the user in simpler terms it would get more people on board with downloading the app. Caret has a ton of promise and if you’re about automating your life you should definitely check it out.