Extremely inaccurate
Please don’t waste your money on this brand of glucose monitor. Readings are never even close to what my finger sticks show and could lead to severe medical issues if you only rely on what the monitor shows. There is no way to calibrate finger stick readings with what the sensor shows so it cannot “learn” and become more accurate. I stopped using the Freestyle Libre 8 months ago and switched to the Dexcom G7, but my Dexcom expired and I need my paycheck to pick up my next prescription. Saw I had an extra Freestyle and thought it was better than nothing, but this isn’t the case. It’s useless. Sensor reading on first use was 105. Finger stick 185!! Had I not remembered how wildly inaccurate the Freestyle was I would have not taken any insulin and went hours with high blood sugars. Getting ready for bed and just checked again. This time the sensor say my sugar level is 60 (I don’t feel low sugar effects) so I did a finger stick and my sugars are 110. Again the sensor could have caused me to sleep with high blood sugar had I of eaten or taken a glucose tab. Go with the Dexcom G7! Smaller, 30 minute warm up, has the ability to calibrate with finger sticks so it learns, but the main reason is it extremely accurate. Just removed this Freestyle sensor and trashed it. Thank God it was my last one.
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Response from developer
Thanks for the comment. We'll need more information to help with this issue, so please contact our Customer Care team at 855-632-8658.
Behind the times
So I used a freestyle, libre version one for years and the app has always been terrible. I got a freestyle Libre 3 two weeks ago. I love the live readings and the live alerts, but it’s practically useless when you consider the functionality of today’s technology. It doesn’t sync with Apple health, it doesn’t have any widgets, it doesn’t show live readings on your Apple Watch. All of these things should be a piece of cake for them to put together in this day and age -the only excuse that they could possibly have development time and money, which is to say they don’t have an excuse.
I’m getting an insulin pump in three months and I’m gonna switch to the Dexcom if they don’t get their act together by then. I should be able to have the sensor on my arm and glance at my Apple Watch or my phone and see the live glucose widget feedback instantly. If I have to open the app to see my glucose, I might as well still be tapping my arm. it’s 2024 and I can have chatGPT make me an app, you should be able to provide your customers with features that have been available elsewhere since 2020.
I’m getting an insulin pump in three months and I’m gonna switch to the Dexcom if they don’t get their act together by then. I should be able to have the sensor on my arm and glance at my Apple Watch or my phone and see the live glucose widget feedback instantly. If I have to open the app to see my glucose, I might as well still be tapping my arm. it’s 2024 and I can have chatGPT make me an app, you should be able to provide your customers with features that have been available elsewhere since 2020.
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Response from developer
Thanks for your feedback.
Needs to be so much better
The Freestyle Libre as wearable technology is a wonderful breakthrough in diabetic management, but the app is so rudimentary it’s a joke. People want to be able to use and synthesis the data being captured. The daily curves should be able to view actual reading numbers (the Dexcom app does this by scrolling with your finger across the curve and the reading numbers show up). Notes are viewable by hovering on a note, but only for the current day. Unavailable for historical daily graphs. You should be able to view more than one day at a time on the daily graph. For example, you should be able to view a 14 day, 30, 60 day graph as so many blood glucose apps will. Which brings me to another point. Libre data should be shared with many more apps. OURA, My Fitness Pal (or other popular meal tracker apps) so people can see the impact real time of particular foods. The app needs some serious work to take advantage of the advance this wearable technology represents. Ask diabetics what information they want! The data is already collected. Step up your game here.
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Response from developer
Thanks for letting us know. We appreciate the feedback.
Be careful entering your email address
The app is a little glitchy. When you setup the app, you enter your email address. But you only enter the address once, not twice like some apps require to be sure you entered the right address that is free of typos. I entered my address wrong. I noticed it during set up but there was no back button to go back and fix the mistake. Then, once I was done setting it up I went to my account profile to correct the mistake. You can change your name and birthday and password but you can’t change your email address. With the incorrect email address, you can not link app-to-app (I was trying to link to Veri). I called customer support to see if they could do update my email address from the back end. The answer was no. The only option is to deactivate your account and the reinstall the app with a new account. But that also means you lose the sensor you bought because the sensor only calibrates once.
This would be an easy fix for the developer: (1) either add the space to enter the email twice to confirm the right address, or (2) have a back button on the set up pages so people can fix their mistakes during set up, or (3) have a back door via customer service to fix wrong addresses without losing the sensor. The sensors aren’t cheap. When I finish this sensor, I’ll likely switch to a different model and not use Libre because this was an annoying defect in the app.
This would be an easy fix for the developer: (1) either add the space to enter the email twice to confirm the right address, or (2) have a back button on the set up pages so people can fix their mistakes during set up, or (3) have a back door via customer service to fix wrong addresses without losing the sensor. The sensors aren’t cheap. When I finish this sensor, I’ll likely switch to a different model and not use Libre because this was an annoying defect in the app.
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Response from developer
We'd like to follow up with this. Please give us a call at 855-632-8658 so we can better assist.
Crap ware
This software seems to get worse as time goes on. Abbot is a large corporation and should be able to attract good developers. I know since I’m a senior developer. This software misses entered information “at times”. It may show the missing info in the generated graph for the day, but misses it in the log. This is serious because when trying to decide to give yourself insulin or not you don’t have the data to make the determination. A good test group should be able to catch that, especially in the automated regression testing or functional testing. It’s inexcusable to have this happen.
Also, the readings are consistently off from what a glucometer is telling you, sometimes as much as 40-50 points. You would think that someone at Abbott checks these numbers against real blood sugar readings.
You would think that someone at Abbott checks these numbers against real blood sugar readings and shows them when the doctor pulls up the info to see if you were really in the range or not.
You need to provide more info for the doctors. I found out they don’t see some of the things, like what you entered for glucometer reading and shows them to the doctor when the doctor pulls up the info to see if you were really in the range or not.
They make it impossible to complain to them other than this rating item. There is no way to use the app to tell them if something is wrong. That means terrible management. I highly doubt if they even look at this also.
Also, the readings are consistently off from what a glucometer is telling you, sometimes as much as 40-50 points. You would think that someone at Abbott checks these numbers against real blood sugar readings.
You would think that someone at Abbott checks these numbers against real blood sugar readings and shows them when the doctor pulls up the info to see if you were really in the range or not.
You need to provide more info for the doctors. I found out they don’t see some of the things, like what you entered for glucometer reading and shows them to the doctor when the doctor pulls up the info to see if you were really in the range or not.
They make it impossible to complain to them other than this rating item. There is no way to use the app to tell them if something is wrong. That means terrible management. I highly doubt if they even look at this also.
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One flaw but otherwise great
I feel the Abbet freestyle libre is a great product, and this app is excellent for viewing my trends throughout the day and sharing with my healthcare team. The big key is knowing where my glucose levels are trending either up or down, which is much different than what you get from point in time blood glucose readings. I did find one flaw I would like the developers to correct, on a recent trip to Hawaii on a cruise ship it took me four days to go from California to Hawaii and back, and I crossed many time zones. I needed to keep changing times each day manually to match time zones and this essentially broke the app. I did revert that time to a prior or future time zone but then my phones time and time stamps were all off. It was a frustrating situation. I understand why you do this to prevent manipulation of the time to extend usage but you should consider another way to meter usage such as an internal or external time countdown to the sensor that can override these scenarios. Basically international travel is difficult with Libre based on the app design and needing to change times manually. Thanks.
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Response from developer
Thanks for letting us know. We appreciate the feedback.
Why don’t these things work ?
I have been using Libre products for a couple of years. This is my third sensor in a row that has given me a good reading and then on the next attempt I am told “sensor error: glucose reading is unavailable. try reading again in xxx hours”. Typically this happens if a I change a sensor before bed and take a single reading before I retire for the night. The next attempt to read the next day gives the above error with a 4-12 hour delay before I can read my glucose again. I love these things when they work, but dang if I can figure out why they are so fickle. I changed my pod at 1:30p today and got a good reading about an hour later. Life happened and I was unable to check again until 9:40p and I got the above error with a 4 hour recheck time. 4 hours from will be the middle of the night. I am betting I get a 12 hour “recheck time” in the AM because I will miss the window while asleep. My frustration level is through the roof.
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Readings Are Way Off!
I have been using this app with my iPhone 11 Pro Max for about 6 months. I started with the freestyle libre meter to read the sensor and changed to my smart phone because you have the option to leave notes which I thought was fabulous. I would say what I ate what I drank how long it was before I measured and how long after. I left all kind of information I started relying on it 100%. lately, the past couple of days I've been getting very low readings in the 40s and 50s. really scared me! I ate my glucose pills I drink juice I did everything I could to get my blood sugar up. And even after eating something high in carbs afterwards it will start falling quickly. That is just not like me. I decided to start testing my blood at the same time I test with the meter and found it off by about 100 points. Phone = 186, Freestyle sensor reader = 284. One Touch Ultra 2=244. All I can say is they're not even close. The scary part is I didn't even know. If we have to keep checking the accuracy of the phone app, it's a waste of time. Might as well just use the blood glucose meter and poke my fingers again and stop getting the Freestyle Sensors sent.
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Response from developer
Thank you for your comment. Please contact our Customer Care team at 855-632-8658 so we can better assist.
There is no current update for your app.
I’ve been using the freestyle Libre 14 day for INXS of a year. The last time your app was updated was it year ago. For the last month I’ve been having an issue with getting my sensors to scan. I’ve gone through the rigmarole of having customer service replace my sensors. But the problem is not with the individual sensors. In addition to going through all of that with your customer service division who by the way doesn’t listen. I have had my phone checked by my service provider and Apple. It appears that your free style libre libre link is not compatible with the current Apple update. I have now been without a glucose monitoring system for a month. Since I had been using your system for over a year when my other monitoring system broke I did not replace it. Your customer service department has replaced seven sensors. This would be wonderful but none of them will work because your app is out of date and no one seems to want to own up to this or give any idea of when it will be updated. How sad. I really really liked having this CGM but if it doesn’t work what good is it? I don’t expect that you will respond because that would be taking ownership of the issue. Please fix it soon.
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Response from developer
We're so sorry to hear this issue wasn’t resolved. Please give us a call at 855-632-8658 so we can better assist.
Okay but some real glitches
I realize that if you go more than 8 hours between readings there will be a gap in the data. What is frustrating are the unexplained short to medium length gaps that randomly appear.
Sometimes a reading that is reflected in the log is missing from the daily or last 24 hour chart. In some cases the gap has the clock icon indicating a time zone change. Not sure what causes that in the middle of July when I have stayed at home all day long. Sometimes the timing of the gaps appear correlated with use of the phone to place or receive a call, an activity one would think was anticipated in developing an app for an iPhone.
Not huge issues but very frustrating when they appear. Makes one lose confidence in the app generally. What else is going wrong that I do not see.
Sometimes a reading that is reflected in the log is missing from the daily or last 24 hour chart. In some cases the gap has the clock icon indicating a time zone change. Not sure what causes that in the middle of July when I have stayed at home all day long. Sometimes the timing of the gaps appear correlated with use of the phone to place or receive a call, an activity one would think was anticipated in developing an app for an iPhone.
Not huge issues but very frustrating when they appear. Makes one lose confidence in the app generally. What else is going wrong that I do not see.
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