Leave a Review Octopus Watch
Edited: Stopped working
Edit: With help from the developer, who has been in touch & very helpful since my original Review, I’m trying to resolve the issues I’ve had which appear to be Octopus Energy’s issues & not the App Developer.
I have re-rated the review from two stars to five in the interests of clarity.
Original Review: The app itself is good but it’s recently stopped working on the last update. The history will no longer load despite the data being visible on the Octopus Energy website. The data is being read from the meter & I can see it if I log into my account but no longer on the app. Initially I started to delete the app & re-install it & this would drag through the data & update the app but recently this has also stopped working.Show lessIisteveiI
Developer Response
Hi, sorry to hear something is going wrong. Drop me an email at contact@smarthound.uk with your account number and API key and I can help you out. There are a myriad of things that can go wrong, but what usually happens is that something goes wrong on Octopus Energy's end when updating your account when switching tariffs. I can help you pinpoint the issue and either help you fix it or point you in the right direction for getting support to resolve the issue from Octopus Energy.Working faultlessly
I have been using this App for 11 months now seamlessly. I had a smart meter installed by EDF a year before that and when I changed to octopus in Sept 20 the switch worked well and this third party app is terrific. Works seamlessly and has paid for itself in financial savings and sheer ease of use. The actual Octopus website is good, but this app is even easier to use.Show lesstopicalcat
Got Octopus Agile Tariff - This app is a must have!
This is a brilliant app I use it daily to save myself wasting money on using electricity at the best times. Sometimes just waiting a few minutes to the next 30 minute slot can halve the cos. It’s great to have the ability to know when to charge my electric car tonight or is it cheaper tomorrow night possibly. I also have the now and next prices on my Apple Watch face for quick reference. However since the last watch update has stopped working on my older version of the Apple Watch. The developer contacted me with the solution to getting it working again in Watch series 3 😊 was also very detailed in her response to me. Finally a developer who cares about the app and genuinely wants to assist 👍👍Show lessPete Lawrance
Developer Response
Hi Pete, just updating my response as well. Thanks for getting in touch, and always feel free to reach out to me if you have issues, questions, etc at contact@smarthound.uk. For other users: there have been a number of bugs introduced in WatchOS lately. Get in touch with me if you are using an Apple Watch Series 3. If you are on a Series 4, 5, 6 or SE: (1) restart the Apple Watch, and (2) open the Octopus Watch app directly from the app screen on the Apple Watch. This should resolve the issue.Would be great if it worked.
Unfortunately Octopus don’t seem to be able to see my modern second generation ex-British Gas smart meters, so I have to manually give them a meter reading every month. This is not what I signed up for.
But they still pretend to tell me how much gas and electricity I consume. And charge me £1.99 for an App that will never work.
Their tariffs are cheap, but when it comes to service, or paid-for App, email, phone or Twitter, you certainly get what you pay for.
Edit: The developer has contacted me via this review, for which I am grateful.
Since leaving my review I have been advised that the second generation Smart Meters installed by British Gas go dumb as soon as you leave them. OctopusEnergy didn’t tell me this. This App doesn’t tell you this.
This means that this App will never work as no one can see the data gathered by the meter.
I now have to wait until OctopusEnergy can get round to changing my 4 year old Smart Meters into new ones. What an incredible waste of resources and money.
Presumably, when I leave OctopusEnergy because their customer service is not what it is cracked up to be, I will need to have yet another one... ad fininitum.
It wasn’t clear to me that this was a third party App when I bought it yesterday. If I had know then what I know now, I wouldn’t have bought it, as it will never work unless or until OctopusEnergy replace my meters.
It’s only two quid. But that’s not the point.Show lessI really don’t want a namenick
Developer Response
Hi, this app is not made or supported by Octopus Energy. As a developer I of course depend on the information received through Octopus Energy. This does sadly mean that if you have a broken meter, the app also cannot pull in your data. Keep pushing them though, they should and will eventually fix the meter for you.A must have for those on Octopus’ smart tariffs
An essential app, particularly for those on Agile Octopus. You can see your usage, compare costs, and plan your future usage. Detailed reports give you all the information that you need.
The predictive rates, although not often correct in terms of cost, are usually pretty good at identifying cheapest and more expensive periods.
The developer is extremely responsive to suggestions and questions. The subscription is well-worth the additional cost — if not for the additional features, then just for supporting an excellent app and developer.Show lessDaniel Colquitt
Cracking app for Agile users
Used every day to find the cheapest (and avoid the dearest) electricity prices. Excellent customisable reports, many graphs for geeks to go wild over.
Agile is a great tariff that gets you thinking about using your electricity when it’s less carbon intensive (and therefore cheaper). I find this app an essential companion.
You do have to accept that the Agile tariff remains a beta product and (occasionally) data doesn’t flow correctly from your Smart Meter, which means you might have a gap in your stats. This always resolves in a few days, so just chill out! As always, the last link in the chain before the end user tends to get a kicking when things don’t work - mainly from people who won’t take 5 minutes to read the explanation provided in the app!!!Show lessBrian Molson
An agile companion
I bought this on the strength of other reviews. As a new EV owner I’d been researching whether to move to Octopus Agile from Octopus Go. The concept of half-hourly price changes did seem overwhelming, and I wondered if I would be able to optimise it for our usage.
This is an essential companion to Octopus Agile ! It’s the ‘ronseal’ of apps, very simply displaying the next 24h of unit prices for your postcode and your meter.
You can then make an informed choice to run the washing machine, tumble dryer and when to charge the car.
Usefully the app includes a couple of other tools. A particularly useful slider to help determine when is the best time to use electricity - ie charging- over the next 24h. And a handy comparison of your consumption against the standard rate to see what you’ve saved.
Heartily recommended it will soon become a go-to decision support tool at home!
Enjoy!Show lessteamprince
Fantastic app but loses API login data.
This is a great app and very easy to navigate with a great interface for the Apple Watch too! Love the features and ability to find the best time for appliances too depending on useage time.
1 issue/bug I have is after entering the API login consumption data to access and link to Octopus account it validates and I can see the history of useage however when I close the app it loses this information and reverts back to simple login with no data and I have to renter info again to restore. Sadly is does this each time I close and reopen the app so not useable for me at this time.Show lessJlndrrorqhqc
Developer Response
Sorry about that bug, and thanks for reporting it! The credentials are stored in a better way since 1.3.0 but a bug caused older credentials to be reloaded over and over again. This has been fixed since version 1.3.2!Great app for both existing and potential customers
Great app that lets you see unit price in real-time and up to 32 hours ahead.
Shame it doesn’t work on my iPad Air (1st gen) as minimum requirement is iOS 13. I’m sure there’s a good reason for that.
One recommendation would be for the user to set their benchmark cost rather than comparing against the standard variable. Some, like me, will have come across from the cheapest available tariff on open market so it would be great to see the actual savings we’ve made or not.
Users could either enter their Stabding Charge & Unit rate, or, eventually, there could be a selection box that already has all the open market data for existing tariffs across all providers (big on going task, I know!).Show lessWaheedArshad
Developer Response
Thanks for the suggestion WaheedArshad! The main focus of the app at the moment is to be the best app for knowing what the current rate is on Agile, and for easily finding out how to save the most when you are on the Agile tariff. In a later stage I will look into if and how the app can become a comparison tool for other tariffs. As you mention, this is a big task and at the moment I feel other tools are better for that. Still, it is definitely something to consider for the future.Awesome!
Amazing app.
Can I suggest a toggle for finding the cheapest time to run? Defaults to the left (any time), but the other side is (overnight) (9PM->6AM)? Obviously using the data that’s available at the time for overnight. So it’d be 9PM-22:30PM until the full nights’ data is available 😊 useful for when to run the dishwasher.
Would also be awesome if the cheapest time finder included the remaining time in the current 30 minute window. E.G. 6.17p (current with 15 mins left), 6.72p, 7.06p, 7.23p. App selected 6.72p & 7.06p but could’ve just started appliance straight away. Not necessary, but sometimes cheaper. 🙂Show lessJakosaur_
Developer Response
This feature is now available in version 1.2! Thanks for the suggestions and I will definitely consider adding them in future updates.
