Comparison

GLOWRIUM vs Placelore

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

GLOWRIUM

Control smart lighting devices via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Customize colors, set scenes, and simulate natural light changes throughout the day. Requires iOS 13.0+ and specific Bluetooth/Wi-Fi versions.

Highlights
  • Bluetooth and Wi-Fi control
  • Intelligent multi-area control
  • Spectrum setting and automatic operation
  • Independent color channel customization
  • Multi-scene preset lighting
  • Phased ecological simulation
Features
Read full description

Smarter Plant Assistant Starts with Better Light. GLOWRIUM APP is newly upgraded to deliver a smarter and more convenient lighting experience for indoor plants and modern homes. By connecting with GLOWRIUM smart grow lights, you can easily control brightness, timer schedules, Circadian Mode (Sunrise and Sunset mode), and multiple plant lighting types to create a better light environment for every plant. With the upgraded Plant Assistant feature, GLOWRIUM APP provides lighting suggestions and plant care references based on plant type, helping you care for indoor plants in a smarter and more scientific way. From a single plant to an entire room, and from daily routines to everyday well-being, GLOWRIUM APP brings smart lighting naturally into your life. GLOWRIUM—Where Innovation and Quality Shine.

About

Placelore

Features
Read full description

Placelore is a private place journal for your real life. It runs quietly in the background, notices when you've actually settled somewhere, and turns each stay into a place you can name, revisit, and write about. No check-ins. No feed. No friends list. Just your own log of where you've been. WHAT IT DOES • Detects places automatically from how long you stay, not from what's nearby. • Lets you rename, recategorize, or merge places so the log matches how you actually think about them. • Attaches journal entries and photos to each place — a quick note from a coffee shop, a longer entry from a trip. • Counts visits and tracked time so you can see your real-world patterns over a week, a month, or longer. • Shows your day on a map: the places you stopped, the path between them, and how long each stay lasted. • Sends gentle milestone notifications when a place reaches 5, 10, 25, 50, or 100 visits. • Categorizes places by type — Restaurant, Cafe, Gym, Park, and more — using Apple Maps, with custom categories you can add yourself. WHY IT'S DIFFERENT Most location apps want to broadcast where you are. Placelore is the opposite: it's a logbook you keep for yourself. The dwell-based detection means you only get places you actually spent time at, not every storefront you walked past. The journal and photo attachments turn raw location history into something worth looking back on. PRIVACY BY DEFAULT • All data is stored on your device. There is no Placelore server. • No accounts, no sign-in, no analytics SDKs, no advertising identifiers. • Your places, visits, photos, and journal entries never leave your iPhone unless you explicitly export them. • Background location is used only to detect dwell time. You can pause tracking for 1, 4, or 24 hours from inside the app. • You can delete every place, visit, photo, and journal entry from Settings at any time. CONTROL • Set the minimum stay duration that counts as a real visit (default: 30 minutes). • Pause and resume tracking whenever you want. • Export your raw location samples as CSV for your own analysis. • Delete individual places or wipe everything from Settings. REQUIREMENTS • iPhone running iOS 17 or later. • "Always" location permission for passive background detection. • Camera and Photos permissions only if you choose to attach pictures. Placelore is for people who want to remember their own life, quietly. If that's you, give it a try.

Screenshots

GLOWRIUM4 screens
Placelore4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Placelore at every 3 days against GLOWRIUM's every 2 months. GLOWRIUM's advantage is device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 17.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

GLOWRIUM ships an update every 2 months, Placelore every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on September 8, 2026 and September 21, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
GLOWRIUM versus Placelore: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterGLOWRIUMPlacelore
PriceFreeFree
Rating2.4 (34 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews45.5% of reviews—
Number of ratings34 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 3 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS13.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size90 MB2 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperXingyang Hicent Technology Co., Ltd.Yucheng Hu

In-app purchases

None

GLOWRIUM

No in-app purchases

None

Placelore

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is GLOWRIUM free?
GLOWRIUM is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Placelore free?
Placelore is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do GLOWRIUM or Placelore have ads?
Neither GLOWRIUM nor Placelore shows ads.
Which is updated more often, GLOWRIUM or Placelore?
GLOWRIUM ships an update every 2 months, and Placelore every 3 days. Most recently, GLOWRIUM was updated on September 8, 2026 and Placelore on September 21, 2026.

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