Comparison

Control vs ThisDay

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

Head to head
About

Control

Consolidate your daily trackers, planners, and reminders into a single, elegant app. Monitor habits, budgets, fitness, and more directly from your Home Screen, Lock Screen, or Live Activities. Enjoy a private experience with all data stored locally and synced via iCloud.

Highlights
  • 20+ customizable iOS widgets
  • Track habits, budget, fitness, and more
  • Home Screen, Lock Screen, and Live Activities support
  • Private data storage on device
  • iCloud sync across devices
  • No sign-ups or dark patterns
Features
Read full description

Your Home Screen, redesigned. Control is a library of 20+ beautifully crafted iOS widgets - every tracker, planner, and reminder you actually use, gathered in one app. Habits, budget, fitness, medication, birthdays, travel, and much more, all glanceable from your Home Screen, Lock Screen, and Live Activities. No more juggling ten single-purpose apps. No sign-ups, no dark patterns. - TRACK EVERYTHING - • Habits - daily routines, streaks, goals • Budget - spending, savings, monthly limits • Subscriptions - see exactly what's recurring and when • Portfolio - stocks and crypto, refreshed automatically • Debt - loans and credit cards, payoff progress • Currency - live exchange rates between any two currencies • Fitness - steps, workouts, calories burned via Apple Health • Calories - daily intake, weight goals • Period - cycle tracking with predictions • Medication - dose reminders for every prescription • Birthdays - pulled from Contacts, never forget another one • Books - what you're reading, with auto-fetched covers • Movies - your watchlist with poster art • Pets - feeding, walks, vet visits • Vehicle - mileage, services, fuel logs • Hotel & Travel - live check-out countdowns and trip dashboards • Past Trips - a souvenir of where you've been • Food Expiration - what's in your fridge and when it spoils • Game Tracker - leaderboards plus a multi-touch player picker • Speedometer - live drive sessions • Clipboard - quick-paste from history • To-do - checklists that sync across devices • Quit Tracker - sober days, money saved, life regained - PRIVATE BY DEFAULT - Everything is stored on your device and synced privately through your own iCloud account. No external servers. No tracking. No analytics SDKs. Your habits, finances, and reminders are yours. Control is built for people who want their Home Screen to do something useful. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

ThisDay

Features
Read full description

Not someday. ThisDay. Most planners hand you a backlog. ThisDay hands you a day. Every task, note, voice memo, event and habit lands on a real date; not in a someday pile you scroll past for months. Open the app and there is one thing in front of you: today, in the order it happens. ONE DAY, EVERY KIND OF THING Tasks, events, notes, voice memos, photos and habits share one list, because they share one day. A habit at 10:00 sits between the 9:00 task and the 11:00 meeting, where it belongs. Same row, same swipe, same checkbox, whatever kind of thing it is. Your own calendars appear inline too, at the hour they happen, so a morning with a meeting in it never looks free. EVERYTHING CAN REMIND YOU Record a voice memo and put a reminder on it. Write a note and have it find you at 6pm. Your phone can already take a voice memo, it just can't tell you about it later. ThisDay can. HABITS THAT TICK THEMSELVES Point a habit at Apple Health and stop reporting on yourself. Steps, exercise minutes, active energy, sleep, the Watch's three rings, and workouts from running to yoga. Set the number you're aiming at; ThisDay watches for it and fills the ring as your day fills it. ThisDay only reads Health, never writes to it, and only the measurement each habit names. Nothing leaves your device. And a habit is never marked done because a sensor said so and you disagreed. No reading is ever "done"; if your watch was on the charger, the tick is still yours to make. Your tick always wins. APPLE REMINDERS, BOTH WAYS The Reminders lists you choose show up in your day, next to everything else, read-only: ThisDay never edits somebody else's row. And when you ask for it, the other direction. Tasks you make here are written back out as reminders, so they reach Siri, a Mac that doesn't run ThisDay, and anyone you share a list with. Switching it off takes the copies back out. NOTHING GETS BURIED Unfinished work follows you to today instead of quietly aging on a date you've already passed. Completed things can leave the list or stay in a folded section, your call. MOMENTS Keep a photo from a day worth keeping. Months later it's still filed under the day it happened on. THE DAY BAR Lives at the bottom of the screen and holds the whole app in one thumb's reach: capture anything, jump to any day, and see what's running without leaving what you're looking at. ALSO IN HERE • Quick capture for every kind of item • Reminders, repeats and rollover • Categories, priorities and links • Month, week and year calendar views • An inbox for anything without a day yet • Multi-select for bulk edits • Widgets and Live Activities • Shortcuts and Siri • Ten languages, every screen in each one • Light and dark, and an accent you choose • Your day on every iPhone you own BUILT BY ONE PERSON There is no account and no sign-up, because there is no server to sign up to. No analytics, no tracking, and nothing sold to anyone; your day never leaves your device. Something broken or missing? Write to hello@akilastudio.com and you'll get a reply from the person who made it. TRY IT, THEN OWN IT ThisDay is free for 21 days with everything included; no card up front and nothing to cancel. After that it's a one-time purchase and it's yours for good. No subscription, no renewal. ThisDay for Mac is a separate app, sold separately on the Mac App Store.

Screenshots

Control4 screens
ThisDay4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Control at weekly against ThisDay's fortnightly. ThisDay's advantage is device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.2). 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. Control sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and ThisDay sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Control ships an update weekly, ThisDay fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on September 19, 2026 and September 24, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 6 level
Control versus ThisDay: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterControlThisDay
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.5 (2 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings2 — better—
Update frequencyWeekly — betterFortnightly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS26.218.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size30 MB49 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperAlex Patrick PalaceanAgustin Dell Aquila

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Control

One-time1
  • Control Lifetime$9.99
1 purchases

ThisDay

One-time1
  • ThisDay$14.99

Questions

Is Control free?
Control is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is ThisDay free?
ThisDay is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Control or ThisDay have ads?
Neither Control nor ThisDay shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Control or ThisDay?
Control ships an update weekly, and ThisDay fortnightly. Most recently, Control was updated on September 19, 2026 and ThisDay on September 24, 2026.

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