Comparison

Agitate vs Agitate

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

Head to head
About

Agitate

This app provides a reliable timer for home film development, supporting black and white, C-41, and E-6 processes. It features a unique clock that records step completion, not just countdowns, ensuring accuracy even after interruptions. Designed for darkroom use with safelight mode and intuitive controls.

Highlights
  • Accurate timekeeping that records step completion
  • Safelight mode with red screen and low brightness
  • Full screen button for easy operation in the dark
  • Tap-based agitation tracking with optional sound
  • Precise timing for drain and mid-run adjustments
  • Detailed agitation schemes and temperature conversions
  • Extensive database of published film development recipes
Features
Read full description

A timer for developing film at home. Black and white, C-41 and E-6 in one app, entirely on your device. THE CLOCK IS THE TRUTH Most timers count down, and a counter can stop — when a call comes in, when the system reclaims memory, when the app is force quit. Agitate stores the moment your step ends, not the seconds left in it. A call, a reboot, a phone that ran flat and came back: on return it works out where you are from the clock. There is nothing that can freeze, because there is nothing counting. BUILT FOR A DARK ROOM • Safelight mode: red on true black, screen driven to its lowest brightness, and the Live Activity uses the same palette so nothing lights up behind your back • The whole screen is the button, so you can start the next bath blind, in gloves, with wet hands • Every agitation is a tap in your hand. Sound if you want it, and it plays through the silent switch • Large tabular figures that do not jitter, readable across the room • A segment chain that always shows where you are in the process THE DETAILS OTHER TIMERS GET WRONG • The drain is called ten seconds before time, as the makers specify. A timer that simply rings at nine minutes gives you nine minutes and fifteen seconds of development, every time • Nudge the running step by fifteen seconds, or re-read the thermometer mid-run and let only the remainder be recalculated — without abandoning the run • Agitation as published: four inversions in the first ten seconds of each minute is one maker's scheme, five to seven inversions every thirty seconds is another's. They are not interchangeable. Stand and semi-stand are here too, marked as the community methods they are • Time and temperature converted for black and white between 14 and 27 °C, in Celsius or Fahrenheit. Refused for C-41 and E-6, where deviation is a colour shift that no extra time repairs • Minimum concentrate counted per film, not per tank. A 500 ml tank holds two 35 mm films, so a highly diluted developer can be half short while looking fine EVERY TIME FROM A DATASHEET Hundreds of published combinations, searchable, each row naming the manufacturer document it was transcribed from. No scraped database, no crowd-sourced numbers of unknown origin. If a combination cannot be sourced, it is not in here — write it as a recipe of your own instead, which is unlimited and free. WARNINGS BEFORE YOU POUR Expiry, exhaustion, minimum quantity, re-use surcharge and temperature tolerance are all in the free version. A warning behind a paywall would make the free version dangerous, so none of them are. AGITATE PRO Free develops your film. Pro remembers. • A development journal: every finished run with the film, the recipe, the temperature you actually measured, the push, and your own note. Searchable • A chemistry ledger: bottles with mixing date, fill level and film count, so the app knows when a developer is out of life or out of capacity • Export of all of it, recipes included, as CSV and JSON Pro is a one-time purchase. Not a subscription, nothing renews. PRIVACY No account, no sign-up and no server of our own. The free version loads advertising from Google over the network, and Agitate Pro removes it. Your recipes and your journal never leave your device. Agitate is independent and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any manufacturer of film, paper or chemistry. Product names are used only to identify which products a published time applies to. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. TERMS AND PRIVACY Terms of Use (EULA): https://agitate-app.vercel.app/terms Apple's standard EULA also applies: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://agitate-app.vercel.app/privacy

About

Agitate

Features
Read full description

Agitate is a darkroom timer for iPhone and Apple Watch. Load a process, fill your tank, press Start, and work by feel: a big countdown and an Invert Now prompt on the phone, a buzz on your wrist at every inversion and step change, and the next event on the lock screen and in the Dynamic Island. You do not have to touch the phone with wet hands to know what comes next. Film-box yellow, black ink, sprocket edges: built to be read from across the room. FREE TO START, ONE PURCHASE FOR THE REST The download is a complete single-tank timer: one tank with up to eight rolls in it, every bundled preset, push and pull by stops, temperature compensation, the Live Activity and alerts, the Sunny 16 meter, and a lab log of every roll you develop. Agitate Pro is a one-time purchase, shared with your family through Family Sharing, that adds up to four tanks at once, the chemistry shelf, the shooting diary and stats, and the Apple Watch app. Sections marked Pro need it. UP TO FOUR TANKS AT ONCE (PRO) Run one tank or four, each with its own process, color and label. Stagger the starts so the tanks come due one after another. Pause one tank while the others keep running, or pause them all. TIMING THAT HOLDS UP Agitate does not count seconds. Every countdown is computed from the moment a tank started and its step schedule, so after time in the background it comes back showing the true state. Inversion, step and completion alerts are local notifications scheduled from those same start times, each with its own sound and haptic setting. APPLE WATCH COMPANION (PRO) The watch takes over a running session: the next tank to flip as a large countdown, other tanks as chips, a swipe to pause or resume. It schedules its own alerts, so it buzzes at every inversion and step boundary with the phone locked in your pocket, and a watch-face complication shows the time to the next flip. PRESETS AND PROCESSES Ships with CineStill Cs41, B&W standard (D-76), E-6 and DF-96 monobath. Build your own with any number of steps, review and adjust each tank before a run without touching the saved process, and share any process as an .agitaterecipe file. CHEMISTRY THAT KNOWS ITS AGE (PRO) Keep a shelf of mixed batches with mix date, rated capacity and shelf life. Attach one to a tank and Agitate counts the rolls through it, warns you at capacity, and extends the developer time for reused chemistry from a published reuse schedule (Unicolor C-41) or a flat per-roll rate. For C-41, a change of developer temperature recomputes the time from the published chart; off the chart, Agitate says so instead of guessing. Optional expiry reminders fire as a batch nears its shelf life. A calculator and the Ilford wash helper round it out. THE LAB LOG AND THE NOTEBOOK Every roll the timer develops gets a journal entry: process, push, temperature, roll number and the real development time, filled in at completion. Name each roll's stock at setup or afterwards, keep a film-stock library with colours, rate the roll and add a note. With Agitate Pro the entry becomes a shooting diary: camera, lens, EI, subject and date shot, with the journal grouped by day or by stock, filtered by date, stock and process, and a stats screen over what you filtered. SUNNY 16 METER A meter you read by eye. Pick the light from six conditions, set the ISO from a film stock or by hand, and read the aperture at 1/ISO. Slide over to see the same exposure at every full stop, and correct a long exposure for reciprocity with published curves. NOTHING COLLECTED Agitate works entirely offline: no account, no analytics, no advertising, no third-party SDK. The only network traffic is Apple's own App Store purchase and restore, handled by iOS. Notifications are local. Your data stays on your iPhone. REQUIREMENTS iPhone with iOS 17 or later; iPhone only. The Apple Watch app needs watchOS 10 or later and installs with the iPhone app. Dynamic Island features need an iPhone that has one.

Screenshots

Agitate4 screens
Agitate4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is ads: Agitate at none against Agitate's shown. On price, in-app purchases, device support and iOS requirement 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. Agitate sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Agitate sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
Agitate versus Agitate: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAgitateAgitate
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 4 days—
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details — not scored
Size7 MB7 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperLevin David SchwabCody Amos

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Agitate

One-time1
  • Agitate Pro$4.99
1 purchases

Agitate

One-time1
  • Agitate Pro$14.99

Questions

Is Agitate free?
Agitate is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Agitate free?
Agitate is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Agitate or Agitate have ads?
Agitate shows ads; Agitate does not.

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