Throughout high school and even my early college years, I was a fervent reader. I’d read novel after novel to fill time in between classes and work. Once I graduated from university, the real world sunk in. I felt like I had less time than ever before and reading was one of the activities that fell out of priority. These days, I still have the desire to read and learn but can’t make the time day-to-day. Uptime has helped me with this by providing a catalog of books, articles, and audio snippets that only less than five minutes to consume.

The idea is simple. Condense the most relevant information into bite-sized chunks that make it easier to digest. Rather than mindlessly scrolling TikTok as you wait for the bus, you can open Uptime and better yourself. It has a growing library of books, courses, and documentaries that were specifically chosen for their relevancy and ability to be parsed in short intervals. Uptime’s team has combed tens of thousands sources for the most educational, motivational, and inspirational.

There are more than “knowledge hacks” in many topics. You can learn about cryptocurrency, relationships, entrepreneurship, cooking, and more. They then distill the main points into insights and action items that help you take your learning to the next step. 

It’s no surprise that Uptime has also used two popular tactics to help increase engagement with the app. Those would be social tie-ins and gameification. As you complete courses, the app makes it easy to share insights with friends and family or social media. With the gameification aspect, you’re rewarded and applauded for growing your streak. They’ve even mimicked Apple’s own and wildly successful Activity Rings from Apple Watch to encourage you to keep learning.

The app has a clean, fresh look that puts content front and center. It makes it second-nature to navigate the app and find something you’d like try out. Filters can be a hard UI to implement and I love how Uptime has allowed the discovery of topics. Each of the topics has a corresponding icon for easily visual identification and you can swipe through then horizontally, rather than a mindless text list. I was impressed as well with the in-app media player. It breaks down the content into smaller chapters allowing you skip through even faster.

Uptime doesn’t have novels or stories — there are plenty of short stories and podcasts around for that — but it caters to the pursuit of knowledge. It’s fast, easy, and well-designed enough for you to fit into your bustling life. Plus, you get at-a-boys for doing it! 

But enough about other people's apps.

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