Fitness trackers are extremely popular right now, whether they’re standalone hardware or software built into your smartphone, smartwatch, or other wearable device. However, they can also be prohibitively expensive, especially in cases where dedicated hardware meets subscription-based software. One app aims to solve this problem, at least in the case of the Oura Ring, the smart ring that silently tracks more than 50 of your health metrics.
The new app, called Cracked Oura, will allow you to skip paying for Oura membership without sacrificing the benefits of AI tracking and analysis. An Oura Ring, while almost as impressive as a smartwatch, is an expensive proposition. The 5th generation starts at $399 for the ring only, and a charging case will cost you an additional $99. As we noted among the five things you need to know before buying an Oura Ring, a subscription is almost mandatory, which will cost you a recurring fee of $5.99 per month or $69.99 per year, meaning the actual price can swell by hundreds more over its lifespan.
How Cracked Oura works
Cracked Oura seeks to make owning an Oura ring less financially burdensome by eliminating this ongoing cost. It does this by exporting your data and storing it as a SQLite database, a lightweight archive that keeps all your data locally in a single file. You don’t need to run a separate server program to use it. Cracked Oura reads all this data, then creates graphs and charts that the creator says are “at least as good as the official Oura dashboard.” Although some configuration is required for the app, its GitHub page provides easy-to-follow instructions so anyone can follow along. If you prefer to avoid this process, there are smart ringtones that don’t require a subscription and that you can choose instead.
Once set up, Cracked Oura breaks down your scores based on their contributing factors and shows you trends over time, along with information about how much time you spent in each sleep stage. There is also an option to create your own custom widgets to keep tabs on specific data points or intersections that are not explicitly distributed by default in the application. Some AI features are even built-in, although the app’s description warns that it’s under development and might not work as expected. When working, it allows users to access local LLMs in a chatbot-like interface to ask questions about their data.
Is this legal?
On the surface, an app that lets you access features that normally require a subscription fee seems illicit. The reality is that Cracked Oura is perfectly legal, partly due to Oura’s policies and partly to the laws of the various territories where the ring is sold.
Oura allows users to upload and view their data in various forms, as part of what it claims to be a commitment to user privacy. All users can access their data as a CSV file, a plain text file that can be opened by any spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. However, only users with a paid subscription have access to the shareable reports, which come in a more digestible PDF, and their trending data.
The unspoken part of Oura’s transparency is that it is required by law to provide access to user data in many territories. This is guaranteed by laws like Article 20 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which establishes the “right to data portability”. It guarantees the right to download your data in a format you can use and transfer it to another service provider if you wish. There are also related privacy laws in many US states, such as the Colorado Privacy Act, which ensures data portability alongside other provisions.
