Large Button Water Reminder App for iPhone

Plenty of apps describe themselves as having large buttons. Here are the actual measurements, so you can compare them with anything else.

Free on the App Store.

The measurements

Element	In Sip	Apple's stated minimum
Main button, I drank some water	92 points tall	44 points
Every other control that matters	At least 60 points	44 points
Body text	The iOS title3 size	The iOS body size
Smallest text allowed anywhere	The iOS callout size	No floor

Points, not pixels. A point is the unit iOS lays out in, so these sizes hold on every iPhone screen rather than shrinking on the small ones.

Why a bigger button is not simply a bigger button

Enlarging a control without changing anything else pushes the next one closer, and a crowded screen of large buttons is harder to use than a calm screen of ordinary ones. Three things carry the size in Sip.

One action per screen. The home screen has a single thing to press. Everything else is a way out of it.
Room around each control. Spacing grows with the buttons, so a near miss lands on nothing rather than on the wrong thing.
Text that wraps instead of shrinking. At the largest iPhone text size the labels take a second line. Nothing is truncated and nothing is scaled down to fit.

The drink sheet: four buttons, no typing

Recording a glass never involves a number pad, a slider or a wheel. The sheet holds four buttons, each with the amount in figures, the name in words, and a symbol.

150 ml, small glass
250 ml, glass
350 ml, large glass
500 ml, bottle

The sizes are deliberately coarse. Somebody who wants to estimate a glass to the nearest ten millilitres is not who this app is for. With Premium you can add your own vessels in steps of 50 ml, or 30 ml when the display is set to fluid ounces, up to 1,500.

The daily goal is also two large buttons

Sip never asks for body weight. That would mean a text field, a health figure, and a precision the app does not have. Instead there are three starting goals, 1,500, 1,800 and 2,200 millilitres, as three large buttons, and the exact number stays freely adjustable afterwards with two more.

See the sizes

The Sip home screen: a large glass filled to 1,050 of 1,800 millilitres above a wide button reading I drank some water — One screen, one action. The glass fills as the day goes on.

The drink sheet with four large buttons: 150 millilitres small glass, 250 millilitres glass, 350 millilitres large glass and 500 millilitres bottle — Four glasses, each with the amount and the name. Nothing to type.

The week screen showing seven bars, five of them ticked, and the sentence You reached your goal on 5 of 7 days this week — Seven bars and one sentence. A missed day is a shorter bar.

The same home screen at the largest iPhone text size, with the greeting and the button wrapping onto two lines — The same screen at the largest iPhone text size.

Common questions

How big are the buttons in Sip?

The main button is 92 points tall. Every other control that matters is at least 60 points. Apple names 44 points as the smallest sensible tap target, so the main button is more than twice that.

Can I change the glass sizes?

The four built in sizes are 150, 250, 350 and 500 millilitres. With Premium you can add your own, in steps of 50 millilitres or 30 millilitres if you work in fluid ounces, up to 1,500.

Does Sip work in fluid ounces?

Yes. The unit is chosen from your region on first run and stays changeable. Everything is stored in millilitres underneath, so switching the display never loses or rounds away what you already recorded.