I Built a Free Replacement for Oura's Web Application

If you're an Oura ring user, you may or may not be aware that there's a web-based application for viewing your data. It's really quite useful: Oura on the web was previously the only place that you could view your data and explore correlations over time, with r-valuer-value: noun
In statistics, the r-value is a measure of the strength and direction of a linear relationship between two variables. It ranges from -1 to 1, where values close to 1 indicate a strong positive correlation, values close to -1 indicate a strong negative correlation, and values around 0 indicate no correlation. calculations and advanced comparisons. It also provided the only way to easily and quickly export data in CSV format. Straight from Oura's website:

Oura on the Web is a useful tool for looking into your long-term health patterns and exploring how two of your Oura data points compare to one another.

However, last month, the company announced they are shutting down Oura on the web later this year:

We will be discontinuing Oura on the Web later this year. For now, there are no changes and you can continue using Oura on the Web as normal. Your data will also continue to be available in the Oura App or Membership Hub. We'll share more details as we get closer to the date.

They've been pretty quiet about any further details on their reasoning or exact timeline, but it's a bummer to see a useful tool go away. I can't say I'm too surprised, seeing as the web version doesn't appear to have been updated often and sort of felt like a little-known side project for the company. Nevertheless, it seems to have been pretty well-liked based on some Reddit threads.

Thankfully, the Oura API is alive and well, and it's super easy to build with! I already had some experience with Oura's API from other projects I've worked on, so it felt like a good opportunity to put together a nice web-based replacement.

Ring Pulse is Born

First, if you don't want to read about it, you can just go try it out at ringpulse.app. It's pretty self-explanatory and super easy to use!

Ring Pulse connects to the Oura API using OAuthOAuth: noun
An open standard for access delegation commonly used as a way to grant websites or applications limited access to user information without exposing passwords., but rather than store your data in a remote database, it uses IndexedDBIndexedDB: noun
A low-level browser API for client-side storage of significant amounts of structured data, including files/blobs. It allows for high-performance searches and is supported by most modern browsers. in the browser to cache and organize all your data. This makes browsing and using your data lightning fast, and keeps it all private - Ring Pulse simply operates as a proxy to securely make API requests on your behalf.

Ring Pulse is entirely local-first, meaning I never store, log, or view your actual health data. This keeps things simple for me, and 100% private for you! You can even see the entire set of cached data and manage it by re-syncing or completely deleting it from your device. Read the full privacy policy for more.

Daily Views

Ring Pulse allows you to view a summary of the current day accross your 3 core metrics: readiness, sleep, and activity.

For any given day, you can drill down into those 3 metrics and see all the data driving them:

Correlation Views

The core of Oura on the web was being able to look at correlations between data points. Ring Pulse takes this a step further and allows overlaying any combination of data points on top of each other, calculating r-values for each pairing on the chart:

Data gaps are gracefully handled in trends, for situations like that time I took a weekend trip and left my ring on the charger at home 😔

CSV Export

CSV export is one of the features I've heard the most disappointment around losing. Without Oura on the web, there won't be a good way to get immediate CSV exports; Oura's recommended approach is using the account data export tool, which isn't immediate. Ring Pulse fills this gap with a nice CSV exporter, allowing you to export your data for any date range, across any data points:

Free to Use

Because of the local-data architecture I built Ring Pulse with, the costs are minimal to me to run this. The source of truth remains Oura, and your local on-device database enables the lightning fast performance. The only thing I'm hosting is the UI and the lightweight API proxy.

This means I can continue to offer Ring Pulse for free for the forseeable future. You don't need another subscription just to view the data you're already paying for.

If you find this useful, buying me a beer is always appreciated, but certainly not expected. And if you do start using this app as part of your workflow, feedback is always welcomed by emailing feedback@ringpulse.app. Happy analyzing!