Tick & mosquito — repellent timer & bite risk Version 1.0
BugWatch tells you which insect repellent actually works, and for how long. Search about 630 EPA-registered products — or just pick an active ingredient and its concentration off the label — and you get a protection time drawn from the published literature, with the citation sitting next to the number. Start a timer when you apply and it tells you before your protection lapses. It also shows whether current weather sits inside the ranges where ticks and mosquitoes are known to be active — clearly labelled as conditions, never a forecast — and walks you through the prevention steps that genuinely work.
The big idea: every number in BugWatch is traceable to a citable source, and where the evidence runs out the app says so rather than guessing. It emits no sound, it makes no prediction, and it makes no medical claim. BugWatch gives you the evidence — you protect yourself.
This is the reason BugWatch exists. Protection times come from Fradin & Day (2002), New England Journal of Medicine 347:13–18 — a controlled trial that put real repellents on real arms and timed the first bite. The results are not what the packaging suggests:
That last row is the whole app. Search “citronella wristband” and BugWatch says 15 seconds and shows you the paper — it doesn't soften it. We sell no repellent, so we have no reason to tell you anything other than what was measured.
These are laboratory figures from a specific trial: heat, sweat, swimming and rubbing all cut them short, and BugWatch says so beside the number instead of burying it. The EPA's own registered-product data is bundled in too, but it lists a protection time for only about half of mosquito products and roughly a quarter of tick ones — which is exactly why the advisor is built on ingredient and concentration first, with the EPA row as a bonus when it exists.
The safety rails are free forever, and they act rather than merely advise:
A protection timer turns a number into something useful: tap Start when you apply and BugWatch shows “Protected until 7:42 PM”, then sends a local notification before it runs out. Everything is calculated and scheduled on your device.
A Protection Schedule automates the part people forget. Arm a recurring window — every day 18:00–22:00, or anchored to civil dusk where you are — and at arm time BugWatch notifies you to apply repellent and starts the timer itself. Dusk is computed offline from your location, so it follows the season without a network call.
The Now tab shows whether the weather where you are sits inside the ranges the literature associates with tick and mosquito activity. It reports Low, Moderate or High — coarse bands only. No 0–100 score, no percentage, no “expected”. Every band opens into the factors behind it — temperature, time of day, wind, humidity, season and species — each with its source and an honest note on how strong that source actually is. Where the evidence is thin, the app labels it thin.
Why so hedged? The CDC ran a West Nile forecasting challenge with 15 expert teams. Simple models built on nothing more than historical case averages generally beat the complicated ones, and feeding in real mosquito surveillance data made the predictions worse (Holcomb 2023, Parasites & Vectors 16:11). If fifteen research teams with live field data couldn't predict this, an app on your phone cannot either.
So BugWatch describes what the weather is doing and shows its working. It does not tell you what the insects will do. Wind, for instance, is measured at 10 metres in the open — in a sheltered yard it can be near zero, and the app says so on the tab rather than in the small print.
Most apps in this category emit a tone and claim it drives mosquitoes away. BugWatch makes no sound at all. That's a deliberate feature, not a missing one.
Mosquito hearing tops out around 2 kHz, so a 20 kHz tone is simply silence to them — and a phone speaker can't reliably produce it anyway. Field trials have found no effect, repeatedly and for years. One study found that software tones increased biting. The FTC has pleaded these exact claims false in court. We'd rather ship one honest number than a button that does nothing.
What does work is already on the label of a bottle you can buy in any pharmacy — which is what the advisor is for.
Safety information is never paywalled. The repellent advisor and all its products, every age, pregnancy and permethrin warning, one protection timer, one Protection Schedule, today's conditions, the standing-water audit and the CDC state counts are free, permanently. The free tier is supported by a single banner ad on the Now (conditions) tab only — never beside safety guidance, never on a timer or an expiry alert, never on the paywall. Credibility is the product here; we're not renting that out.
BugWatch Pro adds unlimited Protection Schedules, family profiles (each with their own age and repellent), up to 10 saved locations, the 10-day conditions outlook, a bite log with CSV export, home-screen widgets, and no ads.
Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled; manage or cancel anytime in iOS Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions. The Lifetime unlock never expires and has nothing to cancel. Tap Restore Purchases on the membership page if you've bought Pro before on the same Apple Account.
No — and no app can. BugWatch is an information tool: it tells you what to put on, how long it lasts, and when to reapply. The repelling is done by the repellent.
No. There is no sound emission anywhere in the app, by design — see “Why there is no ultrasonic mode” above.
Because nobody can tell you that reliably, and we'd rather say so than invent it. BugWatch reports the conditions it can observe and shows the reasoning. Pro adds a 10-day conditions outlook — that's still weather measured against known activity ranges, projected forward. It is not a prediction of insects.
Only to look up conditions where you are and which species are active locally. It's used for the lookup and then it's gone — we don't store it, we keep no location history, and we never sell it. You can use the repellent advisor, timers, schedules and the standing-water audit with location turned off entirely.
No. BugWatch presents published research and public data. It does not diagnose, it does not claim to prevent disease, and it does not assess your personal risk. If you've been bitten and you're worried, talk to a clinician.
Protection times: Fradin & Day 2002, NEJM 347:13–18. Product data: the US EPA's register of registered repellents, bundled in the app so no lookup leaves your device. Surveillance: the CDC's public arbovirus data. Weather: Apple Weather. Every threshold in the app carries its citation, and the full list is in Settings → About & Sources.
That's common — the register omits a protection time for about half of mosquito products and most tick ones. Look up the active ingredient and its concentration from the label instead. That's what the advisor is built around, and it's the more reliable answer anyway.
Open Settings → Membership and tap Restore Purchases.
For support, email mwsupplylimited@gmail.com. If you think a number or a citation is wrong, that's the most valuable bug you can report — send it to mwsupplylimited@gmail.com and we'll correct it or show our working.
See the BugWatch Privacy Policy.