How to Find Reliable ADHD Apps: Expert Tips and Red Flags

Hello. Hello. This is Danielle Invito with ND Out Loud, and we're here talking about apps, as in online apps for your phone, for your desktop, for your tablets that are out there for ADHD and autism. And there are so So, so many of them right now, they are targeting us as a community. I saw one the other day and I don't remember who it was. It made me so mad cuz I've seen it a few times. I know I've brought it up before that was targeting, um, fat ADHD people and it was called HIPPO or something like that.

Holy crap.

I was really ADHD eating disorders or something like that. And I can't remember it, it, it was HIPPO something, whatever. But I was like, what the, like, are, are you kidding me? And there are so many apps out there that are targeting us. We've got like Motions of the world and Focusmate and, and there's so many things out there. And it's kind of interesting because one of the apps, the MedTech world, which is mental health slash medication help, all of that is being sued. The CEO is what, just arrested or something?

Yeah. They're both, I wanna think the CEO and the president, however they have their structure, but the 2 people At the very top were arrested for basically fraud, medical fraud.

And because they were prescribing stimulant medication and supposedly they were helping drug seekers. There were a lot of red flags to me when I read the thing. It's Dunn was the app that is in trouble right now, and a lot of influencers were promoting it. And now that we're watching all those influencers back off and All this craziness from that. And I think some other medtech companies I've seen are kind of celebrating the fact that Dunn is getting in trouble for all of this. But I, as an ADHDer who is treated like a drug-seeking individual, even though I just need my medication to make me be able to function as an adult, I wonder if they actually were, or if they were just treating us like humans instead of drug-seeking individuals.

I don't know, cuz I don't use Dunn, but I know that even in with my private healthcare here in the state of Oklahoma, that for a long time, well, I guess it was for, I don't know, it was right after COVID that they made us take a drug test before they would prescribe your stimulant medication. And you had to sign this big contract that said you weren't going to abuse it. It was the exact same contract that they give to people that have opioid addictions or a history of, which I've never had a history of any kind of drug abuse. And it was really, really triggering.

So I'm waiting to see, obviously I don't know, I've never used Dunn myself, all of that, but I'm still waiting to see if it comes out that they were just treating us like a human population because Dunn, from what I've heard, really treated our population well. So I'm really hoping it's just A competitor being nasty.

Well, and you just never know because until things get down to the nitty-gritty and get investigated, but it's sad. So if they were doing something wrong, they have set the ADHD medical treatment community back a lot. And if they weren't doing anything wrong and they were just getting scrutinized because they were helping so many people. Well, that in and of itself indicates a very large problem with ADHD healthcare. So there's problems either way. And it's really frustrating cuz for those of us who have prescribed stimulant medication, it's going to be harder to get when there was already a shortage to begin with.

There's a shortage of doctors willing to prescribe it in the first place. So we have so many issues with getting our medication as a community, executive dysfunction, making the doctor's appointment. Doctor's appointment, remembering to make the appointment for the refill because you can't just do normal refill stimulant and all of the things that make it so difficult for us as ADHDers as part of normal life. Then we're adding maybe some more levels of complication because this has happened whether it's true or not or whatever ends up being. It's going to change how they prescribe and how we get access to our. Healthcare that we need. And it's so freaking frustrating that we talk about stuff like this all the time. And then you've got other apps, you've got all of these planning apps that say that they can solve your ADHD. I love that we can heal your ADHD with planning app, right? Or habit building apps. And now we have partnered with Propel, which is a learning app that helps rewire the brain for better function and focus and less anxiety.

Mm-hmm.

But we're being really, really careful who we partner with here because we're looked at, community is looked at as the cash cow right now for online apps.

Right. Well, think about this. So not only do we have these mental health medtech areas, right? It's this huge niche and there's lots of people in it, but we don't just have the whole drug problem, right? Or the lack of the overprescribed, all that other stuff. You also have this huge influx of AI in this area of medtech, and how does that change the face of healthcare? And are you okay as a person, as a neurodivergent person, are you okay talking to a bot for a certain amount of time until it escalates to a person? Because I get frustrated calling. credit card company and having to speak to a bot till I get to a real person.

Hate bots. As a neurodivergent person, I have a hard enough time navigating and getting up the confidence, getting over the RSD and frustration of dealing with making the phone call to the credit card company, to the internet company, to the whoever. And then I have to deal with a bot first that if I don't say things exactly in the right order for the right way, for the right thing, I'm never going to get to a human. And now we're seeing that in some ADHD apps, coaching. There's a couple coaching apps that are using the bots. And now we have gotten to work with a group of college kids who are making an AI app, but they have put so much effort and time into talking to experts. They have PhDs on their team. They have coaches like Vida and I who they've talked to, and we've been testing it out and giving them advice on how our brains work and their ADHD themselves. And There are some apps out there that are trying to do the AI thing right and use it to our advantage, but there are so many that are just using it to take advantage or frustrate the hell out of us so we can give up. I swear to you that the bots on some of those customer service things are just to frustrate the hell outta you so you give up and don't bother calling.

I agree. I really think that there's a lot of predatory practices for any consumer, but specifically geared toward neurodivergent consumers, because if they make it hard enough to get to the boss level, to get to the end, There's a lot of us that will never get to that. So it's scary. This whole thing is scary. And I mean, okay, so we talk a lot about people when they graduate high school, there's not a lot of scaffolding for them at the next level. And we know that you can take your 504, your IEP into college, into trade school, into whatever. My daughter's 18. She's in a beauty school. She's in a trade school, and we got the paperwork the other day. They tried to say that we didn't close her— disclose her disability, which I did in the interview.

Right.

Okay. So they gave us paperwork to fill out. It has to be filled out by a practitioner, and it is extremely intrusive. I'm gonna send it to you so you can look at it because I read through it and I'm like, I'll do whatever we need to do to get her accommodations, but this is problematic. And I think that they set it up like this so people don't fill it out.

That just makes me so mad. There are so many companies that are purposefully making things difficult just so they don't have to deal with it, so that you'll give up, so that you'll whatever, whatever the thing is. And it's It's ridiculous. And there are apps that do too. There are apps that are built like that. Motion draws you in in this really pretty thing, but you want to know how much time you waste setting up Motion and getting Motion to work and all of these things, which are— is— and then you're frustrated with it because it doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

Well, and it's also like, oh gosh, Notion, right? Super customizable. I really do love it, but it is a black hole. For anyone that's neurodivergent, cuz we will get stuck in the minutia. So I mean, it's not a problem with that per se, it's just the way it's set up. Spend a lot of time getting it set up before you can be productive.

So how do we know what apps and what things are safe for us to use? What aren't a waste of time to get used to it? I remember Mint. Mint for a while was one of the best for my clients' financial planning apps. And Mint just disappeared in last January. All of my clients are freaking out because this app that actually worked really, really well for them just disappeared. And, and that's an issue for an ADHDer. You get used to using something and, and that transition and change, we don't deal with it well. And it's, it's really frustrating as an ADHDer to one, find the thing to use and then find your alternative when it disappears.

I think that you can look to content creators. That, that's the whole, that's one of the whole shticks, right? Like look to content creators to review and to give you some guidance. 'Cause a lot of us have tried things and a lot of us have tried things without any kind of promotional kickback or anything. We've just tried things because we're just trying to survive.

100%.

And so I think if you have a content creator that you like, You can look at them, but really just kind of the neurodivergent social media space altogether. You can like apps that are good for this and tons and tons of lists are going to come up. But if you have an ADHD coach, a lot of times they can help you weed through all of that stuff. 'Cause we have things that work for us, but Danielle and I, we're kind of a different kind of ADHD coach. We have neurodivergency ourselves, but we've also helped entrepreneurs and we help teachers and we help all these things. So even though a certain app may not be my favorite, I can tell you, well, for all of my teacher clients, this is the one they use and they really like. For my entrepreneur clients that do this, this is the one that they really like. So don't be afraid to ask.

Ask. That, that's really a big one. Ask. And Unfortunately, the way that TikTok is working, especially with some of the— I'm gonna apologize to Kelly. Kelly, I know you listen to our podcast. I'm not talking about you, I swear. Go follow Kelly Bombs. She does not suggest anything unless she uses it first, because her and I have had conversations about that. But unfortunately, a lot of even the ADHD influencers you can't necessarily trust because they're getting paid now. To do these things that I know of. I know for a fact there's a couple influencers that have promoted a couple things that are very— the rest of the ADHD community looks at and goes, what? Are you kidding me? Why are you promoting this? This is terrible. So be, be really careful who you follow. Asking your ADHD coach, perfect example. We have an actual free area in the free community space where we talk about apps that we love as ADHDers. There is no No kickbacks on any of the things anywhere for any of that, because we just find apps that we like. Like Habitica— I can't say that— Habitica is amazing. I love that habit building app. I use it 2 or 3 times a year. Did you just hear me say I don't use it all the time? I just use it 2 or 3 times a year. I kind of cycle around between habit apps for what works for me when I'm in certain moods or whatever. So you're gonna hear that from most anybody that's gonna be honest with you about using apps. And all of that is that we're, we're not using the same thing all the time. Why do we love this one? Why do we love that one? Why do we switch around? And you're gonna get a really honest opinion cuz I have thousands of apps on my phone that I've paid for myself and tested out because a client has mentioned it to me, which is actually an addiction and a problem and I need to stop doing that. But that's another story entirely.

A lot of us get caught up in the shiny ball scenario. So it's okay. But if you want to save yourself some time, ask us, ask the community at large. What if you have your own social media? Ask. And people, cuz you probably follow a lot of neurodivergent people, people will chime in in the comments.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Even on some of those bigger ones that I say, eh, be careful that they're paying to promote. If you ask questions, hey, does anybody use this in their chats? There's some of the biggest most active chats on Cockatex like that to ask the questions, then go for it. But again, be really careful. And again, ask our free community, ask your coach, because we've got apps that we like and we'll tell you why we like them, why we like them, why we don't like them. And I have apps I don't hate and I have clients that use them based on the things that I told them that I don't like about them because there are things that they would like. So being able to talk to somebody who's actually tried it out and use it day to day for a little bit is really, really helpful. Other thing is don't buy immediately. If they expect you to put a credit card in immediately, don't do it.

I'm really leery about that regardless if it is coaching apps, med health apps. Everyone wants you to put in a credit card to hold it. But as you know, also many of us forget we have subscriptions, stuff like that. I need people that the free trial is free. So if it is 7 days, if it's 2 days, if it's 30 days, whatever. I do not wanna have to put my information in there and get automatically charged if I go over the trial period, cuz I will do it. I will go over it cuz I will forget. And so if it's good enough, I will come back. Have faith in your product.

You know, if it is good and I can stay engaged and I like it, great, and I will use it. But if you make me put my credit card in, cuz I will forget. We forget about our subscriptions. We forget about all those things. And as a coach, I encourage my clients and I actually send a message out like once every 6 weeks. Have you checked your apps and made sure you like your current subscriptions? And I actually, it's something that I as a coach remind my clients of often because it's so important. What apps are you finding that you do like and are helpful to you?

Well, social media is a blessing and a curse for neurodivergent people. There's a wealth of information, but it's very easy to rabbit hole. And unless you set a timer, I think the cons outweigh the pros. And I know, I know that that's like, what? But that's true. I've tried Trello. I've tried Asana. I've tried all the productivity apps. Some of them are so beautiful. I've tried Notion. I've had templates, everything. Some of them are so beautiful. I get caught up in that, but I'm telling you, the ones that work the best are the most plain. And the simplest. They're really the cheapest.

Yes. For me, my apps are pretty basic. I use an iPhone, so I use Siri. I use the Reminders app. I use the Notes app. And I have my social media apps, obviously, but Slack for me is one of my favorite apps for keeping in contact with my team members and all of that. And then Google. So I have a Google Calendar for putting everything that doesn't go under Reminders. And I try to keep it really simple. Trello is what we use for organizing as entrepreneurs and owning a business, but Other than that, we— I try to keep it as simple as possible. What's built into my phone? Why do I want what's built into my phone? Because I'm not gonna change my phone brand ever because everything works together. My phone has the same stuff as my laptop, has the same stuff as my tablet, as my desktop. So I don't have to think about things and I don't have to worry about things are where they belong. And that right there for me is why I'm on Apple. I wish Windows did it because a Windows desktop is actually better for using for a lot of things, but don't come after me, Mac people, but I use a Mac. Because I'm ADHD.

So I do, I like the interconnectivity of, of Apple products. And but okay, so Apple products and regular PCs, that is, it's whatever works for you, right? Whatever works for your brain. And there's some of us, a lot of education, a lot of schools, a lot of colleges are Apple only. And that is because Apple gives money to education to get them to put their products in schools.

Yes.

And no shade on the game there, Apple. I think that's an amazing thing. And, and I love your products. I do. But there is a learning curve with Apple products.

Yeah, there is.

And there's a big enough learning curve with Apple products that I have Apple products and I don't know all the cool shit they do because there's such huge learning curve. And it's hard to get tech support for them. It's hard to— that's the thing. I need things to be easy. So tech support, user interface, all of the things. I need it to be simple and I need tech support to be easy. I need, if I have to cancel something or, or sign up for something, I need it to be easy and clearly defined.

Nobody has clearly defined or easy, and that sucks. So it's a matter of, can I figure this out on my own a lot of times? And, and I think there's a problem for a lot of us is we know that we have We can't rely on somebody else for help very rarely, right? Because tech support—I don't care who your tech support is. I was in IT for years. Tech support sucks. Hello, I was the problem. It was me. But we worked on Windows. We worked on Macs. I had to learn all the things. So for me, it's not that big of a deal. But I understand that there when I come across something I don't know how to use, like use an app here that I cannot figure out for the life of me. Bright is the only one who knows how to use. It drives me insane, and I'm a tech person. I can't figure this app out. It just drives me nuts. But I don't have the patience because it's not intuitive. I don't have the patience to figure those things out. That's why I have somebody like a Vita, or I have a Gina, or I have my husband who will figure something out. But we have to. That's part of figuring out what works for us is having another brain to learn from to figure out what's going to work best for us. But that comes back to everything that we talk about around here is. Community. Have a community you can rely on before you make that purchase, before you buy that thing, before you download that thing. Ask somebody else. So my favorite things that are out there right now: AI can be amazing. We were talking with on our group call just today. We were talking to some of the people in our community about using ChatGPT to help you figure out your moving packing list, figure out how to create your travel packing list. What do I need to take on a cruise with me? Hey, here are all of the. tasks I need to do today? What order should I do 'em in? And what are the steps to doing 'em? ChatGPT is amazing.

So many people are using ChatGPT to write content, right? And then there's all these, there's a whole bunch of shade out there. You can tell it's written by AI, blah, blah, blah. But I'm just over here as a stressed out neurodivergent person. I need a packing list for a 4-day vacation for a family of 4 to the desert, to the beach, to whatever. And it will spit it out like nothing else. I need a to-do list. I'm getting ready to move from one apartment to the next. I need a to-do list of action steps and it will spit it out. I'm over here using it for more concrete things to make sure I don't forget the steps because I can write content. I'm a creative person. I can do all that stuff. What I need is something that does those baseline cognitively expensive things like the task list, the things like that. Because if you just want me to sit around and create all day, I can do that, no problem.

So yeah, I use it all the time. Hey, these are all my tasks I have to do today. How do I get these done? I have 8 hours and 4 phone calls from this time, this time, this time. And it will actually give me the time slots and how long it should take me to do things. In resources, I've only had this happen once, and I don't know what I did, and I can't find the one post that I did on ChatGPT. It gave me a resource. to do something that I didn't know how to do. Because it said figure out how to do next to it in my own notes. I had just copied and pasted on some things from my phone and it gave me directions on how to do the thing. I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Because I didn't have to spend the time, the executive functioning decision skills and energy to figure that out. So using ChatGPT to help you with your executive functioning is huge.

For me, that's the thing. And, and it, okay, it's the same as when you're driving around and you're lost and you're looking for something and you turn the radio off so that you can see better with your eyes.

Yeah.

Because you clearly can't see a street sign when the radio's on, right? That is actually us trying to lessen our cognitive load. We're just doing it unconsciously. We lessen our cognitive load. We're not having to listen and look at the same time, and it makes it easier for us to process the information we're seeing. So for me, that's what I'm using AI for, is these to lessen my cognitive load. I'm using it as a coping skill instead of a creation platform, because I, I just don't have trouble creating. What I, what I have trouble is all of those little tasks take up all my creative spoons. And then when it gets time to be creative, I don't have anything left because I'm exhausted because I've had to make 5 million decisions about should I buy whole wheat pasta or whatever.

It really does help to have something to help you with that decision fatigue because that's a big deal. So there are apps that are really amazing for us out there. And again, if you want to pick our brains, please ask the questions because we will answer under this podcast video, however you're watching this. We're happy to answer that for you, what we use, why we use it, how we use it. But Be careful about what you're using. Go to your community, actually look for— before you spend the money, before you do the thing, ask. Because it is such an important part of making sure that you have the support you need in a way that actually makes sense and isn't going to be an impulse spend or a financial burden on you long-term because you've forgotten about the thing or it didn't work for you or it was never gonna work for you in the first place. And then you had a lot of shame, so you put it in that little box and forgot about it.

And here's the thing, if you ever run into a company that their practices seem to be hidden, like let's say you need to cancel something and you can't find it and you email them and the process is still hard to navigate, they're predatory practices for a reason. If you sign up with our community and you can't figure out where to go and you email us, we'll take care of it for you. Through it, or we'll do whatever.

I'll do a Zoom call with you and do it with you. The directions I give it, and we have Bloom videos created for this stuff to make it as easy as possible, but we will give you direction. We don't like that. We don't want it. Don't get me started on that stuff. But if you find a company that is predatory and you feel that they're predatory, start talking about it on social media. Like, talk about it. Let people like us know so that we can talk about it and we can explore, because things are not going to change unless we start talking about it.

100%. And supporting each other. You know, I said the only problem I have with social media is I get distracted, and it's a black hole for me of time. But that's where our community spends a lot of time. And so if you don't know what to post on social media, you don't have to put anything. You can just creep on everybody. That's what a lot of us do. But if you feel really strongly about something, a company has predatory practices, Or you don't know how to navigate something or whatever, put it out because the neurodivergent community is super supportive and most of them are online.

And again, it's not that we're just super supportive. The narrative needs to change. The predatory practices need to change. The treating us as we're just— because we're impulsive spenders and we like shiny objects that we are worth investing millions and millions of dollars in advertising to target us. We don't start speaking out against things like that, it's not going to change. They're going to continue to target us.

Yeah.

We were talking about Dunn at the beginning of this episode and stuff. We don't know what's going on with Dunn. We don't know what the actual truth is. We're all watching it very, very closely, but I really hope that it doesn't affect how we're able to access our care that we do need now. And obviously that's something that's near and dear to me and something I'm trying to change the message on by going back to school because I'm sick of us being treated the way we're treated. So speak out about it. If you're treated badly, if you've got something that's predatory, if you've got something that's a red flag. And again, we talk about if you met one ADHD or neurodivergent person, you met one. But if you are— you struggle with it, there is somebody else out there that does too. It's not just you. I promise it's not just you. Please tell us. Please tell the world. Please tell the community so that we can change how— We're presented with options out there to help us. Yes.

Because I say it on every single thing that I can get people to do. Always. The only thing I ever got bad grades on in school was my excessive talking. And I truly feel that having conversations and talking about things is how we change the narrative. If you don't ever talk about it, it won't get changed.

We need to change the narrative. We need to not be targeted. So how do we change that? We talk about it. So let us know if you find something predatory or even one you absolutely love that treated you Amazing.

Yes. I always need good ones.

Please tell me the amazing ones too, because I mean, I have a social media app, but this is the app I was saying I have no freaking clue how to use. I cannot figure it out, which is why I bought it. But we didn't use it for a short period of time. Like we were forgetting about it and not using it and they stopped charging us while we were in pause, but kept emailing us and letting us know we were paused. Yeah, it's amazing. That is an app, Repurpose.io. If you need social media for your business or whatever, Repurpose.io, go use it because they are fantastic and built for the indie community, let me tell you. And their support has been amazing and helpful.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's like almost instant.

They're amazing. So absolutely tell us about the good, bad, tell us the good, tell us the bad, tell us the ugly so that we can change the narrative and celebrate those things that are amazing for us. As a community. If you have any questions, reach out to us at ND Out Loud. You can find us everywhere, ND Out Loud. I don't care where it is— website, internet, TikTok, whatever. Just message us. We're happy to help, and we're happy to have a conversation with you. Have a good day, everyone. Bye, guys.