Support

Common questions

How is Crest supposed to work?

Every urge rises, peaks, and fades. Most peak within ten to twenty minutes and pass on their own, but most people give in during the rise, so they never find that out.

When an urge hits, you start a surf. Crest shows you where you are on the wave and gives you something to do with your hands and attention until it passes. You are not resisting the urge, you are outlasting it.

What happens if I give in?

You log it, and nothing bad happens. Giving in doesn't break anything, doesn't count against a score, and doesn't lower any number in the app. Crest asks what the urge felt like and what set it off, because the triggers that beat you are the most useful thing it can learn about you.

Those show up in Progress under "What Beats You", separately from the ones you ride out.

What does "Your Urges Fade" mean?

When you log a surf, Crest asks how strong the urge was at its worst and how strong it was by the end. Across all your logged surfs, those two numbers become proof, in your own data, that urges pass.

On Progress, the same card compares your recent surfs against your earlier ones, so you can see whether the drop is getting bigger over time.

What is the Journal?

A month grid where every day you logged an urge is coloured by how hard that day was, so the month is already a picture before you write anything. Tap a day to see what happened and add a line about it, and tap the month name to pull back to the whole year at once.

Nothing nags you to write. It is there on the days you want it.

What is the heads-up notification?

Optional, off by default, in Settings → Reminders. Once Crest has enough history to see a clear pattern in when your urges hit, it will nudge you about fifteen minutes before that window, so you can get ahead of it instead of reacting to it.

It stays quiet until there is a genuine pattern. If your urges are spread evenly through the day, you will not get a daily notification built on noise. Everything is calculated on your device; nothing is sent anywhere.

Do I need an account? Where is my data?

No account, ever. Your surfs live on your device and sync through your own private iCloud so they follow you to a new phone. There is no server of ours involved and no way for anyone, including me, to read them.

The full details are in the privacy policy.

What happened to Surf Crew?

It has been retired. In practice almost every crew ever created stayed a crew of one. Asking someone to invite a friend into an app about their cravings turned out to be asking them to disclose something private, and very few people did.

It is fully removed as of version 1.6. If you were in a crew, the screen is gone and your own history, streaks and notes are completely unaffected - nothing you logged was ever stored in a crew record.

Can I use Crest without opening the app?

Yes. Add the widget to your Home Screen or Lock Screen and its Start button begins a surf immediately with your last category. "Hey Siri, start a surf" works too, and a Live Activity keeps the wave on your Lock Screen while a surf is running.

How do I delete my data?

Swipe or long-press any surf in your history to delete it. Deleting the app removes everything on that device. To remove the synced copy as well, go to iOS Settings → your name → iCloud → Manage Account Storage → Crest.

Something is broken, or I have an idea

Please write to me. Crest has no analytics in it, which means I genuinely cannot see when something goes wrong inside the app. An email is the only way I find out.

Get in touch

Include your iPhone model and iOS version if something isn't working. With no analytics in the app, that context is all I have to go on.