Answers for life with dysautonomia. Your nervous system, measured every morning.
Autonomic is a dysautonomia tracker for iPhone and Android. A five-minute reading becomes a daily score against your own normal, beside your blood pressure, standing heart rate, sleep, digestion and symptoms. It warns you when things start to slide, and all of it stays on your phone.
Every install starts with 14 days of Pro, free
“I’ve been through a dozen apps trying to manage my POTS and PEM. I can say without a doubt Autonomic is the BEST one I’ve tried.”
“It’s already helping me manage my health and gather data to show providers.”
“Only app that isn’t for athlete training and specific to dysautonomia.”
The questions dysautonomia leaves you with, answered.
Each one is a part of the app. Tap a question to see how it works.
What dysautonomia is, and why it is so hard to see.
- POTS
- Heart rate up 30+ bpm standing
- Orthostatic hypotension
- BP down 20/10 in 3 min
- IST
- Resting rate over 100
- Vasovagal syncope
- A reflex faint
Your autonomic nervous system runs everything you never have to think about: heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rhythm, digestion, sweating and temperature. It has two branches, the sympathetic side (“fight or flight”) and the parasympathetic side (“rest and digest”), and they are meant to balance each other moment to moment. Dysautonomia is the umbrella term for when that balancing goes wrong.
It takes many forms. POTS is a heart rate that races when you stand. Orthostatic hypotension is blood pressure that falls when you stand, by 20 mmHg systolic or 10 diastolic within three minutes1. Inappropriate sinus tachycardia is a fast heart even at rest2. Vasovagal syncope is a reflex faint. Small fiber and autonomic neuropathies damage the nerves that carry the signals in the first place. Dysautonomia also travels with long COVID, ME/CFS, mast cell activation and hypermobility, and many people meet the criteria for more than one3.
You cannot feel your nervous system, but you can measure it
The regulation itself happens out of sight, and its symptoms (dizziness, fatigue, brain fog, palpitations, nausea, temperature swings) are easy to dismiss and hard to describe. What you can measure are its fingerprints:
- HRV, the beat-to-beat variation in your heart rhythm, is one of the most direct daily windows on how much your rest-and-digest side is in play4.
- Heart rate at rest and on standing shows how hard your system works to keep you upright.
- Blood pressure across the day, because a single seated number misses the swings many people live with.
- Sleep, digestion and symptoms, kept on the same timeline so a bad week has context.
Taken once, any of these is a snapshot. Taken every morning and read against your own normal, they become a trend you and your clinician can use: a baseline, an early warning when things slide, and a record of what changed when you tried something new.
What Autonomic will not do
It will not tell you which form of dysautonomia you have, and it will never tell you to start, stop or change a treatment. Autonomic testing, tilt tables and skin biopsies belong with a clinician. What the app gives you is a careful record to bring to them, and it is honest when it has nothing to say.
Sources
Checked November 2026- Consensus statement on the definition of orthostatic hypotension, neurally mediated syncope and the postural tachycardia syndrome Freeman R, Wieling W, Axelrod FB, et al. Clinical Autonomic Research 21(2):69–72, 2011. The consensus definitions of POTS and orthostatic hypotension.
- 2015 Heart Rhythm Society expert consensus statement on the diagnosis and treatment of postural tachycardia syndrome, inappropriate sinus tachycardia, and vasovagal syncope Sheldon RS, Grubb BP, Olshansky B, et al. Heart Rhythm 12(6):e41–e63, 2015. The diagnostic criteria for POTS, including the 30 and 40 bpm thresholds.
- Long COVID: major findings, mechanisms and recommendations Davis HE, McCorkell L, Vogel JM, Topol EJ. Nature Reviews Microbiology 21(3):133–146, 2023. Dysautonomia and POTS as common features of long COVID.
- Heart rate variability: standards of measurement, physiological interpretation, and clinical use Task Force of the European Society of Cardiology and the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology. Circulation 93(5):1043–1065, 1996. The founding standard for measuring HRV and what it reflects.
What to track with dysautonomia, and why.
Your autonomic system touches nearly everything. These are the signals worth keeping, and how each one reaches your journal.
| Signal | What it can tell you | How Autonomic gets it |
|---|---|---|
| HRV (RMSSD and SDNN) | How much your rest-and-digest side is in play. A morning reading under your own normal often comes before a harder day. | Five minutes with your phone camera, Apple Watch, Garmin or a chest strap |
| Resting heart rate | A resting rate creeping up for a few days is one of the earliest signs your system is under load. A fast heart at rest is its own question for your clinician. | From your morning reading, or logged sitting or standing |
| Standing heart rate | How hard your heart works to keep you upright, at the core of POTS and orthostatic intolerance. | A guided stand test on Apple Watch or a chest strap, plus one-tap episode captures |
| Blood pressure | Highs, lows and swings across the day, and how they line up with symptoms, meals and standing. | Typed in from any cuff, lying or sitting, and graded |
| Sleep and overnight heart rate | Broken nights show up in the next morning’s numbers, and a heart that never settles overnight is worth knowing about. | Nights from Apple Health or Health Connect, with stages and overnight heart rate |
| Digestion | Gut motility is autonomic too. Hard days, loose days and long gaps often move with a flare. | Bowel movements logged by form and graded, with a quiet day counted only when you were logging |
| Temperature and sweating | Heat intolerance, temperature swings, cold hands and feet, flushing and excess sweating are all autonomic symptoms. | Built-in symptoms in two taps, with heat as a trigger |
| Barometric pressure | Plenty of people feel the weather turn. Your own log can say whether it really moves your days. | Recorded from your phone’s barometer (with your permission on iPhone), shown only once your data links it |
| Symptoms and triggers | Dizziness, palpitations, brain fog, fatigue, nausea, near fainting, and what came before each one. | Built-in dysautonomia symptoms and triggers, plus any you create |
One reading a morning. The whole system in view.
Recovery from dysautonomia is slow and uneven. The daily habit is small so the record can be long.
- 1Before you get upFive minutes lying still, with your finger on the camera, a watch or a strap. Your score and guidance are waiting before you stand.
- 2Through the dayBlood pressure, symptoms, meals, water and bowel movements in a few taps. Sleep, steps and workouts arrive from Apple Health or Health Connect on their own.
- 3When something slidesThe Journal flags it early and lists what moved, so you can ease off before the floor falls out.
- 4Over the monthsProgress draws the long view against your own baseline, and Insights shows what lines up with your better days.
I’ve been through a dozen apps trying to manage my POTS and PEM. I can say without a doubt Autonomic is the BEST one I’ve tried.
Hear about a slide before it lands.
Two detectors watch for you. One notices when your daily score has been sliding for days. The other speaks earlier, when the markers that move first, like resting and overnight heart rate or how quickly your heart settles after a workout, drift from your own normal together.
An early flag, not a prediction. It can be wrong, and it never replaces how you feel.
How crash warnings work →Find out if the weather really is part of it.
Pressure is recorded quietly each time you open the app. If your own journal ties low-pressure days to worse symptoms or readings, Insights shows you the link, and the Journal warns you on the next low day. If there is no link, you never hear about it.
Read about weather and dysautonomia →
vsComparing Autonomic with Welltory?
Both read HRV. Autonomic grades it for recovery, against your own normal, and adds the rest of the picture.
Read the full comparison with Welltory →
Stress, energy and wellbeing, with chronic illness among its usesOne a day on the free planGeneral HRV and stress scoresOn its cloud servers (Amazon Web Services and Google Firebase)
“I saw specialist after specialist, and kept leaving with no real answers. So I started tracking it myself. Autonomic is the tool I built to make sense of it.”
Austin Spaeth · more than four years with long COVID · dad of six, South Carolina
Read my story →Dysautonomia questions, answered
What is the best app for tracking dysautonomia?+
Measure the same few signals the same way, every day, and read them against your own normal. A five-minute morning HRV reading, your resting heart rate, a stand test now and then, blood pressure from a home cuff, and a log of sleep, symptoms and triggers cover most of what moves with dysautonomia. Autonomic brings all of it into one journal and turns it into a daily score and a trend.
Can an app tell me which type of dysautonomia I have?+
No. Dysautonomia is diagnosed by a clinician, often with autonomic function tests, a tilt-table test or a skin biopsy, after other causes are ruled out. What an app can do is keep a careful, repeatable record of your heart rate, blood pressure, HRV and symptoms, which gives your clinician far more to work with than a single visit.
Why track HRV with dysautonomia?+
Heart rate variability is one of the few direct, daily windows on your autonomic nervous system. It reflects how much your rest-and-digest side is in play. A single reading means little on its own, but a morning reading taken the same way each day, compared with your own baseline, shows the good stretches, the slides and the slow recovery that are otherwise hard to see.
Do I need a wearable?+
No. Your phone camera can take the morning HRV reading with a fingertip on the lens, and blood pressure can be typed in from any cuff. An Apple Watch or a chest strap records the stand test for you, or the app times it and you enter your heart rate by hand. A strap gives the cleanest HRV signal if you already own one.
Can I bring my data to autonomic testing or a specialist?+
Yes. With Pro, Autonomic builds a doctor summary from your readings, stand tests, blood pressure and symptoms, written by the AI you choose. Every stand test and reading also stays on your phone to show in the room.
Is Autonomic free?+
The journal is free forever, including unlimited HRV readings, your daily score, crash warnings and every stand test capture. Autonomic Pro is $7.99 a month or $49.99 a year and adds Insights, the pacing budget, your full history, stand test results and AI reports. Every install starts with 14 days of Pro, with no card.
Does it work on Android?+
Yes, at the same price. On Android, HRV readings run with your phone camera or a Bluetooth chest strap, the stand test and episode capture run with a chest strap or by hand, Garmin watches work, and sleep and workouts come in from Health Connect. The Apple Watch app needs an iPhone.
About dysautonomia
All basics articles →The latest on dysautonomia
Meet your nervous system tomorrow morning.
Free on iPhone and Android. Your phone camera is enough to start.