Charsible

When I got back into blogging, I was looking for an analytics tool that could track how many people visited my blog, which articles they read, and where they were from. I also wanted a tool that respected my visitors’ privacy, didn’t require loading a large JavaScript file, and was GDPR-compliant, so I wouldn’t need to display a cookie banner. After thorough research and testing different options, I chose Plausible Analytics. It’s a fantastic alternative to Google Analytics and met all my criteria. That was about four years ago.

Plausible Analytics is a paid service, but since it’s open-source, you can also self-host it. I opted for the paid version because I didn’t want the hassle of maintaining a server, and the cost was reasonable.

So far, I haven’t had any issues with Plausible Analytics, but I wanted a simpler way to check how many people visited my blog throughout the day. This led me to create an app that uses Plausible’s API to add widgets to my iPhone, making it easy to monitor visitor numbers at a glance.

And that’s how Charsible was born. With this app, you can use your Plausible API key (securely stored in your iCloud Keychain, so only you can access it) to access your data. You can then add your websites and configure widgets on your iPhone’s Home Screen to display the data however you like.