Steady Hands - tremor meter Panel Review
Review updated:
Steady Hands is a smartphone app that lets you measure and track Parkinson’s tremor in your hands, as well as your medication. Our reviewers liked being able to monitor changes in their tremor alongside their medication schedule, but most found the instructions and feedback provided by the app unclear.
Highs
- Easy to use
- Helps monitor tremor
Lows
- Instructions are unclear and hard to find
- Test scores often don’t match experience
- Optional premium subscription is expensive
Meet our review panel
The seven reviewers in our panel were asked to test the premium version of Steady Hands for four weeks before sharing their feedback with us. One of them had previously tested the Vilim Ball and used the device alongside the app for this review.
Symptoms: Our reviewers are living with a wide range of Parkinson’s symptoms, including tremors, rigidity, stiffness, anxiety, insomnia, fatigue and pain.
Tech confidence rating: 2 very confident, 3 somewhat confident, 2 neither confident or unconfident
Location: Berwickshire, Clackmannanshire, Essex, Northumberland, Warwickshire, Wirral and Worcestershire.
Gender
- Men: 3
- Women: 4
Age range
Years since diagnosis
Background
Steady Hands is a smartphone app designed to measure and track hand tremor over time. The app was created in 2023 by Vilimed, the Lithuanian company behind the Vilim Ball vibration therapy device. Steady Hands works by itself but will connect to a Vilim Ball if you have one to give you more information.
Vilimed developed Steady Hands after realising that doctors can’t monitor short-term changes in people’s tremor. They can see how a patient’s tremor changes over the years, but it requires visits that are usually a year or more apart. This can make it harder to know whether changes in tremor are caused by changes in medication or lifestyle, or whether the patient is simply having a good day.
Vilimed thus developed an app that uses the tech inside your smartphone to measure tremor more frequently at home. It also lets you record your medication and add notes about sleep, stress and other factors that could impact tremor on any given day.
“Digital tracking plots a long-term trend line, empowering you to distinguish between temporary fluctuations and actual disease trajectory, ensuring that any necessary adjustments to your care plan are made proactively and precisely”, Vilimed told us.
“By using the devices you already own, such as mobile phones or smart watches, we solve two problems at once: we provide objective, data-driven results that doctors need, and we make it accessible for everybody because you don’t need to buy any extra equipment.”
First impressions
How it works
Steady Hands uses four free exercises to measure tremor:
- Holding a virtual glass of water to evaluate hand stability
- Tracing shapes on screen to measure hand stability
- Uploading photos of pen-on-paper drawings to measure hand stability
- Touching a dot on screen to measure tremor intensity
If you give permission to collect health data, the app can also track your tremor and how you walk. The same goes for an Apple Watch if you have one, as some of our reviewers did.
You can also pay for the optional premium plan, which adds several extra features:
- Fast monitoring to analyse hand stability on the spot
- Track changes in your response speed
- Breathing exercises for stress and anxiety
- Test whether your stability is affected by tactile stimulation
- Tremor imitation to reduce tremor
- Combined therapy with the Vilim Ball
Instructions
Of our seven reviewers, three found the instructions in the app to be “fairly clear”, while four found them to be less clear or could not find them at all.
One person said: “There were no instructions. [I was] presented with a group of tests to perform but no guidance as to when to perform them.”
I felt there was an over-reliance on the intuition of the user.
Another said, “When you first open the app I expected prominently placed and clear instructions on how to perform various tasks. A link to FAQs and another link to tutorials were the last feature on scrolling down. Even then, I felt there was an over-reliance on the intuition of the user.”
Even the reviewers who called the instructions “fairly clear” were confused in certain areas.
“The initial three main activities were generally clear [but] the amount of water to put in the glass was not specified – this could affect results,” said one.
Another said, “Stupidly to begin with I held a physical glass of water next to the phone. It was about a week before I realised I needed to use the virtual glass!
“[Also] the aim of the exercises was not clear. [I] didn’t really understand the tremor imitation.”
Medication logging
Steady Hands also lets you record when you take your medication and learn how this corresponds with your symptoms. However, some reviewers noted issues with this.
“There was nowhere to enter dosage or timing. Levodopa [was included] but not brand names”, said one. They also wanted a “way to erase a data entry point if necessary.”
Another said: “Probably the most frustrating issue was with respect to logging current medication […] I didn’t come across any specific instructions but after a while I noticed on the screen a display reading ‘no medicines currently in use’. When I clicked on this it took me to a page where I could input my medication.”
This meant they weren’t sure the app was storing their medication data, and felt they had to re-enter the information every time they opened it.
Vilim Ball
For Vilim Ball users, Steady Hands includes a ‘combined therapy’ feature that combines the ball’s tremor-reducing vibration therapy with the breathing exercises in the Steady Hands app.
One reviewer had previously tested Vilim Ball for the Tech Guide and agreed to test Steady Hands alongside it. They found it “fairly difficult” to sync their Vilim Ball with the Steady Hands app. “Again, there were no clear instructions.”
They saw no benefit from the combined therapy and felt unsure about the science behind it.
“I was left wondering what evidence there might be that breathing alone might help. As it turned out the output showed no improvement in the tremor for me.”
Daily Use
Using the app
Six of our seven reviewers found the app fairly easy to use.
“It was quite logical and followed a pattern,” said one reviewer.
Another called the app “intuitive generally.”
Some found the app to be helpful in tracking their tremor throughout the day. They said that it had potential in helping them monitor their tremor and adjust their medication accordingly.
However, one reviewer found the exercises in the app to be boring and repetitive, and found that the free spiral-drawing activity produced “wildly erratic results”.
“[They] might be better with a more extreme tremor,” they said.
Another said: “Because the tasks were quite short time-wise, the tremor didn’t really register. I tried doing them when the tremor was there already but when concentrating on the task the tremor goes.”
“It has made me reflect on how my body behaves at different points in my day and medication cycle”, said someone else.
“It might be useful if [you’re] looking to assess changes in tremor following the start of a new practice or medication change.”
Setting reminders
You can set up reminders in the app to take your medication and complete exercises.
Vilimed recommends repeating the exercises on different days, at different times of day and in different emotional states. This lets you catch more of your real-life experiences of tremor.
It has made me reflect on how my body behaves at different points in my day and medication cycle.
“[It] only takes a few minutes a few times a day,” said one reviewer. “Testing at [the] same time as [my] pill alarm makes it easy to remember.”
But another found remembering every day to be tough. “It was difficult to get into a routine of doing the tasks because I was very busy […] I think this was because the tests didn’t really show any variance […] so there seemed little point in doing them.”
Understanding the feedback
Different exercises provide results such as a stability score that rates the severity of your tremor, a graph that maps your movement, or the option to compare yourself to ‘typical’ scores for tremor.
You can also record your stability, stress level and sleep. And there’s a more detailed view with graphs to track yourself over time or to share with healthcare professionals.
It’s very difficult to work out exactly what it’s measuring and whether it’s significant.
Confusion about the feedback was common.
One reviewer said the initial screens were “fairly intuitive” but that the results pages were far too technical.
“There were a lot of acronyms to get your head round”, said another.
Another reviewer questioned the scoring system: “Often I wondered about the scale they used, especially if I was rated 10 (perfect) but I had seen my hand shaking whilst doing a task.”
Our reviewers wanted to know more about the scientific basis of the app and its scores. Without this, some weren’t sure how far to trust the results. “Occasional odd readings were flagged as quote ‘worrying’ which I feel was very inappropriate, and potentially disturbing,” said one person.
“[It’s] not clear how – if at all – use of the app might help to reduce tremors as opposed to simply monitoring them. [It’s] very difficult to work out exactly what it’s measuring and whether it’s significant”.
On tablets and watches
Most reviewers reported no problems reading text or pressing the on-screen buttons. However, one did say that the finger-tracing activities could be fiddly on their 6-inch smartphone display. They wondered if using a larger iPad instead would make it easier.
Steady Hands is also available on the Apple Watch. Here, the app uses the watch’s sensors to measure tremor, show real-time data, complete a vibration test and offer vibration therapy.
One reviewer tried it but found “little general info about [the app] or exactly what the various options were measuring. [It was] also unclear how it integrated with the main iPhone app activities.”
Vilimed plans to extend support to other smartwatches, including Garmin and Samsung Galaxy models, in 2026.
Value
Our reviewers tested the free version of Steady Hands, followed by the premium version to give them a good idea of the differences of the two plans.
Free version
Most reviewers thought that Steady Hands provided good value as a free app.
One said “[It is] certainly worth trying the free version”, while another said it was good value but noted that “it only recorded a limited number of results in the free version”.
Others didn’t think the free version offered any value.
“I think it is unreliable as a diagnostic tool and, from my experience, the associated therapies are ineffective. On this basis it isn’t worth any price,” said one.
Is it worth paying for the premium version?
Some exercises and features require a £9.99 monthly premium subscription.
One person thought the free version of the app was “too crude to be useful”, but that the premium version had a lot of potential for monitoring the impact of medication on tremor.
Another didn’t believe they were getting the full benefit of the premium subscription without a Vilim Ball, as one of the paid exercises requires the device. “If you don’t have that product you’re not getting as much money’s worth as those who have both.”
They added: “I was not comfortable with the breathing exercises which are a Premium feature as they seemed [to be] quite an advanced level. [But] I liked the PDF report that it prepared and emailed to me.”
Others didn’t feel the app offered enough features to hold their attention considering its high price.
“It was a bit boring after a while, I felt like I was losing interest,” said one.
“Definitely not an app I would subscribe to”, said another. “I didn’t really feel that I got to understand what the aim of the product was.”