Why Is the Watering History Still So Useless After All These Years?!

[rwdozier]

Okay Rachio… we need to talk.

I’ve been a Rachio user since 2016. Back then, it was a pioneer — smart irrigation systems were rare, and Rachio felt like the future. But here we are in 2025, and the watering history feature is still shockingly underwhelming.

My Core Gripes
Lack of Useful Historical Data

The app and web interface fail to provide detailed, easily accessible watering history.

You can’t even search it. Can’t filter. Can’t export. Can’t generate a report for a specific period.

Stop Using “Yesterday” in a Historical Report!

Historical logs should give the actual date and time, not vague terms like “yesterday.”

Example: I see “Zone 1 – Started – Yesterday 9:08 PM” — but in an actual report, that “yesterday” becomes meaningless a week or a month later. I am sure the background coding to report “Yesterday” and then change it for the next day’s report is unnecessarily complicated!! This is basic reporting logic.

Cartoonish Interface

Huge fonts, giant icons, redundant info, wasted white space… like it’s designed for a preschool iPad app.

The history is all big graphical tiles — which means you can’t even copy and paste the info if you wanted to.

No Reporting Tools

How is there still no way to generate a history report for a date range? Or export to CSV? Or even just view the last 30 days in a readable table?

Example
Here’s an actual clip of my history (attached).
Notice how it’s split into multiple tiles for the same event. “Started” tile, “Completed” tile, “Soaking” tile… spread out across multiple pages. It’s absurd that I have to scroll endlessly to get an overview of what happened in a single day.

Bottom Line
This feels like a half-baked, never-finished feature that’s been frozen in time since the first-gen Rachio. The scheduling, hardware, and watering logic are solid — but the history feature is stuck in the stone age.

Rachio team:
Give us:

A detailed, searchable, exportable log

Ability to filter by date range, zone, or schedule

A table view for quick scanning

Actual timestamps, not vague “yesterday” placeholders

Real-time updates, not “maybe tomorrow if we feel like it”

Am I really the only one fed up with this? I can’t believe more people aren’t reporting these same inadequacies.

[tmcgahey]

I don’t ever look at my watering history. Actually, it is pretty rare that I get into the app at all unless I’m doing a quick run while fixing a zone. My Flex Daily schedules just run, and run really well.

[Linn]

Gotta agree with you. I used to be meticulous about looking at my history, especially when I was working on getting my Flex Daily schedules set up. You used to be able to cut and paste it. Then they changed to this format. And the events don’t even line up in chronological order. Zone 1 starts and then a minute later 2 is completed??? then zone 4 starts and THEN zone 1 completes??? Probably that way that they are handling events that start and stop at the same rounded time, but makes it crazy difficult to read. It should just present it in reverse chronological order!!!I finally just threw up my hands and said (to myself) “this is a mess”.

Luckily I don’t need to look at the history much at all anymore, but I can see that there are times that it might be needed. And reading it the way it’s presented is really tough!!!

[annepco]

Agree rwdozier, the app could be much more user friendly than it currently is. I have been able to export the data on my computer as a csv file, zone by zone as well as combined per day, & import it into a google sheet. This helps me understand when things are watering properly or require an adjustment. Attaching below. I get tripped up in the Advanced Settings. I honestly don’t know the AREA of each zone, the available water, root depth, allowed depletion, efficiency or crop coefficient. I simply want to water more or less often for the same am’t of time when a zone is scheduled. So frustrating!

[rwdozier]

All kinds of issues - in the web interface, the “Home” screen shows this out of chronological order timeline, and it is not that way in the mobile app.

[tmcgahey]

That is because Rachio made it very clear almost 2 years ago that resources aren’t being pushed towards the web app anymore. Most IoT devices don’t have, or have a VERY limited web app associated with them.