A Massive Dev Chart Alternative for iPhone

Where the Massive Dev Chart wins

The database is far larger. Digitaltruth describes the Massive Dev Chart as the largest film development chart there is, and that is not marketing. Agitate bundles 795 published times covering 53 films and 45 developers. If your combination is an unusual one, the chances of finding it there rather than here are much better.

It has a track record. The Massive Dev Chart Timer has been on the App Store for years and carries years of ratings with it. Agitate has one rating, which is 5.0 from 1 rating. One rating is one person's opinion, and you should read it as exactly that.

It is on Android as well. Agitate is an iPhone and iPad app only, and there is no Android version and none planned in public.

Where Agitate is different

Color is in the same app. The Massive Dev Chart Timer covers black and white; Digitaltruth sells a separate app, the Darkroom Lab Timer, for C-41, E-6 and RA-4. In Agitate, black and white, C-41 and E-6 are one app and one purchase decision, with twelve color kits written out bath by bath.

Every row names its source. Each of the 795 times in Agitate carries the manufacturer document it was transcribed from, shown on the row. There is nothing scraped and nothing crowd sourced, and a combination that cannot be sourced is not in the app at all. That is the direct cause of the database being smaller, and it is a deliberate trade.

The timer does not count. Agitate stores the moment each bath ends rather than the seconds left in it, so a lock, a call, a force quit or a flat battery cannot freeze the run. The lock screen and Dynamic Island countdown is drawn by iOS itself, in the same red on black as the app.

The minimum quantity is counted per film. A dilution calculator that checks the minimum against the tank rather than against the films in it will pass a 500 ml tank that is short by half. How that check works.

It refuses to compensate a color time. Time and temperature conversion is a black and white technique, and Agitate will not produce a compensated C-41 or E-6 number. Why, and where it does convert.

It is free. The Massive Dev Chart Timer is a paid app. Agitate is free and develops your film in full, including every chemistry warning; the free version shows advertising from Google. Agitate Pro is a one-time purchase that adds a development journal, a chemistry ledger and export, and removes the advertising.

Agitate, in numbers

Figures for Agitate are counted from the app's own bundled database. Everything said about other apps here is from their makers' public descriptions.

What Agitate does not have

No RA-4 and no paper processing: the app times three processes, black and white, C-41 and E-6, and nothing else. No ECN-2 template. No cloud sync, which is why export of your recipes and your journal as CSV and JSON exists and why you should use it before changing phones. No Android. And a database that is a fraction of the size of the one you are comparing it against.

There is also nothing stopping you using both. If you have a time you trust from any chart, write it into Agitate as a recipe of your own: unlimited in the free version, and it behaves exactly like a bundled row with the same agitation schemes, the same drain call and the same warnings.

Agitate is independent and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any other app, publisher or manufacturer. Product names are used only to identify what is being compared. See the trademark notice.

Try the smaller, stricter one

Free, with color in the same app, a source named on every row, and a clock that a locked phone cannot stop.

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