Attendance clicker

An attendance clicker is a way to record how many people came to a class or event. Sometimes the name means a student-response remote or app that each person uses to check in. Sometimes it means a manual counter that one person presses once per attendee. This page is about the second kind: a headcount, with no names.

Two things people mean by "attendance clicker"

If you need to know who was there, you need a check-in system. If a number is enough, such as how many came to a workshop, a talk or a club night, a headcount clicker is simpler, and that's what Tally Counter does.

Count a class or event with Tally Counter

1. On the Counters screen, tap Create Counter (or New Counter if you already have some).
2. Name it after the session, for example "Tuesday workshop", and tap Create.
3. Open the counter and tap the large + for each person who arrives. You get a haptic tap each time unless you turn haptics off in Settings.
4. If you tapped too many times, tap −. It takes one off and stops at zero.

For a second session, create another counter. There's no limit on how many you can have, and counting is free. To rename one, open it and tap Edit. To delete one, swipe it in the list.

Setting up a count for a class, a talk or an event

How you set the counters up decides how useful the numbers are later.

• One counter per session. Name it with the course or event and the date, for example "Bio 101 Oct 14". Each session keeps its own total, and the Counters list shows every count side by side.
• One counter for a whole run. If you'd rather watch a single number grow, keep one counter for a recurring event. The Today badge then shows the net change for the current day, so each event day starts at zero on that badge while the display keeps the running total.
• Two doors, two counters. Name them "Front door" and "Side door", count separately and add the totals afterward. The app doesn't merge them for you.

One caveat for classes. A tap count says how many people were there, not whether a given student attended, so it won't replace a roll call or a check-in system when attendance is graded.

What the Today badge shows

The Today badge on a counter shows the net change made today, for example "Today +42": adds minus subtracts. Reset doesn't change it. If you reset a counter to 0 partway through, the display starts over but the badge keeps its value, so read the display as your total.

The app asks "Reset this counter to 0?" before it clears anything.

The activity log (Premium)

Premium Insights has a Recent activity list for each counter. It groups entries by day and shows the time next to each one, as "Added 1", "Removed 1" or "Reset to 0". Insights also has total actions, daily average, peak hour and an hour-by-hour chart. Open Insights from inside a counter.

This tells you when taps happened, which is useful if you want to see when people arrived. It doesn't say who they were.

What it doesn't do

Tally Counter has no field for attendee names and no roll call, so it can't tell you who attended. It doesn't use sensors, the camera or the microphone. It doesn't sync between devices and it doesn't export your numbers, so if two people count two doors, you add the totals yourself. Your counters are stored on your iPhone.

For more on counting people with a tap, see people counter. For how a phone compares with a handheld clicker, see hand tally counter vs phone app, or start with what a tally counter is.