The Natural Cycles app uses daily temperature measurements and period cycle tracking to predict the days someone is least likely to get pregnant. It falls under the broad category of fertility awareness birth control methods, where people track when they’d be ovulating and use that information to figure out when they’d have the best chance of conceiving. It tends to be conflated with the rhythm method, which is ineffective, but when done properly, fertility awareness can be as or more effective than hormonal birth control pills.
“We do see that there are some users that have trouble remembering to take their temperature in the morning,” says Elina Berglund, co-founder and CEO of Natural Cycles. “We listened to our users, and they said, you know it would be great if there will be something they could wear and measure the temperature during the night so they don’t have to remember in the morning.”
Anyone using the app to track their fertility can use the [Oura ring tracking] feature now through a beta program. People who use the app as birth control, which Berglund says is about 75 percent of users, don’t have access yet — Natural Cycles needs sign-off from the FDA first.
