How to use Tare

Getting Started

When you first open Tare, you'll walk through a short onboarding flow to set up your profile — weight, height, age, sex, and activity level. Tare uses these to calculate your BMR (basal metabolic rate) and TDEE (total daily energy expenditure), which power your calorie goal suggestions. You'll also pick a fitness goal (lose fat, maintain, build muscle, or athletic) and optionally set a goal weight. Your water intake goal is auto-calculated from your body weight (~30ml per kg).

After onboarding, you'll land on the Daily Log — your home screen. From there you can start logging food immediately.

You can revisit your profile settings and adjust your goals at any time from the Profile and Goals tabs.

Daily Log

The Daily Log is organized by meal category. By default, you'll see Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Snack, but you can create your own categories. Each section shows the foods you've logged with their calorie count.

At the top, you'll see your calorie summary card with a progress bar and macro breakdown (protein, carbs, fat). The colors change as you approach your goals:

• Muted — you're well under your target
• Green — you're on track or have hit your goal
• Red — you've gone significantly over (110%+)

Each entry shows its full macro breakdown (protein, carbs, fat, fiber) inline — no tapping needed. Swipe left to delete, swipe right to edit.

Tap the chevron below the macros to expand and see fiber, sugar, and pinned micronutrients (Iron, Calcium, Vitamin D, Vitamin C) with percentage of your daily target. Tap "View all micronutrients" to see the full breakdown of 22 vitamins and minerals.

The Daily Log also shows your water tracking card and a weight pill displaying your current weight at the top.

From the ellipsis menu (⋯) you can access the Weekly Summary for a week-at-a-glance view, or copy the previous day's log to quickly duplicate yesterday's entries.

Navigating Days

The date header at the top of the Daily Log shows the current day. You can move between days in two ways:

• Swipe left/right on the log to go forward or back a day
• Tap the left/right arrows next to the date

At the bottom of the Daily Log, a calendar strip shows dots on days you've taken your supplements, making it easy to spot gaps in your routine.

Meal Categories

By default, Tare organizes your log into Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Snack. You can create your own categories to match how you actually eat — for example, "Pre-Workout", "Second Breakfast", or "Evening Snack".

Go to Profile → Meal Categories to manage them. For each category, you can set:

• Name — whatever you like
• Color — pick from a color grid
• Icon — choose an SF Symbol
• Time range (optional) — set a start and end hour, and Tare will auto-suggest that category when you log food during those hours

Categories can be reordered with drag-and-drop — the order in Profile matches the order in your Daily Log. You can have up to 12 categories total.

To edit a category, tap it. To delete one, swipe left — you'll be asked whether to reassign its entries to another category or delete them.

The four built-in categories (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snack) can be customized but not deleted.

Searching for Food

Tap "Add food" under any meal to open the food search. You'll see several default sections:

• Favorites — foods you've starred for quick access
• Recent — the last foods you've logged
• Templates — your saved meal templates for one-tap logging
• Recipes — your saved recipes, ready to log a portion

Start typing to search the USDA FoodData Central database. Results show the food name, source, and per-100g calories with macro chips (P/C/F).

Tare caches foods locally after the first search, so looking up something you've used before is instant — no network request needed.

Barcode Scanner

Tap the camera icon in the food search to open the barcode scanner. Point your camera at any food or supplement barcode — Tare looks it up via Open Food Facts.

The scanner includes a torch toggle for dark environments and a "Enter barcode manually" option if the barcode is damaged or hard to focus on.

If the product is found, you'll go straight to the logging screen with all nutrition info pre-filled. If not, you can:

• Search manually — go back to text search
• Add manually — opens the standard Custom Food form with the barcode pre-filled. Enter the product's name and nutrition facts. The food appears in My Foods and is found instantly on future barcode scans

Scanned products are cached locally, so the same barcode won't need a network request next time. The viewfinder flashes green on a successful scan.

Nutrition Label Scanner

When creating a custom food, tap "Scan Label" in the Nutrition per 100g section header to open the camera. Point it at a nutrition facts label and take a photo — Tare reads the text using on-device OCR and extracts calories, protein, carbs, fat, fiber, serving size, and the four FDA-required micronutrients (Vitamin D, Calcium, Iron, Potassium) automatically.

Everything runs locally via Apple's Vision framework — no photo is uploaded and no image is saved. The photo is used only for text recognition and discarded when you leave the screen.

After scanning, you'll see a review screen where you can:

• Verify and edit any value the scanner extracted
• Toggle between "per serving" and "per 100g" — if the label shows per-serving values and a gram weight is detected, Tare converts to per 100g automatically
• Retake the photo if the results aren't right

Tap "Use These Values" to populate the custom food form. You can still adjust any field before saving.

Tips for best results:

• Tap the preview to focus on the label text — especially helpful for small labels
• Use the torch toggle in low light
• On iPhone 13 Pro and later, the camera automatically switches to macro mode for close-up labels
• Flatten the label if it's on a curved surface — this improves text recognition

Logging a Meal

When you select a food, the Log Food screen appears with:

• An amount input with +/− buttons that adjust in smart steps (1g under 10g, 5g under 50g, 10g above)
• A unit picker (grams, ounces, ml, or serving). When you select "serving", Tare shows what one serving equals (e.g. "1 serving = 30g") based on data from USDA or Open Food Facts
• A meal picker (pre-selected based on where you tapped "Add food")
• A live nutrition panel that updates as you adjust the amount

All nutrition math is calculated from per-100g values, so changing units automatically converts everything accurately.

Tap the star icon to add the food to your favorites. Then tap "Add" to log it.

To edit a logged entry, swipe right on it in the Daily Log. You can change the amount, unit, or meal without re-searching for the food.

Custom Foods

Your own foods take priority over every public database. In the food search, tap "Create Custom Food" and enter:

• Name and optional brand
• Serving size and unit
• Nutrition values per serving or per 100g — protein, carbs, fat, and optionally fiber. Use the toggle to enter values exactly as printed on the label. Calories can be auto-calculated from macros or entered manually

You can also add micronutrient data — tap "Micronutrients" to open a sheet where you can enter vitamins and minerals. This is especially useful for supplements like electrolyte mixes where the micronutrients are the whole point.

Three ways in

• From scratch — for anything you can't find
• From a failed scan — when a barcode returns nothing, "Add manually" opens this form with the barcode already attached
• From an existing entry — when a database result is wrong, create your own copy from it, correct the numbers, and keep the barcode

Why the barcode matters

Barcode lookup checks your foods first, before Open Food Facts and before the USDA. So once you've attached a barcode to your own version, every future scan of that product returns your numbers instead of the database's — permanently, and only for you. Nothing is submitted anywhere. Custom foods also rank above USDA entries in text search.

This is the fix for the usual problem with crowd-sourced food data: entries that are wrong, missing micronutrients, or listing a serving size nobody uses. You correct it once.

Custom foods appear in the My Foods segment of the Foods tab and can be edited or deleted at any time. They sync via iCloud like everything else.

Recipes

Go to the Foods tab and switch to the Recipes segment. Tap "+" to create a new recipe.

In the Recipe Builder:

1. Give your recipe a name and optional notes
2. Add ingredients by searching the food database
3. Set the amount for each ingredient
4. Optionally enter the cooked weight — if left blank, Tare uses the sum of raw ingredient weights

The recipe shows live totals (total calories, protein, carbs, fat) and per-gram values (cal/g, protein/g, etc). This is especially useful for batch cooking — enter the total cooked weight, then log individual portions by weighing your plate.

To log a portion, tap "Log a Portion", enter the weight in grams, pick a meal, and you'll see a live macro preview before adding it to your log.

Each section also shows a "Micronutrients" row — tap it to see the vitamin and mineral breakdown for the total recipe, per 100g, or per serving.

Recipes can be edited later — adding or removing ingredients automatically recalculates all values.

Meal Templates

If you eat the same meals regularly, templates let you log them in one tap instead of adding each food individually.

Creating a template:

• Go to Foods → Templates and tap "+"
• Or in the Daily Log, tap the section menu (⋯) on any meal and choose "Save as Template" — this pre-fills the template with that meal's entries

In the Template Builder, give it a name and add foods by searching the database. Each item shows its portion size and nutrition. You'll see live totals (calories, protein, carbs, fat) at the bottom.

Logging a template:

• Find your template in the food search (they appear in the Templates section, favorites first) or in Foods → Templates
• Before logging, you can adjust individual item quantities or exclude items — for example, skip the toast but keep the eggs
• Pick a meal category and tap "Log All"

Template entries appear grouped in the Daily Log under a collapsible sub-header with a template badge, so you can see which entries came from the same template.

You can favorite templates for faster access and edit them at any time from the Foods tab.

Setting Goals

The Goals tab shows today's progress against your targets. You can set goals for:

• Calories (auto-calculated from your macro targets, or set manually)
• Protein (g)
• Carbs (g)
• Fat (g)
• Fiber (g)
• Water (ml or fl oz)
• Micronutrient targets (tap "Micronutrient Targets" to set goals for 22 vitamins and minerals — defaults to FDA Daily Values, fully customizable)

There's also a net carbs toggle — when enabled, fiber is subtracted from carbs in your progress display.

When you save new goals, Tare creates a new goal record effective from today. Your historical logs still reference the goals that were active when you logged them, so changing goals doesn't rewrite your history.

Tip: Tare calculates your TDEE and suggests targets based on your fitness goal. When you change your weight, activity level, or fitness goal in Profile, Tare will offer to update your macro targets automatically. Daily weight logging also silently adjusts targets in the background when the change is meaningful.

Micronutrients

Tare tracks 22 vitamins and minerals automatically using data from the USDA and Open Food Facts databases. No extra work needed — when you search for or scan a food, micronutrient data is extracted alongside macros.

What's tracked

• Vitamins — A, C, D, E, K, Thiamin (B1), Riboflavin (B2), Niacin (B3), B6, Folate (B9), B12, Choline
• Minerals — Sodium, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Zinc, Selenium, Copper, Manganese
• Fat breakdown — Cholesterol, Trans Fat, Monounsaturated Fat, Polyunsaturated Fat

Where you'll see micronutrients

• Daily Log — expand the calorie card to see pinned micronutrients (Iron, Calcium, Vitamin D, Vitamin C) with percentages. Tap "View all micronutrients" for the full breakdown
• Logging a food — tap "Micronutrients" to see the vitamin and mineral content for your portion
• Editing an entry — same micronutrient preview, scaled to your amount
• Recipes — micronutrient totals shown per recipe, per 100g, and per serving
• Templates — micronutrient totals shown when building or logging a template

Targets

Micronutrient targets default to FDA Daily Values — the recommended intake for adults. You can customize any target in Goals → Micronutrient Targets. Each nutrient shows the FDA recommendation as a reference, and a "Reset all to FDA recommended" option is available if you want to start fresh.

Progress bars use simple color coding:

• Muted — below 80% of target
• Green — 80% or above (you're on track)
• Red — only when exceeding the Upper Limit (UL) for nutrients where overconsumption is a concern, like Vitamin A or Iron

Custom foods and supplements

When creating a custom food or supplement, tap "Micronutrients" to add vitamin and mineral data. This is especially useful for electrolyte mixes, multivitamins, and other supplements where micronutrients are the primary content.

The nutrition label scanner also extracts the four FDA-required micronutrients (Vitamin D, Calcium, Iron, Potassium) automatically.

Data availability

Micronutrient data coverage depends on the food source:

• USDA generic foods (e.g. "Banana, raw") — excellent coverage, most nutrients available
• USDA branded foods — varies; many only report what's on the label
• Open Food Facts — varies by product; user-submitted data may be incomplete
• Custom foods — only what you enter manually

Missing data shows as "—" rather than zero, so you can tell the difference between "not tracked" and "genuinely none".

Nutrient Suggestions

When a micronutrient is below target, Tare can suggest foods to close the gap — ranked by what you actually eat, not generic "top 10" lists.

How to see suggestions

Open the micronutrient detail view (tap "View all micronutrients" in the calorie card). Any nutrient below ~90% of your target shows a chevron on the right. Tap it to open the suggestion sheet for that nutrient.

What you'll see

• Gap summary — how much you still need today, with a progress bar, plus how you averaged against the target over the past week
• What contributed — which foods actually supplied this nutrient, with the amount and the share each one provided. Useful for telling apart a nutrient you're missing entirely and one where a single food is doing all the work
• Ranked food list — personalized suggestions with serving size and a "closes X%" figure showing how much of the gap one serving covers
• Absorption tips — practical advice for improving absorption (e.g. "pair plant-based iron with vitamin C")

How ranking works

Each suggestion is scored by two factors, multiplied together:

• Contribution — how much of your gap one serving closes (capped so mega-doses don't dominate)
• Familiarity — how often you've eaten this food. Your recipes and templates rank highest, followed by foods you log frequently, then foods you've never tried

This means a lentil soup recipe you make weekly will rank above beef liver you've never cooked — even if liver has more iron per serving. The best suggestion is one you'll actually eat.

Reason badges

Each suggestion shows why it was picked:

• recipe / template — it's one of your saved meals
• custom — a food you created
• "12× logged" — how often you've eaten it in the last 90 days
• new — a USDA food you haven't tried yet but is nutrient-dense

Logging from suggestions

Tap Log on any food suggestion to open the standard logging flow with the amount pre-filled to the suggested serving. You can adjust the amount before saving.

Dietary preferences

If you set a dietary preference in Profile (Vegetarian, Vegan, or Pescatarian), foods that don't match are automatically filtered out. A vegan user will never see meat or dairy suggestions, regardless of nutrient density.

Absorption tips

Below the food list, Tare shows practical tips for the nutrient you're viewing. These come from a curated dataset of ~30 evidence-based rules covering enhancers and inhibitors:

• Iron — vitamin C enhances absorption; coffee/tea within an hour inhibits it
• Calcium — vitamin D helps absorption; high-oxalate greens (spinach) are less bioavailable than kale or bok choy
• Fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) — pair with a fat source for better absorption
• Zinc — phytates in beans and grains reduce absorption; soaking or sprouting helps

Tips are only shown when relevant — nutrients without known absorption interactions skip this section entirely.

Professional note

If a nutrient has been severely below target (>70% gap), Tare shows a gentle note suggesting a conversation with a doctor or dietitian. This is never alarmist — no red alerts, no diagnostic language. Nutrient gaps are nudges, not medical events.

Water Tracking

The Daily Log includes a water tracking card with quick-add buttons (250ml, 500ml) plus a "+" button for any custom amount. Your progress shows as a bar against your daily goal.

Your water goal is auto-calculated during onboarding (~30ml per kg of body weight, rounded to the nearest 250ml). You can adjust it in the Goals tab. Water is tracked in millilitres internally and displayed in ml or fluid ounces depending on your unit preference.

If Apple Health sync is enabled, water intake is also written to the Health app.

Weight Tracking

Tap the weight pill at the top of the Daily Log to log your current weight. Logging weight also updates your profile and silently recalculates your macro targets based on the new weight — no action needed.

Your weight history appears as a trend chart in Reports, with a dashed goal weight line if you've set one in your profile. The chart shows with as little as one data point.

Weight entries can also be imported from Apple Health — if you use a smart scale that writes to Health, Tare will pick those readings up automatically when weight sync is enabled. Manual entries in Tare always take priority over Health imports.

Adaptive TDEE

Most calorie calculators estimate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) using a formula based on your age, weight, height, and a self-reported activity level. This is a rough guess — it can be off by hundreds of calories. Tare's adaptive TDEE learns your actual expenditure by comparing what you eat to how your weight changes over time.

How it works

Every time you log your weight, Tare applies an Exponential Moving Average (EMA) to smooth out daily fluctuations from water, sodium, and digestion. This creates a reliable trend line from noisy day-to-day readings.

Using your weight trend and your food log, the algorithm back-calculates your real TDEE: if you're eating 2,000 calories per day and your weight trend is dropping by 0.5 kg per week, your body must be burning approximately 2,550 calories per day. No activity tracker is required — though if you wear an Apple Watch, the Activity Bonus can add to today's target on your big days.

The three phases

The algorithm needs data to become accurate. It ramps up through three phases:

• Static Only (days 0–13): Uses the standard Mifflin-St Jeor formula with your activity level multiplier. The adaptive calculation hasn't started yet.
• Transition (days 14–27): Blends the formula estimate with the adaptive calculation. The adaptive weight increases each day, gradually shifting from formula to real data.
• Fully Adaptive (28+ days): Uses only your real data. The formula is retired. Your TDEE updates weekly based on the latest 28 days of food and weight data.

A progress bar on the Goals tab shows your current phase and how many days until the algorithm is fully calibrated.

Weekly Check-In

Once per week (on a day you choose in Settings), Tare prompts you with a Weekly Check-In. This shows:

• Your week at a glance — food logging consistency, fasting completion, energy/mood averages, water intake
• Your current adaptive TDEE and confidence level (Low, Medium, or High)
• Suggested calorie and macro targets based on your TDEE and fitness goal

You can Accept the suggested targets, Keep your current ones, or Customize the macros — calories adjust automatically when you change your protein, carbs, or fat values.

Safety guardrails

The algorithm includes several safety measures:

• TDEE is clamped between 1.1× and 3.0× your estimated BMR to prevent implausible values
• Calorie targets never go below 1,200 (female) or 1,500 (male)
• Week-over-week TDEE changes are limited to prevent wild swings from a single bad week of data, with larger adjustments allowed when the trend has been consistent for multiple weeks
• If you haven't logged weight in 7+ days, the estimate is flagged as stale
• Tare notifies you when you reach weight milestones, and nudges you if your logging drops off and the estimate becomes stale

Getting the most out of adaptive TDEE

• Log your weight daily — more data points = more accurate trend. Weigh at the same time each day (morning, before eating) for consistency.
• Log your food accurately — the algorithm compares intake to weight change, so underreporting intake leads to an underestimated TDEE.
• Be patient — the first 28 days use a blended estimate. Full accuracy comes after a month of consistent data.
• Don't change your eating habits dramatically during the calibration period — the algorithm needs stable data to converge.

Adaptive TDEE is enabled by default. You can disable it in Profile → Smart Features. View your expenditure on the Goals tab, and tap Details to see TDEE over time, weight trend, and intake vs expenditure charts.

Activity Bonus

Adaptive TDEE learns your average burn over weeks — the Activity Bonus handles the days that aren't average. Out-move your typical day and Tare adds the extra calories to today's target, the moment the activity lands in Apple Health. A hike, a long ride, or a hard session counts on the day it happens instead of being smoothed into next week's average.

How your "typical day" is measured

• Your baseline is the median of your recent active days — up to the last 7 active days within the past two weeks.
• Days your Watch wasn't worn (or barely registered activity) don't count, so skipping a day doesn't drag your baseline down and hand out a bonus for an ordinary one.
• Today's bonus is simply how far today's active energy is above that baseline.

Designed to be conservative

• Upward only — a quiet day never shrinks your target. Rest days are handled by the weekly average, not punished on the spot.
• Capped at 40% of your base calorie target, so one glitchy Watch reading can't double your day.
• Macros follow along — bonus calories flow into your carb and fat targets, with protein held steady. Protein is a per-body-weight figure; it has nothing to do with how far you walked.

Seeing the math

When you've earned a meaningful bonus, a Watch chip appears on your daily log. Tap it to see today's activity, your typical day, and the calories you earned. Small bonuses are still applied quietly even when the chip doesn't show.

A smarter starting point

New to Tare with a Watch on your wrist? Tare can use your last 30 days of activity history from Apple Health to calibrate your starting expenditure — so your first targets fit you before Adaptive TDEE finishes learning, instead of relying on the generic formula alone. (Estimates are adjusted slightly downward, since watches tend to run optimistic.)

Turning it on

Enable it in Profile → Smart Features. It needs permission to read active energy from Apple Health, and about a week of recorded activity before it can establish a baseline. It works alongside Adaptive TDEE: the bonus adjusts today, the weekly check-in owns the long-term average.

Intermittent Fasting

Tare includes a built-in fasting timer that tracks your fasting windows, monitors body status stages, and integrates with your food log. Fasting works in two modes: manual (start when you want) and scheduled (auto-arms on days you choose).

Fasting protocols

Six preset protocols are available, or you can configure your own eating window:

• 12:12 — 12 hours fasting, 12 hours eating
• 14:10 — 14 hours fasting, 10 hours eating
• 16:8 — 16 hours fasting, 8 hours eating (most popular)
• 18:6 — 18 hours fasting, 6 hours eating
• 20:4 — 20 hours fasting, 4 hours eating
• OMAD — 23 hours fasting, 1 hour eating (One Meal A Day)

Select your protocol in Profile → Fasting. Set "Fasting starts at" to the time you stop eating each day. You can also configure the grace period (buffer after your last meal) and minimum fast duration.

Manual mode

Tap Start Fast on the Daily Log to begin a manual fast. You'll be asked to choose a duration (12h, 16h, 18h, 20h, 24h, or open-ended). The timer starts immediately and runs until you end the fast, cancel it, or log food.

Scheduled mode

In Profile → Fasting → Schedule, select which days of the week you fast. On scheduled days, your fast auto-starts when the eating window closes — zero taps required on routine days.

The auto-start time is calculated using this priority:

• If you logged food within 2 hours of the eating window end: the fast starts at your last food log + grace period.
• If your last food log is more than 2 hours before the window end, or you didn't log food today: the fast starts at eating window end + grace period.

The eating window end acts as a floor — the fast never auto-starts earlier than your schedule, even if you stopped eating hours before. If you open the app after the window closed, the fast retroactively starts from the correct time.

Before the auto-start time, the fasting section shows Fast Armed · Auto-starts at 9:15 PM with two options:

• Start Early — begins the fast immediately, before the eating window closes
• Skip Today — skips this scheduled day (shows "Skipped Today" with the next scheduled fast date and time)

On non-scheduled days, a Rest Day state shows with a "Start Anyway" option if you want to fast outside your schedule.

Fast breaking

When you log food during an active fast, Tare asks what you'd like to do:

• Break Fast & Log — ends the fast, records the session, and logs the food
• Log & Keep Fasting — logs the food without affecting the fast (useful for coffee, small items, or supplements with calories)
• Cancel — goes back without logging

Water and supplement check-offs do not trigger the fast-breaking prompt.

Body status stages

The timer view shows your current metabolic stage based on how long you've been fasting:

• Fed State (0–4h) — body digests food, insulin elevated
• Early Fasting (4–12h) — insulin drops, glycogen stores used
• Fat Burning (12–18h) — body switches to burning fat for energy
• Ketosis (18–24h) — ketone bodies become brain fuel, appetite decreases
• Deep Ketosis (24–48h) — significant ketone production
• Autophagy (48–72h) — peak cellular recycling

These are informational estimates based on published research — individual results vary. Tap the stage label to see a detailed timeline of all stages.

Fasting history

View completed fasts in Profile → Fasting → Fasting History. Stats include your current streak, average duration, and completion rate. Swipe to delete individual sessions.

Notifications

Fasting sends three types of notifications:

• Fast Auto-Started — "Your eating window has closed. Your fast is starting now." Fires when a scheduled fast begins.
• Fasting Goal Reached — "You've completed your 16-hour fast. Great job!" Fires when elapsed time hits your target. The fast does not auto-stop — you can continue past the target.
• Eating Window Opening — reminds you when your eating window starts (end of your fasting target).

Daily Check-In

The daily check-in is a quick wellness tracker that captures how you feel each day. Over time, this data feeds into correlation insights that help you understand how your nutrition and habits affect your wellbeing.

Core metrics

Two metrics are always shown:

• Energy — rated 1–5 using battery icons, from empty to fully charged
• Mood — rated 1–5 using weather icons, from stormy to sunny

Both use a color scale: red (1) → orange (2) → yellow (3) → light green (4) → green (5).

Extended metrics

Four additional metrics can be enabled in Profile → Daily Check-In:

• Sleep Quality — how well you slept last night (1–5)
• Stress — general stress level (1–5, inverted: 1 = low stress = green)
• Hunger — overall hunger and satiety (1–5, inverted: 1 = not hungry = green)
• Digestion — digestive comfort (1–5)

How it appears

On the Daily Log, a compact banner shows either "How are you feeling?" (not yet checked in) or "Checked in" with your energy and mood icons. Tap to open the check-in sheet.

You can check in for today or retroactively for any day in the past 7 days. Past days show "How were you feeling [day], [date]?"

Where check-in data is used

• Weekly Check-In — your week's average energy and mood appear in "Your Week at a Glance"
• Reports — the Well-Being section shows energy and mood trend lines over time
• Insights — after 14+ days of data, the correlation engine analyzes patterns between your nutrition and how you feel (e.g., "days with higher protein tend to have better energy levels")
• Data Export — all check-in data exports as a CSV file

Enable the daily check-in in Profile → Daily Check-In. Set a reminder time to receive a daily notification prompt.

Supplements

Tare includes a full supplement tracker. Go to Profile → Supplements to manage your supplements.

For each supplement, you can set:

• Name and dose (e.g. "Vitamin D — 2000 IU")
• Timing group — when you take it (Morning, Pre-workout, Post-workout, Night)
• Nutrition link — connect a food item so checking off the supplement also logs its calories

You can also create custom timing groups with their own names, colors, icons, and default reminder times.

Linking nutrition to supplements

Some supplements have calories that matter — protein powders, mass gainers, creatine with carbs. You can link a food item to any supplement so that checking it off in the Daily Log also creates a calorie entry.

To link nutrition:

• Edit a supplement in Profile → Supplements
• Under "Nutrition Link", either scan a barcode or search for a food
• The linked food's calories per serving are shown on the supplement

You can also scan a supplement barcode directly from the Supplements screen — this creates a new checklist entry with the nutrition automatically linked. If the barcode is already in your list, Tare will let you know.

Supplements without a nutrition link still work as a simple checklist — check on, check off, no calories involved.

Linked supplements show a green pill icon and their calorie count in the Daily Log checklist. Unchecking a supplement removes both the checkmark and the calorie entry.

Reminders

Set daily reminders for each timing group to get notified when it's time to take your supplements. Go to Profile → Timing Groups and configure the reminder time for each group.

Each notification shows the timing group name and lists the supplements due. Reminders repeat daily at the same time.

Tare will ask for notification permission the first time you enable a reminder. You can manage permissions in iOS Settings → Tare → Notifications.

Reminders are scheduled per group, not per supplement. Eight supplements split across three timing groups gives you three notifications a day rather than eight, and each one names what's due — so you usually don't need to open the app at all.

Widgets & Live Activities

Tare includes a home screen widget in small and medium sizes, showing your progress for the day at a glance. Add it the usual way: long-press the home screen, tap "+", and search for Tare.

When a fast is running it appears as a Live Activity on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, with the elapsed time updating as it goes — so you can check a fast without unlocking your phone.

The Live Activity also carries an End Fast button, on both the Lock Screen and the expanded Dynamic Island. Tapping it ends the session directly, so a scheduled fast can start and finish without you opening Tare at all.

The Dynamic Island needs an iPhone 14 Pro or later. The Lock Screen Live Activity works on any iPhone running iOS 16.1 or newer.

Reports

The Reports screen gives you a longer-term view of your nutrition and weight trends. Access it from the Daily Log's ellipsis menu (⋯).

Choose a time range: 7 days, 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, or 6 months.

Reports include:

• Daily averages — average calories, protein, carbs, and fat per day over the selected period
• Calorie bar chart — daily calorie intake visualized as bars, with optional grouping by day, week, or month
• Macro progress — how your average intake compares to your goals (protein, carbs, fat)
• Micronutrient averages — daily average intake vs target for all vitamins and minerals, sorted by gap severity. On the 7-day view, tap any below-target nutrient to open personalized food suggestions
• Weight trend — a sparkline chart of your weight entries with your goal weight shown as a reference line, plus the total change over the period

Apple Health

Tare integrates with Apple Health (HealthKit) for bidirectional data sync. Toggle it on in Profile.

Tare writes to Health:

• Dietary energy (calories)
• Protein, carbohydrates, fat, fiber
• Water intake

Tare reads from Health:

• Weight entries (from smart scales or manual entries in Health)
• Water logged by other apps and devices (counted toward your daily total, never double-counted)
• Active energy — for the Activity Bonus and the 30-day starting estimate, when enabled

Health sync and weight sync can be toggled independently. When you delete a log entry in Tare, the corresponding Health sample is also removed.

All Health data stays on your device and is handled entirely by iOS — it's never sent to us or any third party.

Profile & Settings

The Profile tab is where you configure Tare to fit your needs:

• Appearance — choose System, Light, or Dark theme
• Units — switch between metric and imperial (affects weight, height, water, and food display)
• Body stats — current weight, goal weight, height, age, biological sex
• Activity level — Sedentary, Light, Moderate, or Active (with multiplier descriptions)
• Fitness goal — Lose fat, Maintain, Build muscle, or Athletic. Changing this suggests updated macro targets
• Computed stats — BMR, TDEE, and BMI are calculated automatically and shown with color-coded indicators
• Meal Categories — create, reorder, and customize meal categories
• Supplements — manage your supplement list and nutrition links
• Timing groups — manage timing groups and reminders
• Apple Health — toggle health sync and weight sync
• Export — export your data as CSV

Exporting Data

Go to Profile → Export Data to export your logs as CSV files. You can export:

• Food logs — all your logged meals with dates, amounts, macros, and 25 micronutrient columns
• Supplement logs — your supplement intake history

The export uses the iOS share sheet, so you can save to Files, send via email, AirDrop, or open in any spreadsheet app.

Your data is also accessible via Apple Health (if sync is enabled) and persists in your iCloud account, so you always have multiple ways to access your information.

iCloud Sync

Tare syncs your data via iCloud CloudKit automatically. This means:

• Your data stays in your iCloud account — we never see it
• It syncs across all your Apple devices signed into the same iCloud account
• If you delete the app, your data persists in iCloud and will restore when you reinstall

Make sure iCloud is enabled for Tare in your device's Settings → [Your Name] → iCloud → Apps Using iCloud.

Tips

• Use favorites — star your most-logged foods for quick access from the search screen
• Save meal templates — if you eat the same breakfast every day, save it as a template and log it in one tap
• Create custom categories — if you eat six meals a day, create categories that match your schedule
• Weigh in grams — it's the most accurate unit. A cheap kitchen scale makes a big difference
• Log as you eat — it's easier to remember portions in the moment than at the end of the day
• Use recipes for batch cooking — build the recipe once, weigh your portion each time, and log it in seconds
• Copy the previous day — if you eat similar meals, use the copy feature from the Daily Log menu to duplicate yesterday's entries
• Link nutrition to supplements — if your protein powder has 120 calories, link it so checking it off also tracks the calories
• Check Reports weekly — daily numbers fluctuate, but weekly averages show the real trend
• Set up supplement reminders — if you keep forgetting your vitamins, a timed notification helps build the habit
• Log weight consistently — weigh yourself at the same time each day (morning, after bathroom) for the most meaningful trend