PlateLens gives you several ways to capture the same kind of diary entry. Choose the method that is quickest for the food in front of you and set the date and time to when you actually ate—not when you happened to open the app. When analysis finishes, review the result and correct it if needed.
A photo analysis can take several minutes when PlateLens needs another attempt or a second review. Keep the pending meal in your Diary rather than uploading the same photo again. If processing is delayed, refresh the Diary to check its latest state; when the meal is ready, review the result and use Fix it if needed.
These methods are available in the mobile and web apps. On Apple Watch, you can speak a meal or repeat a saved or recent meal; photo and barcode capture stay on the phone or web.
Open Saved & Recent in the mobile app or Library on the web, then select Recent to find meals from your last 30 days. Most recent is selected by default: meals appear newest first by their Diary date and recorded meal time. Logging yesterday's dinner today keeps it with yesterday's meals. Apple Watch also lists recent meals in this order.
Choose Most frequent in the mobile or web app to put the meals you log most often first. Changing the sort order only changes this list; it does not change your Diary or nutrition totals. If a meal appears in the wrong place, check its date and meal time in the Diary and correct the entry as described below.
Tap + → Type or Dictate to open Describe Your Meal. Write in the text field, or tap Dictate beneath it. The microphone control opens the recorder in the same editor; allow microphone access if asked.
On iPhone, Voice in the Quick Log widget and the Say a Meal widget open this same editor and start dictation after microphone permission is granted. The lock-screen microphone shortcut works the same way. Text opens the editor ready to type. Widget shortcuts start with Today; you can change the date and time before adding the meal. If microphone access is denied, you can still type, retry when allowed, or open Settings from the editor. Returning from Settings does not start recording: tap Dictate when you are ready.
Closing with a draft or dictation in progress asks whether to keep editing or discard it. A failed transcription preserves your written text. Each recording can last up to 60 seconds; transcription needs an internet connection and uses the shared dictation permissions and limits. The web and Android apps keep their separate text and voice entry controls.
Open the camera from + and choose Photo or Barcode at the top. The close and flash controls are alongside that switch. In Photo mode, tap the shutter to take a picture, or use the gallery button on its left to choose an existing image.
To add context for the analysis, tap Hint, the speech bubble with three dots on the right of the shutter. It is marked when you have added text; tap it again to review or edit your hint. The same control stays on the right when you preview a photo from your gallery.
Use Photo to photograph the nutrition table of a packaged food, or choose a clear label image from your library. Keep the serving-size line, column headings and nutrient values readable in the same picture. On the web, use the usual photo upload with the label as the main subject.
When the label has a readable per-serving column, PlateLens uses that declared serving as the starting portion. The number of servings in the package is not the amount you ate. Review the analysis, then adjust the portion to your actual amount; use Fix it if a value or serving was read incorrectly.
This creates a meal through the photo-analysis flow. It does not add or correct a product in the barcode catalog. The Coach can explain the steps; send the image through Photo, not through the chat.
A barcode record can be incomplete even when the product is found. On mobile, the result explains when calories and macros are missing; in a partial nutrition preview, — means unavailable, while 0 is a declared zero. Review the available information before logging. A clear label photo is another way to analyze the product when its barcode information is insufficient.
Hint opens with a text field. On iPhone, you can also dictate details that the photo cannot show, such as cooking oil, a sauce or an ingredient hidden underneath the food.
A hint can contain up to 200 characters. If a dictation makes it too long, the full draft stays visible with a warning; shorten it before tapping Done. Dictation adds text to the photo analysis and does not create a separate voice meal or change existing diary entries.
Each recording lasts up to 60 seconds and transcription needs an internet connection. Text you have already written stays available if dictation fails. For microphone permissions, interruptions and dictation limits, see dictation help. The Dictate control is available on iPhone.
When you start from Today, an untouched meal time means Now. PlateLens resolves it at the action that establishes the meal occurrence, not when you first opened the screen. On mobile, that is the photo shutter, barcode scan, or the final confirmation for text and saved or recent meals. iPhone dictation, including the voice widgets, uses the final Add Meal action; Android's separate voice recorder uses the start of the recording. On web, photo, text and barcode use the final Add or submit action, while voice uses the start of the recording. If an untouched Today flow stays open across midnight, Now follows the new day; a past day or a time you chose explicitly does not move.
When you start from a specific past day in Diary, PlateLens keeps that day as the logging context. The date and time control shows the past date together with a suggested clock time instead of presenting the entry as Today. Tap it to change either the date or the time.
On mobile, the camera, voice recording and description editor use one compact control for the meal type and time, such as Dinner · Now, with the date included for a past day. Tap it to edit the date, time and meal type together, then tap Confirm to return to your entry. Confirm does not log the meal. Changing only the meal type preserves your date and time choice, including Now until the capture action described above. In iPhone Type or Dictate, Now is resolved when you tap Add Meal, whether you typed or dictated the description.
If you are entering a meal later, review the proposed date and time before submitting. Quick choices for 30 minutes ago and 1 hour ago are also available. When you choose a specific clock time, PlateLens keeps the suggested eating occasion aligned with it until you choose Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner or Snack yourself; a manual choice is preserved.
A confirmed meal time cannot be more than five minutes in the future. A future diary day is treated as a plan, so PlateLens saves no “eaten at” time until the meal has actually happened.
If a barcode is not found on mobile, review its date, time and meal type before choosing Take photo. The camera keeps that selection, including the time zone, whether you started from Home or Diary.
On mobile, open More → Preferences → Meal times; on web, open Settings → Meal times. This optional preference is available to every account. Set the start and end of Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner; Snack covers the remaining times. The default intervals are Breakfast 05:00–11:30, Lunch 11:30–16:00 and Dinner 19:00–01:00 the next day. Snack covers 01:00–05:00 and 16:00–19:00.
The clock controls follow your device's time format. Intervals may cross midnight, but cannot overlap or have the same start and end. Tap Save to apply the full schedule. Cancel keeps the saved times; Restore default meal times puts the defaults in the editor for you to review and save.
Meal type follows the local consumption time unless you explicitly choose a type yourself. Your manual choice takes priority. Without a manual choice, explicitly saying “for breakfast” in text or voice takes priority over the schedule; the food itself does not determine the meal type. A Saved meal's chosen default remains editable, while a Recent meal uses the new logging context. Editing this preference does not reclassify your diary history or change reminder times. Dinner after midnight still belongs to its actual calendar date.
If the mobile app displays No Internet Connection, choose Check connection. The button shows Checking… while the check is pending and becomes available again if the connection is still unavailable. The warning closes when Internet access is confirmed; the automatic detector also continues checking. The action keeps your current screen and does not resend a meal or restart your session. A network check cannot repair an unavailable Wi-Fi or mobile-data connection.
Open the entry from Today or Diary and open its editing controls (Edit Meal on mobile) to change its date or meal time. You can also add a meal time to any entry that does not have one. Saving updates the whole meal event together, including dishes created from the same capture; it does not create a second meal.
On mobile, tap the row showing the date, time and meal type below the portion and nutrition preview. It opens one editor for all three values. Confirm your selection to return to Edit Meal, then tap Save Changes (or Move Meal if you changed the diary day). Cancelling the date and time editor discards its pending changes. Changing only the meal type (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner or Snack) keeps the date and time as they were, including a time that is not set.
Changing meal time does not re-run the nutrition analysis. Portion and ingredient changes are separate; see editing portions and fixing meals.
A meal without a confirmed time remains valid and unconfirmed. The surfaces make that distinction in slightly different ways:
The audit timestamp records when PlateLens received the entry. None of these surfaces silently treats it as the time you ate.
PlateLens stores the meal’s clock time with its IANA time zone. New entries start in the device’s current zone. If you travel later, a meal recorded at 8:00 AM in New York stays 8:00 AM New York time instead of shifting to the new device zone.
Automatic historical suggestions avoid daylight-saving times that are missing or ambiguous by choosing a valid, unambiguous time instead. If you manually choose a clock time that occurs twice on the fall-back day, PlateLens asks you to select the earlier or later occurrence. A time inside the spring-forward gap is rejected so the record cannot point to an impossible instant.
Open Balance → Day → Intake to see the recorded calories grouped into Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Snacks. This is the place to compare meal-type totals; the individual entries in Diary still show each logged meal's own calories.
You can place a meal on a future Diary date for planning, but PlateLens deliberately leaves its meal time unset. A planned clock time is not evidence that the meal was eaten. Once that diary date arrives or has passed, edit the entry to record the actual time.
On iPhone or Android, open an analyzed meal from Today or Diary, tap the … menu and choose Share Analysis. PlateLens prepares a vertical PNG image and opens your phone’s share sheet so you can choose where to send or save it.
The image includes the meal name, calories and grams of protein, carbohydrates and fat. It also shows the Health Score when available, plus fiber and saturated fat when those values exist. The figures are nutrition estimates for the meal’s current portion. Review the meal and make any corrections before sharing; creating the image uses the saved analysis and leaves the diary entry unchanged.
When the meal image loads, it fades into the dark background beside the nutrition figures. If the meal has no image, including a meal entered by text, or its image cannot load, the layout gives more space to the meal name and numbers. You can still share the analysis. Missing nutrient values are omitted.
This image-sharing action is available in the mobile app. To share a meal logged on the web or Apple Watch, open that meal on your phone. If the share sheet does not open, return to the meal and try Share Analysis again.
See also: the Meal time announcement · where nutrition data comes from · editing portions and fixing meals.