Log and manage hydration

PlateLens keeps hydration on the Diary day and at the time it actually happened. The daily total can combine water you enter, hydration contributed by a logged meal, and records your phone imports from Apple Health or Health Connect. Each entry keeps its source so the available actions stay safe and predictable.

Log hydration on iPhone or Android

1. Open + and choose Hydration.
2. Choose a quick amount or enter an exact amount in the unit shown.
3. Review Date and Time, and set them to when you drank it.
4. Save the entry.

When you open + from a past Diary day, that date is already selected while the time remains available for you to set. From today, the form starts at the current date and time. PlateLens stores the selected moment with the time zone that places it on the intended Diary day; the time at which you happened to save it does not replace the occurrence time.

Open an entry and use the right action

Tap the Hydration card on Home or the hydration section in Diary Day to open that day's entries. Tap any row to see its amount, date, time and source. What you can change depends on who owns the entry.

Estimated water from food

Meal analysis can estimate water in fruit, vegetables, yogurt, cooked rice or pasta, soups and other prepared foods. The estimate belongs to the whole consumed meal and accounts for its preparation; dry and cooked food can differ substantially. Small contributions are retained too. A soup includes the water in its broth and solids once: for example, 280 ml from broth plus 60 ml from its food means 340 ml of food water, separate from the bowl's capacity.

Mobile entries identify this as Food (estimated); open an entry for its explanation and source meal. The web list calls it Estimated water from food. The current hydration total combines recorded drinks, estimated food water and any alcohol adjustment; it is not a direct measurement of your body's hydration. The existing Watch water total includes the same recorded contributions after synchronization.

Changing a portion scales its water estimate, and logging from Saved or Recent preserves the estimate and its category. A correction with Fix it can replace it. Moving or deleting a meal updates its linked contribution. Meals without an estimate remain without one, including when reused; no historical meals are automatically rescanned. If an estimate looks wrong, review the food and preparation in the meal, or remove the contribution from its detail.

Where hydration appears

• Home: the Hydration card shows today's combined total against the account goal and, during the day, the goal-based pace. Tap it for the exact contributors. You can move, always show or hide the card with Customize Home.
• Diary Day: shows the selected day's total and entries, including manual, meal-derived and imported contributors. Adding from that day returns to the same hydration section.
• Diary Week and Month on mobile: summarize observed hydration days against the account goal. Dates without hydration remain dates without data; PlateLens does not invent a daily amount.
• Weekly and monthly PDF reports: a hydration section appears automatically when the report period has hydration. It summarizes total volume, the average across days with hydration and days at goal; the monthly report also shows the observed trend. Local and phone-synced health totals are combined, and reports express hydration in liters and milliliters.

Alcoholic drinks and hydration

An alcoholic drink logged as a meal adds its net hydration: the stronger the drink, the less it adds. A 500 ml beer at 5% adds 438 ml, a 150 ml glass of wine at 13% adds about 100 ml, and spirits at 40% or more add none. These entries count toward your hydration goal, reminders and totals like any other meal contribution. The Coach celebrates your water goal only when an entry without any alcohol reaches it; drinks with any alcohol, even under 0.5%, are listed as Alcoholic drink and do not trigger it.

• Mobile: Hydration Entries label these rows Alcoholic drink and show the drink's volume beside the time when it is known. Their detail shows how much counts for your hydration out of the drink's volume, with a short note on net hydration.
• Web: the Diary hydration list labels them Alcoholic drink and shows, for example, 438 ml of 500 ml.

Log alcoholic drinks as meals, by photo, text, voice or barcode, so their calories and alcohol count. Water you add yourself is hydration only. With alcohol tracking on, the mobile Add Hydration sheet and the web water panel remind you of this.

Sync Apple Health or Health Connect

On the phone, open More → Preferences → Health Integration and allow hydration read and write access. The first hydration import reads up to the previous 30 days. Later syncs request provider changes when PlateLens opens or returns to the foreground.

• The phone normalizes the health platform's volume into PlateLens's canonical milliliter value while preserving the provider's observation time and available source information.
• PlateLens prevents the same provider record from being imported twice. It applies explicit updates and deletions but never treats an empty or partial history read as proof that records were removed.
• Today's manual PlateLens hydration created on mobile, web or Watch can be mirrored while a phone with write permission is active. For a past entry, open that Diary day on the phone so it can reconcile. Stable identities prevent that PlateLens record from returning as a second entry.
• Health permissions are controlled in Apple Health or Health Connect. Removing permission stops future access; it does not erase entries already copied to the PlateLens account.

Units and your hydration goal

PlateLens stores hydration in milliliters and converts at input and display boundaries. Metric accounts use milliliters and liters; imperial accounts use fluid ounces. In the mobile Add or Edit Water form, tap ml or fl oz beside the amount to switch that open form temporarily. PlateLens converts the typed amount and the quick-add choices without changing the account preference; closing and reopening the form returns to the account unit. The account preference keeps mobile, web and Apple Watch consistent, and changing it changes presentation rather than creating or rewriting entries. Your hydration goal is also an account setting and drives the Home, Diary and Watch progress displays.

When you ask Coach about hydration, it compares the recorded amount with your goal before rounding; a rounded percentage alone does not mean the goal is reached. Period averages include every calendar day in the requested period, including days with no recorded water. A goal streak requires consecutive calendar days at or above the goal; a missing or below-goal day breaks the streak. This describes recorded hydration, not water you may have drunk without logging it.

Hydration reminders on your phone

Open More → Tools → Hydration Reminders to choose an interval of 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes, the active hours and the Snooze duration. Turning reminders off and back on keeps those choices in your account.

The start-of-day reminder uses the beginning of your active window. Regular reminders follow at the interval you selected, using the phone's local day and time. For example, a 90-minute interval starting at 9:00 schedules regular reminders at 10:30, 12:00 and so on within the active window. Snooze schedules another reminder after the selected delay and replaces the next regular reminder. The daily start-of-day reminder stays enabled.

When PlateLens detects that you have reached today's hydration goal, it pauses the remaining regular reminders for that local day. The next day's start-of-day reminder stays enabled. These are phone notifications: open PlateLens each day to refresh that day's regular schedule. The start-of-day notification alone does not refresh it in the background. If reminders are missing, check the phone's notification permission and open the app to refresh the schedule.

Web app and Apple Watch

Time zones and daylight saving time

A manual entry stores one real instant plus the time zone that assigns it to its Diary date. This preserves the day you chose when you travel or later view the account in another zone. A clock time skipped by daylight saving time cannot be saved; if an hour occurs twice, PlateLens lets you choose which occurrence you mean. A hydration time cannot be set in the future.

If a total or entry looks wrong

• Open the day's hydration entries and check each source before changing the total.
• For a manual entry, tap it and use …. For a meal contribution, use View meal or Remove contribution. For an imported entry, correct the source record.
• If a health record is missing, confirm hydration read permission and the record itself in Apple Health or Health Connect, then leave PlateLens active in the foreground long enough to sync.
• For a one-time mobile entry, tap the unit beside the amount. To change the default across PlateLens, change the account's Unit Preferences; do not recreate the entry.

Your account-data export includes both PlateLens hydration history and the external hydration history copied to the account. Still need help? Contact PlateLens Support.