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
- Open + and choose Hydration.
- Choose a quick amount or enter an exact amount in the unit shown.
- Review Date and Time, and set them to when you drank it.
- 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.
Manual PlateLens entry
Open … in the detail and choose Edit to change the amount, date or time, or Delete to remove it after confirmation. Swiping the row left is a shortcut to the same confirmed deletion, not a different operation. An edit keeps the entry's identity; moving it to another date removes it from the old day and places it on the new one.
Hydration contributed by a meal
When a logged drink or food contributes to hydration, its entry stays linked to that meal. Open its detail and choose View meal to change the source meal, or Remove contribution to remove only its hydration contribution. The meal remains in Diary. A left swipe uses the same Remove contribution confirmation; after removal, later portion changes to that meal no longer rescale the removed contribution.
Imported health entry
An entry imported from Apple Health or Health Connect is read-only in PlateLens. Its detail names the available source and explains where to manage it. Edit or delete it in the health platform or the app that supplied it; PlateLens applies an explicit update or deletion event on a later phone sync. Imported rows have no PlateLens delete swipe.
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.
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. 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.
Web app and Apple Watch
Web app
Use + → Water or the action in Today or Diary Day. Choose a quick amount or enter a custom amount; when opened from Diary, the water is assigned to the day you were viewing and uses the current capture time. Diary Day lists the same combined account entries. A manual row offers Edit for its amount while preserving its original date and time, and Delete with confirmation. A meal-derived row cannot be edited as a manual drink; deleting it warns that the hydration link will be removed while the meal remains. Imported rows show their source and stay read-only. Use mobile when you need to set or change an exact historical date or time.
Apple Watch
Open Water to add a Glass, Bottle or a precise amount with the Digital Crown. Watch entries use the current capture date and time and queue safely if the connection is temporarily unavailable. Water History shows the account total and recent entries in the account's unit. Swipe an entry created on Watch to delete it; imported entries are read-only and open a source explanation. Use the phone to edit an amount, date or time and to manage meal-derived hydration. The Watch does not import directly from HealthKit; the iPhone performs health reconciliation when PlateLens is active.
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.
- If the displayed unit is not the one you want, 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.