Mains — Support

Contact: support@mains.app — we reply within two business days.

Mains is a workout and food logging app for iPhone. This page covers the things people actually write in about: where their data lives, how to get a copy of it, how to delete an account, and what the app cannot yet do.

Read this first: your data lives on your phone

Mains is offline-first, and in the current version that is not a slogan — it is literal. Cloud sync is not switched on. Everything you log is stored in one database file on your iPhone and is never uploaded.

That means:

There is no backup and no way for us to restore your history. We never had a copy.
Your log does not follow you to another device. Signing in on a new phone gives you an empty diary.
Signing out erases the local database. The app warns you, requires a second confirmation, and offers you an export first — but it does erase it.
Deleting the app deletes your log.

So: export regularly. It takes two taps and the file is yours. If your training history matters to you, treat the export the way you would treat a photo backup.

We are aware this is unusual and we would rather say it plainly than let you find out the hard way. When cloud sync is enabled in a future version, this page and the privacy policy will change before the feature ships.

How to export your data

You → Export my data.

Mains gathers every row it holds for you — profile, goals, workouts, routines, exercises you created, custom foods, the full food diary, saved meals, water logs, weigh-ins and body metrics, and any Apple Health days you imported — into a single JSON file, then hands it to the iOS share sheet. From there you can save it to Files, put it in iCloud Drive, AirDrop it, or email it to yourself.

The file is plain JSON with one array per table and a schemaVersion at the top, so it is readable by any tool — it is not a proprietary format.

This is also how you exercise your GDPR Article 20 right to data portability. You do not need to ask us; the button is the mechanism.

How to delete your account

You → Delete account.

The flow is deliberately slow, because it cannot be undone:

You re-enter your account password.
You type DELETE to confirm.
You are offered an export first — take it if you want to keep your history.
A final destructive alert.

Then Mains deletes every server-side row belonging to you, deletes your authentication account, and wipes the local database on this device.

It is immediate and irreversible. We keep no copy and cannot restore the account or its data.

If the deletion fails with a server error, try again — the operation is designed to be safely repeatable, and re-running it deletes whatever survived.

If you cannot reach the in-app button for any reason, write to support@mains.app from the address on the account and we will delete it for you.

Common questions

The AI read my label wrong. What do I do?

Fix it. Every number on an AI review screen is editable before anything is saved, and nothing is written to your diary until you confirm it.

If a reading looks systematically wrong — a common one is the app reading the kilojoule figure as calories — tap Recheck and, optionally, type what looks wrong. The second attempt is sent to a higher-resolution model along with your note.

Note that your typed note is sent to the AI provider with the request — see the privacy policy §4.2.

Are the calorie numbers accurate?

They are as accurate as their source, and the app tells you which source each number came from. Numbers read off a label or a menu are transcriptions of what is printed. Numbers from a meal photo or a typed description are AI estimates and are labelled as such on screen and in your diary. Numbers from Open Food Facts are community-entered and can be wrong; Mains filters out physically impossible rows and shows at most three of them.

Mains is not a medical device and gives no medical advice.

I scanned a barcode and it said the product is not in the database.

Mains checks three places: foods you created, our own catalog, and then Open Food Facts. If all three miss, you can create the food yourself from the label — and the AI label reader will fill in the panel from a photo.

I forgot my password.

Tap Forgot password? on the sign-in screen. Mains emails you a recovery code; type it back into the app (or paste the whole link from the email — copy it rather than tapping it, because opening the link spends the one-time code) and you can set a new password there and then.

If the email does not arrive, check spam, then write to support@mains.app from the address on the account.

Does Mains write to Apple Health?

No. Health access is read-only; the app does not request write permission at all. It reads body mass, steps, sleep, active and basal energy, exercise minutes, resting heart rate and heart-rate variability. It never writes back, never sells that data and never uses it for advertising.

You can revoke access any time in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Health → Mains.

Do the AI features work offline?

No. Everything else does — logging a workout, logging food, weighing in, editing goals — all of it works with no connection. The AI features need the network and fail with a clear “couldn't reach” message rather than hanging.

Is there a subscription?

No. This version has no purchases, no subscription and no paywall.

Known limitations

Honest list of what the current version does not do. None of these are bugs; they are things that are not built yet.

Limitation	Detail
No cloud sync, no backup, no multi-device	The single most important one. See the top of this page.
Sign-out erases the local log	With sync off, sign-out is as destructive as deleting the account. The app says so and offers an export.
iPhone only	There is no iPad layout and the app is not offered for iPad.
iOS only for now	An Android build exists in the codebase but is not released.
AI features need a connection	And they need something to read: a photo, a PDF, or text you typed.
Apple Health data is displayed, not yet used	Imported steps/sleep/energy rows are shown on the Health screen and included in your export, but nothing yet adjusts your calorie targets from them.
Open Food Facts data can be wrong	It is a community database. Mains drops physically impossible rows and caps results at three, but check the numbers against the package.
PDF import is training plans only	You can pick a training-plan PDF from Files; restaurant menus must be photographed. And PDF picking relies on a native capability — on an older build the button is simply not offered rather than failing.
No sharing, no social, no coach view	Mains is a single-user log.

Reporting a bug

Write to support@mains.app with:

what you were doing, and what happened instead;
your iPhone model and iOS version;
the app version, from You → Version at the bottom of the You screen.

Screenshots help. Because the app has no crash reporting, a message from you is genuinely the only way we learn that something broke.

Privacy

The full privacy policy is at privacy-policy.html. The short version: an email address and password are the only account data; nothing you log leaves your phone; the AI features send only the photo, file or text you hand them; there is no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, no tracking and no sale of data.

Attribution

Mains's food data comes from USDA FoodData Central (public domain) and Open Food Facts (Open Database License). Full terms on attributions.html.