Support

No. The app has no accounts at all. Everything you set up in it stays on your phone.

Yes. The recipes and the calculations are on your phone, so the app works in a shop with no signal. You only need the internet to download and update the app, to buy the full version, to connect phones and for the anonymous statistics, if you switch them on: those go out once a day, whenever there’s a signal. A Teammate’s phone with no signal shows the last state it had and sends the ticked-off shopping once it’s back online.

From the nutritional values of each ingredient and the weights in the recipe — not from a figure guessed for the meal. Your daily target comes from height, weight, age, sex and activity using the Mifflin–St Jeor equation. There’s a “How the numbers work” screen in the app that sets the whole thing out.

The app can filter out recipes containing a given allergen and, for some recipes, offers a substitute ingredient. The filter works from the recipe’s ingredients — seasonings and condiments don’t go into it. It is not a medical tool, though — with a serious allergy, always check the labels on the actual ingredients and seasonings yourself. The app doesn’t know what’s in your fridge.

Yes. The app tells apart two different restrictions. Milk is an allergy to milk protein — it rules out all dairy and only offers a plant-based substitute. Lactose is an intolerance to milk sugar: here the app swaps milk, yoghurt, quark, skyr, cottage cheese, mozzarella or butter for the lactose-free version from the regular shelf, even when it’s the main ingredient of the dish. Aged cheeses such as Parmesan, Emmental, Edam, Cheddar, Camembert, blue cheese, Gorgonzola or hard sheep’s cheese carry practically no lactose, so they go through without a swap. Dishes that are lactose-free to begin with carry the Lactose-free label. Substitutes are chosen by what an ordinary European supermarket stocks. If even small amounts bother you, check the label on cheese and butter.

Main meals are shared and differ only in portion size, according to each person’s target. For every day you can set who in the household is eating and who has a workout.

Yes. One phone, the Captain, runs the household — that’s where the meal plan is put together. Everyone else installs Cheflex and, on the welcome screen, chooses Join as a Teammate. On the Captain’s phone, open Menu → Household members, tap Pair a phone next to the member and show them the QR code (they scan it with their phone camera), send them the link or read them the code. The invite is valid for 10 minutes. You can connect up to three more phones, one per member.

They see the meal plan, the shopping list and the recipes. They can tick off the shopping, give meals a thumb for themselves and change their own weight, goal and activity. They don’t put the plan together, swap meals or change tastes — that stays with the Captain. Of everyone else, they see only the name, the animal, the portion size and their thumbs; not their weight, height, age or goal. A thumbs down from an adult switches a meal off for the whole household; one from a child only makes it less likely to come up.

It does. On the Captain’s phone open Menu → Household members and tap Mirror under yourself; on the tablet choose Join as a Teammate and scan the code. The mirror sees the whole household and ticks off the shopping. When you want to plan on the tablet, tap Take the armband in Menu → Connection there — the phone becomes the mirror, and you can take the armband back on it any time. Free, even without the full version.

No. The phones leave their data in a mailbox on cheflex.app, but they encrypt it on the phone itself, with a key that comes from the invite and that the server never gets. The server sees only random identifiers for the mailbox and the phone, a hash of the password, the kind of message and who it’s for, the size and time and, like any website, the IP address — no names, meals, numbers or thumbs. Bundles are deleted after 30 days at most. There’s more in the privacy policy.

No, neither in the free version nor in the full one. It isn’t part of the full-version purchase — it’s an extra I may wind down one day. The app then keeps working, with each phone planning on its own: a Teammate starts their own household and keeps their thumbs.

Not yet — Cheflex is Android-only for now, and the iPhone and iPad version is on its way. Until then, the Captain can send you the meal plan, the shopping list or a recipe as text or an image via Menu → Share and print.

Yes, by swapping it. Open the meal in your plan and tap Swap with another day at the bottom. The app shows the days still to come that have the same kind of meal — lunch swaps with lunch, a snack with a snack — and you pick which one to trade with. Days when someone eating at home can’t have the meal stay greyed out, with the reason shown. Today and days already past aren’t offered.

The data only ever exists on your phone, so I have no access to it and can’t restore it. If you back up your phone (iCloud, Google), that backup is the only thing that can bring it back — and it’s in your hands. That’s the price of your data never leaving your phone. A Teammate’s phone isn’t a backup either — the household lives only on the Captain’s phone.

It’s free to download, and the free version has 100 recipes for a household of up to two. The whole collection, bigger households and plan themes unlock with a single payment of €9.99 in the App Store or Google Play — or the equivalent in your local currency (£, NOK and so on), which the store shows you before you confirm. No subscription, no ads. The allergen and diet filter and the shopping list are always free.

No. The purchase belongs to your store account — on a new phone with the same account, tap Menu → Restore purchase in the app. It doesn’t carry over between iPhone and Android, though. On iPhone you can share it with your family through Family Sharing.

Your household, meal plan and thumbs come back with your phone’s backup (Google or iCloud), if you have it switched on. The connection between phones doesn’t carry over, though — its keys stay on the old phone. If you’re the Captain, invite your Teammates again in Menu → Household members; if your new phone is a Teammate’s, ask the Captain for a new invite. The app reminds you after the restore.

Sure. At the bottom of the recipe details there’s a Share this recipe button. Your phone’s share panel opens and you send the recipe wherever you like — a message, an email, a chat. Out goes a picture of who gets how much, with the ingredients and amounts and the method as text, so even someone without the app can read the recipe. For a meal from your plan the amounts are for what you’re cooking that day; for a recipe from the collection they’re the usual portions for whoever you cook for in the app. On a computer the text is copied to the clipboard. The whole shopping list, the meal plan or all the recipes in the plan go out via Menu → Share and print.

Please do. Send the ingredients, the method and a few words on what makes the dish good. If it fits the recipe collection, it will show up in one of the next releases and everyone else will get to cook it too. It does not have to be anything fancy — a dish that works at home is enough.