Support
We answer every email.
Write to info@mealbird.app and a person will get back to you, usually within one business day. If something in your plan looks wrong, send the day and the meal and we’ll check the arithmetic ourselves.
Building a plan
How long does a plan take? The first two days arrive about two minutes after you subscribe, and the rest of the week a few minutes after that. The building screen names each stage as it happens. You can close the app while it works.
It says my answers are infeasible. That means no combination of the available food hits your targets inside your constraints — usually a very high protein target on a very low budget, or a diet plus allergy set that removes most protein sources. The screen offers the specific changes that would make it work, and you can always go back and change your answers.
Can I change my answers later? Yes. Settings › Update profile reopens the quiz with everything you said already filled in. Changing your answers affects the next week you build, not the one you already have.
There’s a dish I don’t want. Open the recipe and use “Not for me” to tell us which ingredient is the problem. That ingredient is excluded from future weeks. To change tonight’s meal instead, use Swap, which shows you what changes before anything is applied.
The numbers
Where do the nutrition figures come from? USDA FoodData Central. Every meal’s protein and calories are computed by multiplying the grams in your portion by the USDA entry for that ingredient. Tap “How we compute this” in any recipe to see every line of that arithmetic, including the USDA record number. No nutrition figure in Mealbird is estimated or guessed.
Why are there two totals on the shopping list? Because they are two different things. The first is the food you will actually eat this week. The second is what the packs cost at the till, since a bag of onions or a bottle of oil comes whole and the rest is counted toward later weeks. Your budget is checked against the first number.
Are the prices real? They are labelled estimates, based on average US prices refreshed regularly. They are not live prices from your store, and we say so everywhere they appear.
Subscription and billing
What does it cost? $29.95 per year with a 3-day free trial, or $9.95 per month with no trial. Both are auto-renewable subscriptions billed by Apple.
How do I cancel? On your iPhone open Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions, then Mealbird, then Cancel Subscription. Cancelling during a free trial means you are never charged. We can’t cancel a subscription on your behalf — only Apple can — but write to us if you get stuck.
I paid but the app still asks me to subscribe. Tap Restore purchase on the locked screen, or in Settings. If you bought on another device, make sure you are signed in to the same Apple Account. If that doesn’t fix it, email us.
Refunds are handled by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.
Your account and data
There’s no login? Correct. Mealbird creates an anonymous account on first launch, so there is no password to forget. Your plans are tied to that account.
How do I start completely fresh? Settings › Start over, or “Reset app and start over” on the locked screen. Note that deleting and reinstalling the app does not do this — your account lives in the iOS keychain and survives a reinstall, which is what lets you get your plans back.
Delete my data. Email info@mealbird.app and tell us roughly when you started using the app, so we can find the right anonymous account. See the Privacy Policy for what we hold and why.
One thing Mealbird is not
It is not a medical device and it does not give medical advice. The targets it calculates are general nutrition estimates. Talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian before making changes to your diet, especially if you have a medical condition.