Blood Sugar — Support & FAQ

Support

Write to sandoya1101@gmail.com and you will get an answer from the person who wrote the app, usually within one working day.

To make a bug fixable in one round trip, include:

• what you did, and what happened instead;

• your iOS version and device (Settings › General › About);

• the app version, shown at the bottom of Settings › About.

Blood Sugar has no account, so there is nothing to reset or recover on our side, and no support request will ever ask you for a password.

Privacy Policy: https://sites.google.com/view/blood-sugar-privacypolicy Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

How to use the app

The four tabs, and the button in the middle

• Summary — where you are right now: your latest reading, time in range, averages, estimated HbA1c, weight, steps. It is built from tiles you can rearrange.

• History — everything you logged, by Day, Week, Month, Quarter or Year.

• Food — your food library: the meals you eat often, saved with their carbohydrates.

• Settings — targets, reminders, medicines, care plan, lab results, export.

• The big + in the middle — one sheet where everything is logged.

Logging a reading

Tap +. One sheet holds all of it, and you fill in only what you have:

• Glucose — type the number in your unit. Tag it before or after a meal if it matters: those tags are what "by meal time" averages and the pregnancy ceiling are built from.

• Insulin — units, with the reason (basal, bolus, correction).

• Food — tap Add food to take it from your library, search the food databases, or photograph the plate. Or type the carbohydrates straight in.

• Ketones — when you are testing for them.

Tap Save. Everything you entered lands as one moment in History, and glucose, carbohydrates and insulin also go to Apple Health if you allowed it.

Logging something from earlier. The sheet is stamped with the current time. To change it, open Details › Date & Time before saving and set when it actually happened.

Weight goes in from the Summary tab: tap the weight tile, then Log weight. It is saved to your log and to Apple Health.

Logging without opening the app

Three shortcuts, all landing on the same sheet:

• Siri — "Log an entry in Blood Sugar".

• Home Screen — hold the app icon: Log an Entry and Scan food.

• Control Centre — add the Blood Sugar button once, and it is one swipe away from anywhere.

Adding food

In the entry sheet, tap Add food:

• Your library — anything you saved before, one tap. This is the fast path once you have logged a few weeks: most people eat the same twenty things.

• Search the databases (Plus) — Open Food Facts and USDA, millions of products with carbohydrates per portion.

• Scan (Plus) — photograph the plate and the app names the dish, estimates the portion and counts the carbohydrates. It also reads barcodes and the nutrition table on a packet.

Anything you log can be saved to your library with its own photo, so next time it is one tap.

Correcting and deleting

Open History and tap any entry to edit it. Press and hold for Edit and Delete.

Making Summary yours

Summary is a grid of tiles. Open the tile editor from the tab, then drag to reorder, swipe to remove. Put what you actually look at every morning on top.

Targets

Settings › Target range. Four bounds — critical low, low, high, critical high — decide what counts as in range and what the app colours as a problem. Readings inside the target count towards time in range.

There is a separate ceiling for after a meal, which is what pregnancy needs: the figure an hour after eating is far tighter than the fasting one. Only readings you tagged "after", or that fall after a logged meal, are judged against it.

The reference notes come from WHO fact sheets and describe populations. Your own numbers come from your doctor.

Medicines

Settings › Medicines. Add what you take on a schedule — a tablet, a patch, long-acting insulin — with the dose as printed on the box, the rhythm, and times for reminders. You then tick each one off as taken; they are counted as taken or not, never added up, because two tablets share no unit. Units of insulin are logged on the entry sheet instead.

A medicine you stop keeps its history and stops asking to be ticked.

Care plan

Settings › Care & results › Care plan. The checks a year of diabetes care is made of — HbA1c, eyes, feet, kidneys, blood pressure — each with its own interval and reminder. Tap Suggestions for the common intervals as a starting point, then adjust them to what your doctor actually asked for.

Tasks can be added to your calendar, so an appointment sits next to the rest of your week.

Lab results

Settings › Care & results › Lab results. Enter a lab HbA1c, cholesterol, blood pressure, kidney figures and the rest, each with its date. You can attach a photo of the report, the referral or the prescription — it stays on the device.

The app also estimates HbA1c from the readings you logged, and the report shows both: the lab figure is measured, the estimate is arithmetic on your own measurements.

Reminders

Settings › Reminders.

• Glucose checks — after breakfast, lunch or dinner, at the checkpoint used to judge how a meal went. A reminder is cancelled automatically if you already measured.

• Fasting — before breakfast.

• Medicines — a notification at each time you set; it can keep coming back until you press Taken.

Reminders are scheduled on the device, so they work with no connection, and their text never shows a reading on your lock screen.

Using a CGM

Settings › Sensor (CGM). Blood Sugar does not talk to your sensor. It reads what your sensor writes into Apple Health, so turn on writing to Health in the sensor's own app — Dexcom, Libre, whichever you use — and the readings appear here.

A sensor writes a reading every five minutes: 288 a day. History draws one per interval so a day stays readable, and you choose that interval here. Averages, charts and time in range always use every reading.

The report for your doctor

Settings › Export for doctor (Plus). Choose the period and the language — the report can be in a language you do not use the app in, which is what a foreign appointment needs. Tap Create PDF: the averages first, then every reading, meal and dose day by day. Then Share report to print it, mail it, or save it to Files.

Nothing is uploaded. The file stays on the device until you share it.

Exporting and importing your data

Settings › Data.

• Export all data writes one JSON file with everything in it — readings, doses, meals, the food library, weight, ketones, lab results, care tasks, medicines, your settings and the photographs. Photos make it large, so save it to Files rather than mail it.

• Import from file reads that file back. Everything in it is added to this device: records already here are updated, nothing is deleted, and importing the same file twice changes nothing the second time.

A file is for what iCloud does not do: handing your log to someone else, or keeping a copy of your own. Moving to a new iPhone needs no file at all — sign in to the same Apple Account and the log is already there.

Frequently asked questions

Getting started

Do I need an account? No. There is no sign-up, no email, no password. Everything works the moment you open the app.

mmol/L or mg/dL? Both. Pick your unit in Settings; every reading, chart and report follows it. Changing the unit converts what you already logged — nothing is re-typed.

Which languages does it speak? 40, including English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean and both Chinese scripts.

Does it work on iPad? Yes, on iPhone and iPad, with the same log on both through iCloud.

Can I import my history from another diabetes app? Not directly — every app writes its own file format. Two routes work: if the old app wrote to Apple Health, allow Blood Sugar to read Health and that history shows up; otherwise the years you care about can be entered by hand with a back-dated time on each entry.

Your data

Where is my data stored? On your device, and — if iCloud is on — in your own iCloud account, which syncs it to your other devices. It is not stored on our servers, and the developer cannot read it.

Do you sell or share my health data? No. Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to insurers. The full detail is in the privacy policy.

What happens if I delete the app? Local data goes with it. The iCloud copy stays until you remove it in Settings › Apple Account › iCloud › Manage Account Storage — which means reinstalling brings your log back.

Can I get my data out? Yes: a backup file you can keep and restore from, and a PDF report for your doctor. Both are yours; neither is uploaded anywhere.

I have a new phone. What do I do? Sign in to the same Apple Account with iCloud on, and your log is already there. If you moved to a phone on a different Apple Account, export a file from the old one and import it on the new one.

Apple Health and sensors

Does it work with Apple Health? Yes, in both directions. Blood Sugar reads glucose, carbohydrates, insulin, weight, steps and active energy from Health, and writes back what you log. You choose which of those to allow, and you can change your mind in Settings › Health › Data Access & Devices.

I use a CGM — Dexcom, Libre, or another sensor. Will it work? Yes, through Apple Health. See Using a CGM above.

Does it connect to my insulin pump? Doses recorded by a pump reach the app the same way, through Apple Health.

I allowed Health but nothing appeared. Health permissions are per data type. Open Settings › Health › Data Access & Devices › Blood Sugar and check that reading is on for the types you expect. Note that Health only hands over data written by other apps and devices — not readings you typed into Blood Sugar itself, which are already here.

The meal scanner

How does photographing food work? You photograph the plate, and the app names the dish, estimates the portion and counts the carbohydrates. It also reads barcodes and the nutrition table on a packet.

How accurate is it? It is an estimate from a picture, and it says so on every result. Correct it to what is actually on your plate — that is what the editable figure is for. Where a label or barcode is readable, prefer those: they are measured, not estimated.

Is my photo stored anywhere? No. It is sent over an encrypted connection, read, and discarded. It is not kept by us, and it is not attached to your health records.

Is there a limit? 20 scans a day, which is well past what a normal day of meals needs.

The scan did not recognise my food. Photograph it from above with the whole plate in frame, or scan the barcode or the nutrition table instead. Failing that, type the carbohydrates in by hand — the entry is the same either way.

Plus

What is free? The log itself: glucose, carbohydrates, insulin and other medication, weight, ketones, lab results including HbA1c, targets, time in range, charts, reminders, the care plan, Apple Health sync, iCloud sync, export and import of your data, Siri and the Control Centre button.

What does Plus add? Four things: the AI meal scanner, search across the Open Food Facts and USDA food databases, the printable report for your doctor, and photos on the foods in your library.

What does it cost? $9.99 a month, or $59.99 a year with a one-week free trial. Prices vary by country; the paywall shows yours before you pay.

How do I cancel? Settings › Apple Account › Subscriptions, on any Apple device. Cancelling stops the next renewal and leaves you with Plus until the period you paid for ends. During a free trial, cancel at least 24 hours before it ends and you are not charged.

I paid but Plus is not showing. Open the paywall and tap Restore Purchases. If it still does not appear, write to sandoya1101@gmail.com with the Apple Account you bought it on.

I bought on my iPhone — do I pay again on my iPad? No. The subscription follows your Apple Account.

Health questions

Does the app tell me how much insulin to take? No, and it never will. Doses, ratios and correction factors are prescribed by your doctor. Blood Sugar records what you took; it does not decide it.

Where do the target ranges come from? The reference notes come from World Health Organization fact sheets, and they describe populations, not you — your own targets are set with your doctor and entered in Settings.

Is the estimated HbA1c the same as a lab result? No. It is calculated from the readings you logged, so it drifts if you mostly measure at one time of day. A lab HbA1c can be entered separately, and the report shows both.

Why does time in range look different from my sensor's app? Because the range is yours: it is judged against the target you set in Settings, and sensor apps ship their own default. Set the same bounds and the figures line up.