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? Your whole week arrives about two minutes after you subscribe. 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. Redo the quiz reopens it with everything you said already filled in: on iPhone it is at the bottom of Settings, on Android at the bottom of the You tab. 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? There is a yearly plan and a monthly plan, priced in your local currency on the App Store and Google Play; the paywall shows the exact price before you subscribe. Neither plan has a free trial: billing starts when you subscribe. Both are auto-renewable subscriptions, billed by Apple on iPhone and by Google on Android.
How do I cancel? Cancel before the period ends and you are not billed again. We can’t cancel a subscription on your behalf — only Apple or Google can — but write to us if you get stuck.
On iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions, then Mealbird, then Cancel Subscription.
On Android, open the Google Play app, tap your profile picture, then Payments & subscriptions, Subscriptions, Mealbird, and Cancel subscription. In Mealbird, Manage or cancel under Subscription in the You tab opens the same page.
I paid but the app still asks me to subscribe. Restore the purchase from the app. If that doesn’t fix it, email us.
On iPhone, 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.
On Android, tap the … menu on the locked screen and choose Restore purchase, or use Restore purchase under Subscription in the You tab. Make sure Google Play is signed in to the Google account you paid with.
Refunds are handled by the store you bought from: by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com, and on Android by Google Play, from your order history.
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. To use them on a second phone, add a login: an email, Apple on iPhone or Google on Android, in Settings (iPhone) or the You tab (Android).
Where does the account live on my phone? On iPhone, in the iOS keychain. On Android, in Google’s Block Store, which keeps it across a reinstall on the same phone as long as Google Backup is on (Settings › Google › Backup). Without a login, plans live only on that phone.
How do I start completely fresh? Mostly you don’t need to: Redo the quiz (above) changes any answer on the same account and keeps your subscription. Deleting and reinstalling the app does not start you fresh either — on both platforms the account 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.