How to use KetoCypher.

This is the complete guide to the KetoCypher Android app: setting up your account, logging food, reading the Today screen, connecting Health Connect, backing up your data, and everything in Settings. It describes KetoCypher 1.2 for Android and is kept current as the app changes.

Last updated: October 1, 2026 (version 1.2.1).

• Getting Started
• Today Screen
• Logging Food
• Fasting
• Macros & Carb Mode
• Recipes & Templates
• Insights
• Health Tracking & Health Connect
• Backup & Restore
• Premium Cloud Backup
• Security & Lock Screen
• Settings
• Account & Data
• Troubleshooting

1. Getting Started

Creating your account

KetoCypher uses email and password only, no social login. Your password is never sent to our servers in plain form; it stays on your device and is used to unlock your encryption key. Since there's no "forgot your data" reset on our end, we recommend storing your password in a password manager rather than trying to memorize it.

Your recovery phrase

During setup you're shown a 12-word recovery phrase once. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe (not a screenshot, not a note app). It's the only way to recover your encrypted data if you forget your password or move to a new device without a backup file. KetoCypher can't re-display this phrase later, and we can't recover it for you. If you ever need a fresh one, you can generate a replacement from Settings → Recovery Phrase, which invalidates the old one.

Choosing your Nutritional Protocol

Onboarding asks which way of eating you're following. This sets your starting carb, protein, and fat targets, all editable later:

• Carnivore · 0g carbs
• Ketovore · 10g carbs
• Strict Keto · 20g carbs
• Keto · 50g carbs
• Low carb · 100g carbs
• Custom · set your own carb, protein, and fat grams

Your daily calorie estimate

KetoCypher asks for your sex, age, height, weight, and activity level, then estimates your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE, the calories you burn in an average day) using the Mifflin-St Jeor formula. You then pick a goal (lose, maintain, or gain weight), which scales that estimate into a daily calorie target. You can adjust your macro and calorie targets directly anytime in Settings → Nutrition Goals, or tap Recalculate Goals on that screen to re-run this calculator with updated body metrics, activity level, protocol, and goal.

Optional setup steps

Onboarding also offers to connect Google Health Connect and enable notifications. Both are optional and can be turned on or off later in Settings; skipping them does not block account creation or logging food.

2. The Today Screen

Today is the app's home screen and the default landing spot after you log in. It's a stack of read-only snapshot cards. Nothing on Today logs food by itself; the only action point is the + button (see Logging Food). Tap any card to see its full detail screen.

• Macro card. A donut chart showing your progress toward carbs, protein, and fat for the day, with total carbs as the headline number by default (see Macros & Carb Mode).
• Electrolytes. Sodium, potassium, and magnesium tracked as first-class metrics next to your macros, not buried as micronutrients.
• Water. Your hydration total for the day with one-tap quick-add buttons.
• Fasting. Only appears while a fast or eating window is active; see Fasting.
• Health card. Visual tiles for your tracked metrics: glucose with yesterday's in-range bar, your primary ketone reading, weight with its weekly trend, steps, and more. Choose which tiles appear and drag their order from the card's edit sheet; tap any tile for its full deep-dive screen (see Health Tracking).
• Mood & Energy check-in. A quick, optional daily rating for energy and mood, plus a private free-text note about your day. The note autosaves as you type and shows a small "Saved" check when stored. The same card appears on the Log screen for whichever day you're viewing, so you can rate and annotate past days too.
• From other apps. If you allow it, a small card summarizes nutrition and water that your other health apps wrote to Health Connect today, including sodium and potassium when the other app recorded them, shown for context and never counted into your KetoCypher totals.

Pull down anywhere on Today to refresh your Health Connect data right away. KetoCypher only reads Health Connect while the app is open in the foreground (that's an Android rule, not a choice we made), so a pull down is the fastest way to catch up after logging something in another app.

If you haven't backed up recently, a banner appears at the top of Today with a shortcut to back up now.

3. Logging Food

Tap the + button on Today or Log to open Add Food. You'll see several ways to add an entry:

• Search the food database (curated keto and carnivore data plus USDA). Your own foods show in a "Your foods" section above everything else, and results with complete nutrition and a known serving are favored over sparser entries.
• Scan a barcode for packaged foods
• Manual entry when a food isn't in the database
• Favorites and My Foods for items you've saved or logged before
• Meal Templates to log a whole recurring meal in one tap
• My Recipes for multi-ingredient meals you've built (see Recipes & Templates)

Whichever path you take, you'll land on a day, meal, and time picker before the entry saves. It defaults to today and whichever meal matches the current time, but you can log to any past date, any meal, and any time, which is useful for logging something you ate earlier or planning ahead.

Servings and remembering your amount

Where a food has a real serving unit, like "1 slice" or "1 cup", you can log by that unit instead of doing gram math yourself. The next time you log that same food, KetoCypher starts the amount at how much you had last time, so a daily staple takes one less tap to get right.

Product photos

Foods that come from a barcode scan or product search often carry a product photo, so you can confirm at a glance that you grabbed the right thing. Foods with no photo show a food icon instead. See Add your own photo below to put a picture of your own on any food.

Planned vs. logged

You can mark an entry as planned instead of logged, useful for mapping out a meal you intend to eat later. Planned items show up ghosted in your Log and don't count toward your daily totals. When you're ready, tap Log it on the planned entry to convert it to a real, counted log at the time you actually ate it.

Editing and deleting

Open the Log tab to see everything for a given day, grouped by meal. Tap any entry to open it, where you can change its amount, and move it to a different meal, day, or time. Nothing on Today can be edited directly, edits always happen through Log.

Fixing nutrition you don't trust

If a logged item's numbers look wrong, open it and tap Edit to correct the macros and other nutrition yourself. Your corrected version is saved as your own copy, so it sticks: the next time you scan or search for that same product, KetoCypher uses your numbers instead of the original. If you ever want to see the figures it originally came with, or go back to them, open the entry's menu (the three dots) and tap View original or Revert to Open Food Facts (or whichever source the food came from).

Add your own photo

Open any food and use the photo area, or the entry's menu, to tap Add your photo (or Change your photo if one is already set). Choose Take a photo or Choose from files, then drag and pinch to crop it to the frame. Tap the photo afterward to view it full-screen, where you can Change photo or Remove my photo. Your own photo always takes priority over a product photo once you've added one, and it travels with your backups like the rest of your data. KetoCypher strips location and camera metadata from every photo before saving it, keeping only the picture itself.

The entry menu: delete, revert, refresh

Open any logged item and tap the three-dot menu for a few recovery actions, depending on the food:

• Delete entry removes that entry from your Log.
• Revert to [source] appears on a food you've corrected, and undoes your correction so the item goes back to using the original source's numbers (the entry you're currently viewing isn't moved automatically; save afterward to apply it).
• Refresh from Open Food Facts re-checks a scanned product's listing for updated nutrition, in case the manufacturer or Open Food Facts' own data changed. It needs a barcode and your one-time Open Food Facts consent (shown the first time you scan); if your item has your own photo on it, that photo is kept through a refresh. Refresh is unavailable for foods that weren't sourced from Open Food Facts to begin with.

Update notifications

Turn on Update notifications during setup or anytime in Settings to get an occasional nudge when there's a new post in the app's What's New feed, such as a new release or a tip. It checks about once a day and isn't tied to your account or your data.

Meals and meal times

KetoCypher sorts each entry into Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, or Snacks based on the time you logged it. You set those time windows in Settings → Meal Times, and anything logged outside every window counts as Snacks.

If you don't eat a particular meal, you can hide it. In Settings → Meal Times, turn off any of Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner under Show meals, and that meal drops off your Log and Today views. This is a display choice only: nothing you've already logged is changed or moved, and a hidden meal reappears for any day it still has food in it, so logging into it always brings it back. Snacks always stays visible.

4. Fasting & Eating Window

If you practice intermittent fasting, set your eating window in Settings → Eating Window (for example, 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM for a 16:8 schedule). Once set, the Today screen shows a live countdown: time left in your current fast, or time left in your eating window.

If you try to log food while an active fast is in progress, KetoCypher shows a break-fast warning first, so you don't break a fast by accident. You can still confirm and log it if that's what you meant to do.

5. Macros & Carb Mode

Your daily carb, protein, and fat targets come from your chosen Nutritional Protocol (see Getting Started) or a custom set of grams you enter yourself. Edit them anytime in Settings → Nutrition Goals. Your calorie target is derived automatically from those macros; to re-derive it from your TDEE and goal instead, tap Recalculate Goals on that same screen.

Carb Mode controls which number is the headline metric on your macro card: Total Carbs (the default, and what we recommend) sums every gram of carbohydrate you eat, including fiber and sugar alcohols. Net Carbs subtracts fiber and sugar alcohols first. Both numbers are always calculated and visible; Carb Mode just decides which one is emphasized. The first time you switch to Net Carbs, KetoCypher shows a short disclaimer explaining that net-carb tracking can be abused with processed "keto" foods; after that one confirmation, switching back and forth is instant.

6. Recipes, Meal Templates & Favorites

• Recipes combine multiple ingredients (foods you search or already have saved) into one reusable item with combined macros, useful for meals you cook and eat more than once.
• Meal Templates save an entire meal (several separate food entries) as one unit you can log again in a single tap, useful for a recurring breakfast or lunch routine.
• Favorites mark any food, recipe, or template with the star or heart icon so it surfaces faster the next time you open Add Food.

7. Insights & Weekly Reports

The Insights tab is for reviewing patterns, not daily logging. It shows trend charts for your macros, electrolytes, and your tracked biometrics (including ketones and glucose ketone index) over the last 7, 30, or a custom range of days, and surfaces gentle correlation insights once enough days are logged. A dismissible weekly summary also appears at the top of Today, recapping days logged, average macros, and your best and missed days, with a link into the full report. Everything here is computed on your device from your own data.

8. Health Tracking & Health Connect

KetoCypher 1.1 tracks a full set of body metrics alongside your food log. Some sync from Health Connect; others you enter yourself from a meter, strip, or lab report. Both paths feed the same Today tiles, deep-dive screens, and Insights.

What you can track

• Synced from Health Connect (optional): weight, steps, heart rate, sleep, and blood glucose.
• Entered by hand: ketones by any of four test methods (urine strips, blood BHB, breath PPM, breath ACE), glucose ketone index (GKI), A1c, a full cholesterol panel (total, LDL, HDL, triglycerides), blood pressure, and manual entries for any synced type when you don't have a device.

Each metric can use the units your meter or lab uses (for example mg/dL or mmol/L), set per metric on its deep-dive screen. For glucose you can also set your personal target range (defaults to 70 to 140 mg/dL); the Today tile then shows yesterday's percent of readings in range. If you test ketones more than one way, pick a primary method to feature on Today.

Deep dives

Tap any Health tile (or open the hub from Insights) for that metric's full screen: recent readings, a trend chart with your range marked, stats, unit choice, and a log button for new entries.

Reading from Health Connect

Health Connect is optional. Manage it in Settings → Health Sync: turn each data type on or off individually, or jump to Android's Health Connect app to review or revoke access. Syncing happens automatically whenever you open the app; Android only lets an app read another app's health data while it's open in the foreground, so KetoCypher doesn't sync in the background. Pull down on Today anytime to refresh right now. When you enable a data type, KetoCypher pulls in about the last month of history so Insights have something to work with right away.

With permission, KetoCypher can also show nutrition and water that your other apps wrote to Health Connect, as an informational card on Today, including sodium and potassium when the other app recorded them. Those outside records are never merged into your own totals.

A note on CGMs: continuous glucose monitor apps usually share readings to Health Connect on a delay set by the CGM provider, commonly around three hours. KetoCypher always shows how old a reading is, but the freshest number will live in your CGM's own app. Anything you enter yourself appears immediately.

Writing to Health Connect

KetoCypher can also write your own logged data to Health Connect so your other health apps can use it: meals (nutrition, including micronutrients like sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and several vitamins where KetoCypher's units line up with Health Connect's), water (hydration), and manually entered weight, blood glucose, and blood pressure. Sharing is off by default, opt-in per data type under the Write to Health Connect section of Settings → Health Sync, and revocable anytime. Edits and deletions in KetoCypher follow through to what it wrote.

9. Backup & Restore

KetoCypher stores everything encrypted on your device. Backups are exported as a single .kcbak file, protected by a passphrase you choose (separate from your account password), which you can store anywhere: your device, Google Drive, Dropbox, an external drive.

• Free: create a backup manually anytime from Settings → Backup & Restore, and enable local automatic backups on a schedule.
• Premium Cloud BackupPremium: adds automatic encrypted backups to the cloud, so you can restore onto a new device without having to manually manage a backup file yourself. See Premium Cloud Backup.

Restoring a backup replaces all local data on the device, so KetoCypher always asks you to confirm first and shows the backup's date and entry count before you commit. If you get a new phone, reinstall the app, sign in, and you'll be offered the choice to restore from a backup or start fresh. Restoring from the cloud shows real download progress as your backup comes down, and any products you'd previously scanned or searched come back right along with your log, fully searchable by name again.

10. Premium Cloud Backup

KetoCypher's free tier is the complete tracking app: unlimited logging, all macro and electrolyte tracking, Health Connect, Insights, and manual/local backups, for free, indefinitely. Premium Cloud Backup is an optional add-on for automatic, off-device backup:

• $2/month, or $20/year
• Automatic nightly encrypted backup to the cloud (server stores ciphertext only; KetoCypher cannot read your backups any more than it can read your on-device data)
• Restore your data on a new device without manually locating a backup file first

Subscribe or manage your subscription from Settings → Backup & Restore, which hands off to Google Play for billing. Cancel anytime from Google Play; your local data and the ability to keep making manual backups are unaffected either way.

11. Security & Lock Screen

Configure app lock behavior in Settings → Security:

• Auto-lock timer: choose how long the app stays unlocked in the background (Immediate up to 15 minutes, or Never). When your phone's screen locks, KetoCypher locks immediately regardless of this timer.
• Biometric unlock: optional fingerprint or face unlock on supported devices. Your password always works as a fallback.
• Change password: update your account password anytime; this re-encrypts your key locally, your data stays intact.

Because the app can require the device itself to be unlocked to access your encryption key, we recommend having a real lock screen (PIN, pattern, password, or biometric) set on your phone, not "swipe to unlock."

12. Settings

Settings is organized into a few groups, all reachable from the Settings tab:

• Profile — email, password, sex, age, height, weight, activity level, and personal goal (these drive your TDEE estimate)
• Macro Targets & Carb Mode — your Nutritional Protocol and total vs. net carbs display
• Meal Times & Eating Window — the time ranges used to auto-assign meals and to run your intermittent-fasting timer, plus Show meals toggles to hide any meals you don't eat
• Health Connect — connection status and synced data types
• Notifications — logging reminders, weekly report alerts, and update notifications for What's New posts
• Appearance — app theme and home-screen icon. The Cypher look is the default; the Coffee and Carnivore themes and icons are cosmetic supporter perks that unlock automatically when you buy the devs coffees (see Account & Data). Cosmetic only: every feature works the same on every theme.
• App Feedback — report a bug or send a note straight from the app; we read every one
• Backup & Restore — manual and automatic backups, restore, and Premium Cloud Backup
• Security — lock timing, biometric unlock, change password
• Account — recovery phrase, sign out, delete account (see Account & Data)
• About — version, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Use

13. Account & Data

Sign out clears your session but keeps your encrypted data on the device; sign back in anytime with your email and password.

Delete account or data is available from Settings → Account, or by emailing support@ketocypher.com. You can delete just your cloud backups while keeping your account, or permanently delete your account and all server-side data. For the full walkthrough, including what's removed, timing, and your data-export options first, see Delete Your Account or Export Your Data.

Buy the devs a coffee. From Settings → Account you can make an optional one-time "coffee" purchase to support development, through Google Play. Coffees never unlock features, everything in the app works the same without them, but they do earn cosmetic thanks: a Supporter badge from your first coffee, an alternate app icon at two, and the supporter themes at four. Perks follow your cumulative total, including coffees bought before a cosmetic shipped.

For anything else, general questions go to hello@ketocypher.com, account and security questions go to support@ketocypher.com.

14. Troubleshooting