User Guide

Logging a meal

Tap Log a meal when your food arrives (or after — whenever suits you). The flow is built to finish before your coffee cools:

1. "Back at Franklin Barbecue?" The app takes one quick location fix and checks it against the places you've saved. One saved place within about 75 m gets a Yes/No card; several get a short list, nearest first, with "Somewhere else" at the bottom.
2. Somewhere new. If nothing saved matches (or you answered No), Premium subscribers see a list of the restaurants around them and pick the name; everyone else goes straight to the "New place?" form. Either way the city is prefilled from your device's on-device geocoder, and the name and city stay editable.
3. Not at the table? Logging last night's dinner from the couch, flip Not logging from here at the top. The app skips location entirely and saves the place without a pin; it gets one the first time you confirm being there.
4. Add dishes. One or more dishes per visit. Each dish can carry an optional price and notes.
5. Tag the diner. Optionally tag who at the table ordered the dish. Diner names autocomplete from previous visits, so "Sam" is one tap after the first time.
6. Rate it. Two 1–5 ratings per dish: satisfaction (was it good?) and enjoyment (did you love eating it?). They're separate on purpose — a technically perfect dish you wouldn't reorder deserves different marks than a messy burger you think about weekly.

Pins: how matching works

Every saved place carries a pin: the spot where your phone was when you confirmed being there. Matching is by pin, never by name, which is why two branches of the same chain stay separate places with separate histories.

• Pins sharpen themselves. Each time you confirm "Back at…?" with a better GPS fix than the one stored, the pin moves onto it. Confirming the right place is all the maintenance it needs.
• Pinless places (saved with "Not logging from here", or picked from the list without a fix) don't match until you've confirmed being there once; after that they behave like any other.
• Moving a pin by hand. Standing at a place whose pin landed in the wrong spot? Open This City, tap the ⋮ menu on its card and choose Set pin to current location. A pinned place asks "Move the pin for …?" first.

Find restaurants near me Premium

When you log a meal somewhere that isn't saved yet, Premium subscribers get "Is it one of these?" — the restaurants around you, nearest first, with street addresses. Tap one and the New place form fills in with its name (still editable); Not listed drops you to typing the name as usual.

1. It asks first. The list comes from Apple Maps on iPhone or Google Maps on Android, which means your current location is sent to them — the only time anything leaves your phone besides a backup. The first time, the app explains this and offers Turn on or Not now; nothing is sent until you say yes.
2. Change your mind any time. The switch lives in About → Find restaurants near me, and the New place form has a "Find restaurants near me" button that brings the offer back after a "Not now".
3. Only the name is kept. The pin is still your phone's own fix, not the map provider's coordinates, and nothing from your journal is sent.

Dish photos

Every dish can carry a photo. In the dish editor, tap the photo button to take a picture or pick one from your gallery. The photo shows as a thumbnail on the dish card everywhere it appears — tap it for a full-screen view with pinch-to-zoom.

• Photos are stored inside the app, on your device, like everything else.
• Replacing or removing a photo — or deleting the dish or visit — cleans up the stored file too.
• Photos ride along when you share a visit and are included in Premium backups.

Scanning a receipt Premium

The fastest way to log a big table: in the log-meal flow, tap Scan receipt and point the camera at the bill (or pick a photo of it). On-device text recognition reads it and proposes dishes with names and prices. Scanning is a Premium subscriber feature.

1. Scan. Camera or gallery — the receipt image is used once and never stored. On Android, an automatic document scanner crops and deskews the shot for you.
2. Review. A checklist shows what was found, with obvious noise (totals, tax, payment lines) already filtered out. Tick the items that are actually dishes.
3. Edit. Kept items become normal editable dish drafts — fix names, add diners and ratings, then save. Nothing is ever auto-saved.

Scanning a menu Premium

Scan a restaurant's menu once and Table Encore remembers it for that place. In the log-meal flow, pick the restaurant and tap Scan menu:

1. Scan. Same capture flow as receipts — camera or gallery, processed on-device, image never stored.
2. Review. Tick the real dishes in the "Found on the menu" checklist; prices come along where the menu lists them.
3. Autocomplete forever. The kept items are saved as that restaurant's menu. From then on, dish names autocomplete as you type when logging a meal there — prices prefilled.

Re-scanning a menu updates the saved list, so a seasonal menu change is one scan away.

The Here screen

This is the whole point of the app. Standing in a restaurant you've logged before? Open Here and your last visit is already on screen:

• Every dish from your last visit, with both ratings
• Grouped per diner, so you can see what each person had
• Your notes — "ask for extra sauce", "skip the special"

Zero taps, zero searching. Read it while the server hands out menus.

This City

This City lists every restaurant you've saved in the city you're currently in, each with its last-visit date and your best and worst dish there. It turns "where should we eat tonight?" into a scroll through your own greatest hits. Each card's ⋮ menu is also where you move a pin or delete a place, visits and photos included.

History & sharing a visit

History is the full journal: browse or search every visit you've logged. From any visit you can:

• Edit dishes, ratings, prices, and notes
• Delete a visit entirely
• Share the visit — tap the share icon in the visit's app bar to send it anywhere (messages, email, notes). The share mirrors the Here screen: dishes grouped per diner with star ratings, and any dish photos attached.

Exporting your data

Your journal is yours to take. Open About → Export data and the app shares a complete JSON dump of everything you've recorded — restaurants, visits, dishes, ratings, notes — via the system share sheet. Save it to your files, email it to yourself, whatever you like.

Backup & sync (Premium)

With a Premium subscription, About → Backup & sync backs your whole journal up to a private, app-specific folder in your own cloud — dish photos included. On iPhone that's iCloud by default, with Google Drive as an option; on Android it's Google Drive. Code Cowboys runs no servers; the backup travels straight from your phone to your cloud account, and the app can't see anything else you keep there.

1. Subscribe to Premium (handled by Google Play or the App Store).
2. Connect your cloud. iCloud uses the Apple Account already signed in on your iPhone, so there's nothing to sign into. For Google Drive, sign in with the Google account whose Drive should hold the backup. On iPhone, the switch at the top of the screen picks between the two.
3. Back up whenever you like, and Restore on this or a new phone — restore replaces the journal on the device after a confirmation. Moving between Android and iPhone? Use Google Drive on both.

Free tier, Unlimited & Premium

Table Encore is free for up to 5 saved restaurants — photos, sharing, and export included. A "2 of 5 free restaurants used" counter on the Here, This City, and log-meal screens always shows where you stand. Two optional purchases exist:

• Unlimited — a one-time unlock that removes the restaurant limit forever. No subscription.
• Premium — an annual subscription that adds menu & receipt scanning, Find restaurants near me and Backup & sync to your own cloud — and includes Unlimited, so you never need both.

• Your existing data is never gated: viewing, editing, and logging visits at already-saved places stay free forever.
• Only adding restaurant #6 asks for the unlock.
• Payment is handled entirely by Google Play or the App Store; we never see your payment details.

If you enjoy the app, there's also a small coffee tip jar in the settings. It buys nothing and changes nothing — it's just appreciated.

Questions this guide didn't answer? Check the FAQ or the Help & Troubleshooting page.