No Meat Today support

As many as you want. I log two most days, because I skip breakfast and because a third of a day feels too easy to earn — but if I have a real breakfast, or a meaty one, that day gets three.

No. One meatless meal out of two counts as half a day, one out of three counts as a third, and those fractions add up across days. Half on Monday and a third on Tuesday leaves you five sixths of the way to a cow.

Nothing is ever lost. A half plus two thirds is seven sixths: you attract a cow and keep the extra sixth toward the next one. That leftover shows up as a small pie chart at the bottom right of the day’s ring, and it survives even if your cows start leaving.

It happens to me too. Go back and fill in the missing days from memory — nobody is checking, so a best guess is fine. If it keeps happening, turn on the evening reminder.

Because it’s a convenience, and I built the app for two years without it. Two days of one meaty meal and one meatless meal do exactly what one clean day and one meaty day do — it just takes a little more thought.

You attract one by going a whole day without meat, and she lands on your planet the next day. Partial days count: three meals with one meatless is a third of a day, and thirds add up until they make a whole one.

Yes — a day with nothing in it is read as a day with meat. Fill the day in whenever you get to it and she comes back. Cows don’t hold a grudge.

It depends on the goal you set. By default a cow leaves after a full week of meals with meat, so a cow attracted on Monday goes the following Tuesday unless you eat one meatless meal in between — one meal, not another whole day. On the vegetarian setting, any meal with meat is enough to send her off.

They go looking for a more hospitable planet. You scared them and you can’t undo that — short of editing the past — but you can do better next week.

They merge, so your planet stays liveable: seven daily cows become a weekly one, and it carries on up through months, quarters and years. Merged cows look different from each other, which is half the fun of collecting them.

Because the lower levels are hidden once they have merged into a higher one. They are all still there in your population view, and if you want one on the planet regardless, favourite it.

It favourites her, which keeps her on your planet even after she has been merged into a bigger cow. Special cows are favourited for you.

There’s no limit to how many you collect, but never more than one a day. On the planet at any one time it’s 14 (six days, three weeks, two months, three quarters) plus one per year, plus every cow you’ve favourited.

They show up when you edit the past. A frozen cow is one that really did arrive at some point but no longer should have, given the change you just made — rather than delete her, the app puts her on ice. The next cow you’d attract unfreezes her instead.

Groups of special energies that turn up at random. The forecast will tell you something is in the air without telling you what. Energised cows look unlike the regular ones, and a few are rare or one of a kind.

Cow-holidays: dates that celebrate an event or a person. A cow attracted on one of those days arrives with a look you can’t get any other way.

She crossed your planet’s atmosphere on a cowliday, which imbues her with superpowers I haven’t revealed yet, and gives her a distinctive look.

Three options, in the order I’d rank them. Plan around it — one meatless meal out of two the day before leaves you starting today with half a day already banked. Or swap with another day so it evens out. Or cheat, which is between you and yourself, and which I’d rather you didn’t.

Maybe, maybe not. I might let people catch up on missed ones later, but I’m not promising it.

You get both. Only the cow you attracted is imbued — the one that appears because others merged is a different animal.

Yes, and I’ve used them. Write to me from inside the app.

Your leftover fraction of a day. Half a day on Monday plus two thirds on Tuesday is seven sixths — one cow, and a sixth carried forward, which is what the pie is showing.

No. Names and anything else you’ve changed about a cow stay exactly as you left them.

No. Not the data on your phone, and not the data in iCloud either — it sits in your own private iCloud database, which I have no way to read.

Start in the app’s Settings: a dedicated menu appears there whenever it detects a sync problem. Then check the Settings app — tap your name at the top, go to iCloud, and make sure both iCloud Drive and No Meat Today are on. Give it a few seconds to catch up between devices.

In the Settings app, tap your name, then iCloud, and turn No Meat Today off. The app keeps working; it just stops syncing.

Yes. The app writes your whole history to a JSON file you keep, from Settings — no account, no request form, no waiting on me.

How to export your data

Delete the app from every device, then open the Settings app, tap your name, go to iCloud, then Manage Storage, find No Meat Today and delete the data there.

Because it costs money to exist: an Apple developer account, devices, software, a domain and a website, an accountant, taxes, and the 5% I give to charities — all before a penny reaches my family. I used the app myself for two and a half years before publishing it, and the free version today does more than I had then.

What’s free, what isn’t, and how it’s sold

Anyone who has seen enough science fiction knows editing the past is delicate work. Letting you change a day without wrecking every cow and every total downstream of it is the single hardest thing in this app. It’s also the way to cheat, which I think earns it a spot behind the paywall.

Write to me from inside the app and tell me a bit about your situation — only as much as you’d tell a friendly stranger. We’ll sort something out.

Yes, 50%. Email me from your student address and I’ll send you an offer code.

Yes. Every plan covers the family you’ve set up in your iCloud settings — they just need to tap Restore purchase once.

Open the subscription screen and look at the bottom, next to Privacy and Terms.

Open the App Store app, tap your picture at the top right, choose Redeem Gift Card or Code, and enter it. Then come back to No Meat Today and tap Restore purchase in Settings.

Through Apple — refunds are theirs to give and there’s nothing I can do from my side. I would still like to hear what went wrong, because that part I can fix.

It’s a nod to “No Milk Today” by Herman’s Hermits.

Your personal cowch. She’s the one who asks what you ate, and she’s less easily spooked than the rest of the herd, which is why she stays even on your meatiest weeks. Her name comes from the app’s: No Meat Today, Naomi Tude.

Every figure the app shows — the money, the years, the animals, the showers, the apples, the kilometres — comes from published work, and I’ve written down which study each one came from and how I did the arithmetic.

See every figure and its source

Maybe one day. Nothing is in progress.

With your help, maybe. The app is full of puns, some cultural and some that only work in one language, so it takes rather more than a translation engine. Write to me if you’d like to help.

Big ones, small ones, and medium ones — which I like to keep to myself so I can follow where they go. Tell me what you need, though: more than once a message has jumped a feature to the front of the queue.