Track calories on Apple Watch

The reason to use a watch is not that it does more than the phone. It is that you do not have to fetch the phone.

What works on the watch

zweitaps ships its own watch app: the list of what you ate recently, and dictation for everything else. Two taps on your wrist and the entry is in — without the phone leaving your pocket.

Plus a complication on the watch face: the calories left for the day, without opening anything. The watch app is free, like logging itself.

Apple Health

If you want it, zweitaps writes every entry to Apple Health as a meal, and backfills the last 30 days when you switch it on. It is a toggle under Settings → Data, off by default. From Health, the values are then available to other apps and to the Fitness summary.

What does not work there

Scanning barcodes — the watch has no camera suited to it. And photo recognition needs a photo, so it needs the phone. Both are left out on the watch rather than offered badly.