Happy Scale Support

Your daily scale weight fluctuates unreliably, but your "moving average" weight is a meaningful weight loss tracker.

You see, scales are great for weight loss tracking because:

1. They’re available. Most people already have one.
2. They’re convenient. Only takes a few seconds.

But scales are terrible for weight loss tracking because:

1. They measure mass we don’t care about, like food in our digestive system, retained water weight, and glycogen weight (all of which fluctuate a lot).
2. They aren’t as accurate as they claim. Is your scale precise to 0.2 pounds increments? Try weighing yourself, picking up a stick of butter (which weighs 0.25 pounds), and weighing yourself again. Most home scales will fail to notice the difference.

The moving average maximizes the scale’s benefits while neutralizing its weaknesses:

1. To neutralize weight fluctuations, weigh yourself first thing in the morning, after using the restroom and before breakfast. It’s the most stabilized moment day-to-day, fluctuation-wise.
2. To neutralize scale accuracy problems, weigh yourself every single day, once, and Happy Scale will use an advanced mathematical formula to pick out the trend while performing a moving average.

If you follow these two rules, Happy Scale will help you paint a very smoothed-out picture of your weight-loss journey!

Nope. You can weigh in less frequently, like once a week.

The advantage of weighing daily is that more frequently you weigh in, the better the smoothing and predictions will be. But you should do whatever works best for you psychologically!

Happy Scale is built on the philosophy that you should never feel reluctant about stepping on the scale. And it can be heartbreaking to see a bigger number today than you saw yesterday!

Happy Scale emphasizes your 10-day-best to counteract your body’s natural weight fluctuations. Every time you hit a new record low, you have up to ten days of dealing with pesky fluctations before you need to hit a new low weight.

It depends on how you think about your weight loss progress psychologically.

For some people, if they see a new all-time low number on the scale, that number is burned into their heads. 172.4 today! Woo! If that sounds like you, choose "10-day-best" tracking.

For some people, seeing the number on the scale stay the same (or sometimes go up) from day to day is really de-motivating. They feel like giving up because the scale won’t budge. If that sounds like you, choose moving average tracking.

Moving average weight mode uses a trend predictor to predict what your weight is, and this usually results in a pretty smooth downward line. Instead of plateauing for 6 days and then losing 0.6 all at once, moving average weight mode is more likely to say you’re losing 0.1 pounds all 6 of the days. You get to the same place, but it smooths it out.

Happy Scale has four smoothing methods. Two are simple (Exponential Smoothing, Seven Day Moving Average), and the other two are advanced (Happy Scale Smoothing, Double Exponential Smoothing).

The two simple methods average together recent weights. The resulting average will tend to predict what you weighed a few days ago. In other words, the moving average for today will show what you weighed a few days ago.

The two advanced methods will compensate for the inherit lag in the simple methods by also monitoring your current trend, and using that to compensate for the multi-day lag of the simple methods.

If you are losing weight steadily, but then plateau, then the advanced methods will temporarily predict that you will continue to trend downward. This sometimes causes them to predict weights you’ve never achieved.

Happy Scale Smoothing is the recommended method to smooth out weights. It excels at both predicting what you weigh today and predicting what your weight trend is. Its one drawback is that it might make slight adjustments to the past few days of predictions as you enter new weights, because it considers both past and future weights (as available) when predicting the weight for a date.

Double Exponential Smoothing is decent at predicting your weight, but it tends to overshoot its predictions if your rate of weight loss changes rapidly. It’s very poorly suited for calculating weight trends. It only makes predictions based on past weigh-ins.

Exponential Smoothing is poor at predicting your weight, as it tends to "lag" and predict what you weighed days ago. It’s simple, and it’s good for calculating weight trends. It only makes predictions based on past weigh-ins.

Seven Day Moving Average is poor at predicting your weight, as it tends to "lag" and predict what you weighed days ago. It’s an option because some people prefer its simplicity. It only makes predictions based on past weigh-ins.

By default, the app stores all data on the device itself. There’s no server component to log into to retrieve your data.

To get your data to carry over, you’ll need to do one of these:

1. Do a full backup of your old device to iCloud, and setting up your new phone with an iCloud Restore
2. Do a full backup of your old device to a computer running iTunes, and then restore to the new phone with iTunes
3. Set up your old and new devices to sync to Dropbox

1. Tap the Logbook tab.
2. Tap the entry with the incorrect weight.
3. Tap Edit Entry.
4. Tap the Date and/or Weight field, and modify their values.
5. Tap Update Entry.

Sometimes your weight loss journey needs a fresh start. Here’s how to do it:

1. Make sure you’ve added a new weight entry for the date and weight you will be starting over.
2. Tap the Settings tab.
3. Tap the Weight Goals cell.
4. Tap the Starting Point parent cell.
5. Tap the Starting Point cell and choose a new date.
6. Turn on the ‘Hide entries before start date’ switch.

This will hide your old entries, but it will not delete them. You can see your older entries at any time by turning the Fresh Start mode off.

1. Tap the “Settings” tab
2. Tap “How To Calculate”
3. Tap “Weight units”

Tap the circular “+” button at the bottom of the screen.

This guide will help you adjust the font size for the parts of the app that support adjustable font sizes.

The colored sections on the graph compare your weight to where it was 30 days ago.

If you have a green section above your line, its thickness represents how much you’ve lost in the last 30 days. Likewise, a red section below your line represents how much you’ve gained in the last 30 days.

You can modify how many days ago to compare to by tapping the gear icon in the upper–right of the Weight Chart card and modifying the ‘Highlight progress over...’ setting.

No. Happy Scale requests limited access to Dropbox and can only see its own files. It also cannot see your Dropbox email address nor your Dropbox password.

No. The only way a profile will be deleted from your device using sync is if another synced device deletes your profile.

It’s okay to use Happy Scale and make changes while it is disconnected from the Internet. Sync will resume when you reconnect.

If you recently synced two devices, but they are not showing the same data, then you may be looking at two different user profiles. Try tapping the “Logout” button in the upper–left, and see if there are multiple profiles listed.

If your devices are no longer syncing, then make sure the “Sync devices using Dropbox” switch in the Settings is turned on.

If your devices report errors every time you try to sync, and you have access to a device that still has all of your data on it, then tap the Troubleshooting menu, and then select “Remove Happy Scale sync data from Dropbox” and then “Revoke Dropbox authorization”. Once you’ve done that, try turning the sync switch on again.

If you still experience issues, please contact Happy Scale Support.

Happy Scale can automatically export all your weight entries to the Health app, and it can also import weight entries from other apps.

When importing entries, Happy Scale will only import one weight per day. If there are multiple weight entries for a day, Happy Scale will import the lowest weight entry, as this is the best way to estimate your moving average.

Happy Scale considers your weight for a date to be the lowest weight you achieved that day, and it does not collect information about the time of day when you achieved that weight. Therefore, when exporting weight entries, Happy Scale will record all entries as being at noon on a given day.

If you’re using automatic import and export, Happy Scale can only sync one profile per device to the Health app. If you turn on automatic Health sync for a user profile, and then turn it on for a different user profile, Happy Scale will disable Health sync for the original profile.

Having issues with Health app sync?

Ensure that you have granted Happy Scale permission to access your Health app database.

1. Launch the Health app
2. Tap “Sharing” on the bottom tab bar
3. Scroll down and tap “Apps”
4. Tap “Happy Scale”
5. If any of the switches are turned on, turn them off.
6. Turn on all the switches
7. Notice: There is a bug in iOS where these permissions sometimes get broken even though they look like they are on. That’s why you should turn them off and then on again.

Is Happy Scale not seeing weight entries from your other apps?

1. Launch the Health app
2. Tap “Browse” on the bottom tab bar
3. Tap “Body Measurements”
4. Tap “Weight” in the listing
5. Scroll down and tap “Show All Data”
6. Ensure you see weight entries from the other apps in the listing. If you don’t, you need to enable Health sync in the other apps.

Follow these instructions.

Try rebooting your device. It can take some time before it shows up.

Do not uninstall Happy Scale, as this will delete all your data.