macrofactor

New barcode expansion drastically increases our coverage in Europe (and worldwide)

New and Noteworthy 

Barcode coverage expansion

A year ago, we expanded our branded product coverage to include UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Ireland. We also promised that we would look to incorporate more data sources in the future. 

We are happy to announce the completion of Phase 1 for expanding our global coverage. We have incorporated data provided by the Open Food Facts contributors, drastically increasing our coverage in Europe and worldwide. You can learn more about Open Food Facts and their mission here.

As part of this first phase, coverage was expanded specifically for the barcode scanner. Expansion for search and more user-friendly utilities for European users are on our roadmap as part of future phases.

MacroFactor's European barcode expansion

​How to get the newest version of the app: If you have app updates turned on, you will get the newest version automatically. If you want to manually update the app, you can find instructions for iPhone here and instructions for Android here.

Knowledge Base overhaul

We recently moved our Knowledge Base to a new hosting platform for a bunch of boring reasons you probably wouldn’t care about. However, there are a few exciting updates:

1) Get your simple questions answered instantly by our new experimental chatbot, powered by GPT-4!

It’s trained on the MacroFactor Knowledge Base, so it should be able to instantly answer a lot of your simple questions about the app (and about nutrition more generally), without too many wild “hallucinations.” For more complex questions, our Facebook group, subreddit, and email support inbox are probably still your best bets.

MacroFactor's experimental chatbot

2) The feature descriptions in the Knowledge Base are back up-to-date

A lot of interaction patterns changed slightly following the rollout of the food logger and food timeline revamps, but we didn’t want to update the Knowledge Base immediately, because we wanted to give users enough time to opt into the new and improved experiences. Enough time has now passed to align the Knowledge Base feature descriptions with the current app experience. For a couple examples, the entries on copying and pasting foods and moving foods around the timeline got particularly large face lifts.

In the future, we plan to add video walkthroughs to a lot of the Knowledge Base entries as well.

3) New Knowledge Base articles are rolling out!

As time goes on, we get a better and better understanding of the types of questions users have. So, we’re in the process of expanding the Knowledge Base to answer more of those questions in a thorough (but still hopefully succinct) manner. Check out our new articles on how to “roll over” unused calories, and how frequently you need to log your weight and nutrition for consistent expenditure and coaching updates.

As we publish new Knowledge Base entries, we’ll share them in the Facebook group and subreddit to keep our communities in the know.

Quick Tips

We’ve started a new series of posts over on our Instagram account that aims to give you quick tutorials on how to use some of cool, lesser-known features in the app. 

So far, we’ve covered how to create a recipe from logged foods, track foods faster with the log items shortcut, and how to edit your toolbar options

create a recipe from logged foods

If you haven’t already, be sure to give the IG account a follow for more quick tips like these.  

What We’re Working On

MacroFactor’s developers, Cory and Rebecca, have been cooking up something that we know you’re going to be really excited about. 

In fact, it’s the No. 1 most-requested feature on our product roadmap…

Body measurement tracking is coming to MacroFactor. Soon, there will be a whole new section of the app for tracking body measurements and photos. Just like with the Weight Trend and Expenditure experiences, there will also be some really slick data exploration tools alongside these new features. 

If you’ve ever used body measurement and photo tracking in another app, we feel pretty confident that our version is going to blow those other guys out of the water.

photos and body metrics features coming soon

You’ll be able to back-fill data and photos, so if you’re excited about this feature, start taking some of those photos and measurements now. 😉

Want to be the first to know when these new features are released? Make sure you’re connected with us via our Facebook group, subreddit, or Instagram

To learn more about what we’re working on, check our public roadmap to see our plans for new features and improvements. You can also submit features for consideration and vote on the upcoming features that are the highest priority to you.

About the Newsletter

On the last Monday of each month, the team behind the app sends this MacroFactor Monthly newsletter. Each edition includes sections on new features in the app, content recommendations, and a sneak peek at features in development.

Subscribe to MacroFactor Monthly

Sign up to receive the official newsletter for the app. On the last Monday of each month, we’ll send you a digest including three sections:

  • What’s New? includes a breakdown of all new features and improvements in the app.
  • What’s Noteworthy? includes recommended content from our Knowledge Base, communities, and the extended Stronger By Science universe.
  • What’s Next? includes a sneak peek at the projects and features we’re working on for future releases.

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