YAZIO

Beautiful and better than the rest. I've tried many calorie counting apps, and this is the one most similar to MyFitnessPal - and even improves upon it. I switched to Yazio from MyFitnessPal, because MyFitnessPal does not get "active energy" figures from the Apple Health app, and so it doesn't get any calories burned information from my activity tracker band, whereas Yazio does get this information.

Yazio is visually elegant, while giving you all the information you need on the main screen: calorie limit, calories eaten, calories burned, calories remaining, and (graphic) percentages for carbs, protein, and fat.

If you find some entries in the food database are inaccurate, there are two ways to avoid using bad data in Yazio or similar apps. The first is to use the check-marked entries, because the non-check-marked entries were entered by random users. The second option is to enter food information yourself using USDA or other official databases, including your initials or some other identifier in the names, while not setting it "visible to all users" (because then other users could edit).

If you want to track micronutrients (e.g., vitamins), then it's not ideal, especially for free, and only the visually ugly app Cronometer does that well. With all these programs, if you want to track microelements, then you have to forego the bar code scanner and use the official generic entries instead.

If you only want to track calories and macros, then you can use free app without a subscription, and it's quite nice. Plus, you can use the bar code scanner (but beware user data entry errors), and the scanning works much better in Yazio than MyFitnessPal, in my experience. The scanner in MyFitnessPal takes a long time to lock onto the code, though of course once it sees the code, then it has a larger database than Yazio.

One thing I really don't like is that if you type the name of a food and it's actually a recipe (a combination of foods that you've entered), then it won't find it unless you switch to the recipes tab in the search bar - and then it loses the text you just typed. For example, if I search for "Stir Fried Chicken and Broccoli" in the food tab and it fails to find it, then I have to remember that it's one of my recipes, switch to the recipes tab, and type it all over again. Cronometer and most other such apps get this right, not only finding the recipe in a general search but highlighting it in the list of possible matches.

Another thing I don't like is that for custom foods it has data entry cells for both sodium and salt, and while they are technically different (Na versus NaCl), this only confuses users. On some report screens, Yazio lists "sodium" while on others it lists "salt".

Despite the warts, I think this is the best calorie (and macro) counter app, especially if you don't want to pay.

[Edited by Maiklas, May 17]

the YAZIO-app has helped me a lot on my weight loss journey. I love that it makes tracking calories and macros really easy and fast! The healthy recipes and meal plans are a great addition to the nutrition diary. Perfect app!