How to Understand Your AlcoScore

The AlcoScore is a 0-100 health score that grades your drinking patterns across six pillars. This tutorial covers where to find it, what each pillar measures, how the score updates, and how to read each band. It builds up the picture from the screen layout to the underlying logic, so by the end you can look at any AlcoScore reading and know exactly what it’s telling you.

Time to read: about 8 minutes. The screen flow itself takes maybe 30 seconds once you know what you’re looking at.

# Step 1: Find the AlcoScore screen

Tap the AlcoScore tab in the bottom navigation bar. The score is also visible on the home screen widget if you’ve added one, in the Lock Screen widget, in the Dynamic Island during a session, and on the Apple Watch as a complication.

The big number in the dial is your score. The label below the number is the band you’re in. The line at the bottom tells you the score’s basis: six pillars, computed over a rolling 28-day window, updated at the end of every session.

# Step 2: Read the band you’re in

The score sits in one of five bands, each with its own colour and breathing-glow speed:

• Concerning (0-30): red dial, fast pulse. Drinking pattern that’s worth genuine attention.
• Below Average (31-50): amber dial, moderate pulse. Some patterns to look at.
• OK (51-65): yellow-green dial, slow pulse. Mostly fine, room for improvement.
• Great (66-85): green dial, very slow breathing. Healthy pattern.
• Legendary (86-100): deep green dial, slowest breathing. Excellent pattern over time.

The breathing animation is intentional. A Legendary score breathes slowly, like a calm resting heart rate. A Concerning score pulses fast, signalling stress. The visual cue carries information you’d otherwise need to read.

The first time you cross into Great or higher, a confetti burst and haptic celebration fire. This happens once per upward crossing, not every session.

# Step 3: Tap into the six pillars

Below the dial, tap the Pillars button (or scroll down) to see the six pillars that compose your score. Each pillar has its own bar, its own contribution percentage, and a tap-to-explain detail panel.

The percentages show how heavily each pillar weighs in your final score. Frequency and intensity are the heaviest at 25% each; trend is 20%; control, behaviour, and recovery are 10% each.

# Step 4: Understand each pillar

Tap any pillar bar to see what it specifically measures. Here’s what each one tracks:

# Frequency (25% weight)

Counts how many days of the rolling 28-day window had drinking sessions. More drinking days lowers this score; more rest days raises it. Drinking 2 days a week scores meaningfully higher than drinking 5 days a week, even if the total alcohol is the same. The pillar rewards spreading sessions out.

# Intensity (25% weight)

Measures how much you drank per session and how fast. A session with 4 drinks at a sustainable pace scores higher than a session with 4 drinks slammed in 90 minutes. Peak blood alcohol estimate, pacing, and total session volume all factor in. The pillar penalises high-pace heavy sessions and rewards moderate-pace sustainable ones.

# Trend (20% weight)

Looks at the direction your overall drinking pattern is moving over the rolling window. Drinking less than you were last month raises this pillar; drinking more lowers it. The trend pillar matters more than absolute numbers in some ways. Someone reducing from 30 units a week to 20 units a week scores well on trend even if their absolute units are still high.

# Control (10% weight)

Tracks whether you stay within the limits you’ve set yourself. If you’ve set a units threshold of 12 in the consumption alerts and consistently respect it, this pillar scores high. If you regularly breach it, this pillar drops. The pillar rewards self-set discipline rather than absolute moderation.

# Behaviour (10% weight)

Combines several “good drinking habit” signals: water logged alongside alcoholic drinks, time of day patterns (early-evening sessions versus late-night ones), consistency in when you stop drinking. The pillar rewards healthy habits around drinking, not just drinking less.

# Recovery (10% weight)

Counts the rest days between drinking sessions. Two heavy nights in a row produces a worse Recovery pillar than one heavy night followed by 2-3 sober days. The pillar specifically rewards giving your body time to recover between sessions.

The detail panel shows your current value, what it means in context, and what the pillar measures. Use this to see which pillars are pulling your score up and which are pulling it down.

# Step 5: Read your Proud Points and Pinch Points

After every session, the AlcoScore screen also shows two cards: Proud Points (what went well) and Pinch Points (where you slipped). These are session-specific feedback, not overall pillar bars.

These reset every session. The Proud Points are wins worth repeating; the Pinch Points highlight what to adjust next time. Tapping any point cross-highlights the pillar it relates to, so you can see how the session affected your overall score.

# Step 6: Check your Helping and Harming insights

Below the per-session points, two ongoing cards show patterns across all your sessions: Helping Your Score and Harming Your Score. These pull from your full history, not just the last session.

These cards surface the most actionable patterns in your data. Tapping any insight cross-highlights the pillars it affects on the bar list above. Use these to understand where the lift would come from if you wanted to raise your overall score.

# Step 7: Understand the Building Score state

When you first install AlcoLog, you don’t have an AlcoScore. The score unlocks after you’ve logged 5 completed sessions across 3 different days. Until then, the screen shows a Building Score state with progress dots.

The 3-different-days requirement matters. Five sessions in a single weekend wouldn’t unlock the score; the system wants enough breadth to compute a meaningful pattern. The building period typically takes 1-3 weeks of normal use.

# Step 8: Know what AlcoScore deliberately doesn’t include

Two design choices worth knowing:

Medication doses you log do not affect AlcoScore by design. People taking naltrexone, acamprosate, or other alcohol-related medications can log them on a separate flow, but those entries stay out of the score calculation. This is deliberate; AlcoScore is meant to grade your drinking pattern, not assess medical treatment.

There is no AI prediction or coaching layer. The score is computed from the six pillars deterministically. No model says “you’re likely to feel awful tomorrow” or “you should drink less Friday.” A Premium “AlcoScore Advanced” roadmap with AI features is flagged Coming Soon, but everything currently shipping is rule-based.

These are framing choices, not bugs. The score is meant to be transparent and editable in your head: if you change your behaviour, you can predict roughly what your score will do.

# Step 9: Where AlcoScore appears outside this screen

The score follows you across the app:

• Home screen widget: small, medium, and large widgets show your score with the breathing dial
• Lock Screen widget: a circular gauge with the score
• Dynamic Island: visible when a session is running (compact view shows units by default; AlcoScore visible in expanded view)
• Apple Watch: complications in 5 layouts (circular, corner, rectangular, inline). Premium feature.
• Session-end review: every 10th session triggers a structured prompt that includes your AlcoScore band

The score updates at the end of every session, not in real time during one. This is deliberate; the score is meant to be a stable reference, not a live feedback signal that might pressure you to make decisions mid-session.

# Step 10: Use the score to inform decisions

The point of AlcoScore isn’t to feel good or bad about a number. It’s to make patterns visible. A few practical uses:

See which pillar is dragging. Most people have one or two pillars pulling their score down. Looking at the bars tells you where the lift would come from. If Recovery is your weakest, spacing sessions out helps. If Intensity is weakest, slowing pace within sessions helps.

Track changes over weeks. A score going up over 4-6 weeks means your patterns are improving. A score going down means something has shifted, and the Helping/Harming cards usually point to what.

Use the band as a reality check. Many people drink “moderately” but score in the OK or Below Average band. Many people who think they drink heavily score Great. The score is built from your actual logged data, which often differs from how you’d describe your drinking unprompted.

Don’t optimise it as a target. Trying to game the score (logging only certain sessions, hiding heavier ones, switching to lower-volume drinks just to raise the number) defeats the point. The score is informational. Your honest drinking pattern is what produces it.

# What’s next

If you want to see your full session history alongside your AlcoScore trajectory, the Reading Your Drinking History tutorial covers the History view’s monthly cards, calendar heatmap, and trend graph. To see how AlcoScore interacts with the consumption alerts that drive the Control pillar, see Setting Up Alerts and Notifications.