When the brand isn’t in your favourites and you don’t fancy filling in ABV by hand, AlcoLog has two shortcuts on the Add Drink screen: a barcode scanner and a photo recognition scanner. Both are free for everyone, both auto-fill the drink form when they recognise something, and both have a clean fallback when they don’t.
# Step 1. Open the Add Drink screen
During a session, tap + Add Drink. The sheet slides up. The scanner buttons live next to the ABV and Calories rows: a barcode icon (📷) on the ABV row, a photo icon on the Calories row.
If you’ve never used the camera in AlcoLog before, iOS will prompt for camera permission the first time you tap either button. Choose Allow. If you tap Don’t Allow by accident, you can flip it back later in Settings · AlcoLog · Camera.
# Step 2. Scan a barcode
Tap the 📷 Scan button on the ABV row. A live camera viewfinder fills the screen with Point camera at barcode centered. Hold your iPhone over the label until the barcode lights up; recognition is instant.
While AlcoLog looks the product up, a Looking up product… spinner appears. Five lookup providers are tried in turn: Open Food Facts, USDA, LCBO, Systembolaget, and (Premium only) FatSecret. The first one that returns a result wins.
# Step 3. Confirm or scan again
When a product is found, a confirmation card slides in from the bottom showing the product name, ABV, and calories per 100ml. There’s a Sources line listing where the data came from (typically a single provider, occasionally two).
Tap Use This and the Add Drink form auto-fills with the brand, ABV, and calories pulled from the lookup. Tap Scan Again to try a different barcode without leaving the camera.
If the product is in the database under a name without ABV, you’ll get a partial match. The card shows what was found and offers a fuzzy brand match from AlcoLog’s local catalog (e.g. Use Heineken at 5.0%), or you can type the ABV in by hand.
# Step 4. Use the photo scanner
If your drink has no barcode (a pulled pint, a cocktail, a glass of wine), tap the 🪄 Photo button on the Calories row instead. A picker appears with two options: Take Photo (uses the camera) or Choose from Library (uses your photo library).
Frame the drink and tap the shutter, or pick an existing shot. AlcoLog’s on-device classifier runs over the image using Apple’s Vision framework; nothing leaves your iPhone, no upload, no server. A few seconds later you get a result card with Looks like a [type], the suggested subtype and size, and a confidence rating (Low / Medium / High).
If the photo isn’t clear enough, the result is Couldn’t tell from this photo. Tap Try Again with better framing, or Close and pick the type manually.
# Step 5. The manual fallback always works
If neither scanner can place your drink, the Add Drink form is still right there. Pick a type, a size, and tap Log. Both scanners are shortcuts; the form below them is what actually saves the drink.
For drinks you log often, save them as a favourite once and skip both scanners forever after.
# What’s next
For Sinclair Method users, the Naltrexone Side Effects and TSM tracking with AlcoLog editorials cover the why behind the medication side. Inside the app, the next tutorial is reading your drinking history so you can see what those scanned drinks add up to.