v2.2: Backup and safety

There’s a new Menu Plan version, and it’s all about the safety of your data.

Safety Measures against Data Loss

As you might know, Menu Plan works out of the box, you don’t need to create any account: your data are linked to your Apple ID, and automatically saved to iCloud. Thanks to iCloud backup and sync you can use Menu Plan on two separate devices; or you can buy a new phone, log in with the same Apple ID and see all Menu Plan data being downloaded.

All of this is super convenient, but there’s a trade off. In some rare cases, iCloud syncing messes up and some data are lost. For example, some users contacted me and told me some of their recipes lost their ingredients. It’s a rare occurrence, but it happens anyway.
The worst part?
I cannot do anything about these data losses, because the sync is run by Apple at the system level: even if I knew what the bug was, I could not fix it.

For this reason I introduced a fallback mechanism that should keep you data safe even in case of sync failure.

Starting with Menu Plan 2.2, all your recipes are backed up in the History section, which you’ll find in the Settings. This system only records recipe creation, imports and manual edits happening on your device: it is unaffected by the sync, and so it should be a safe fallback repository.
If you realize that a sync, or an update, accidentally modified a recipe, you’ll find the latest version you modified in the History section. Then you’ll be able to restore the old version as a new recipe (safest option) or to overwrite the current recipe with this backup.
This is an extreme-ratio counter-measure, so don’t play with it unless you really need it. Also, if you’re not sure how to use this, do contact me, I’ll be happy to explain the process in greater detail and guide you through the restore procedure.

Data will be backed up starting with this version; unfortunately you won’t be able to recover data lost before v 2.2.

Help!

There’s a new Help/FAQs section in the settings. It’s meant to give a fast answer to users asking the most common questions I get by email.

And this wraps it. Nothing too sparkling in this version, but I believe the new History/Backup system is a great safeguard for your data, and I wanted to get it out as fast as possible.