Searching
You'll use the same kind of search box in several places: when adding food to a meal, when logging an exercise, and in the food and exercise libraries. This page explains how search works; the detailed walkthroughs live on the Food Search and Exercise Search pages.
Where you can search
| Where | What you're searching for |
|---|---|
| Diary → meal → Add food | Foods from your library, online providers, or a barcode |
| Diary → Add Exercise | Exercises to log |
| Foods page | Your food library, including meals |
| Exercise page → Add Exercise | Import exercises from online providers, or create custom exercises |
| Medications, meal builders, water containers | Quick lookups of foods and exercises |
The common ingredients
Most search screens share these building blocks:
- Recent: the items you've used lately, shown before you even type
- Favorites / Frequent: foods you've marked as favorites and the ones you log most often
- Ownership filter: narrow results to All, My Foods (or My Exercises), Family, or Public
- Provider selector: choose which data source to search, or All Providers to search everything at once
- Barcode scan: on the food search, the Scan Barcode button opens your camera and looks up the product's barcode (see below)
Searching online vs. your library
Searches have two sources:
- Internal: your own library plus anything shared with you by family members and shared publicly
- External: live searches against the food or exercise data providers you've configured in Settings → Developer & Integrations → Food & Exercise Data Providers. Pick a provider (or All Providers for foods) and results are imported into your library when you add them.
See External Providers for setup, and Feature Comparison to choose between food data sources. Foods from the free, no-setup Canadian Nutrient File are covered in its own guide: Canadian Nutrient File.
Barcode scanning
On the food search, press Scan Barcode, point your camera at the product barcode, and SparkyFitness looks it up:
- You can pick which provider performs the lookup
- The default lookup provider is set under Settings → Developer & Integrations → Food & Exercise Data Providers as the Default Barcode Provider
- If no provider is configured, the first barcode-capable provider is used
- The scanned product appears as a Scanned product card; add it and it becomes part of your library
NOTE
Barcode results depend on the provider's coverage. If a barcode isn't found, fall back to a normal text search or create a custom food.