Askesis / Support

Support

One inbox, answered by the person who wrote the app. If your question is not below, write in and say what your parish is, because most calendar questions turn on that.

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The calendar

The app shows a different fast day than my parish calendar.

First check which calendar you chose during setup. Open Settings inside the app and look at your parish or jurisdiction. Greek, Antiochian and OCA parishes usually keep the new calendar for fixed feasts; Serbian, Russian and many Romanian and Bulgarian parishes keep the old one. Changing it there changes every screen at once. If it is still wrong after that, write in with the date and what your calendar says, because that is a bug worth fixing rather than an opinion.

Why does the app mark every Wednesday and Friday?

Because they are fast days throughout the year, outside the fast-free weeks, and leaving them off is the single most common complaint about fasting apps. They are marked on the month grid, in the agenda and on Home, from one value, so they cannot appear on one surface and not another.

What if my priest tells me something different?

Then your priest is right and the app is not. Askesis states the general discipline of the Church. It cannot know your health, your circumstances or what you have been blessed to do, and it says so on the way in and again in Settings.

Some autumn weekday readings look wrong.

They can be one to two weeks out, and that is a known limit of this first version rather than a mistake in your setup. The readings are exact from the Triodion through Pentecost, and Sundays and fixed feasts are right all year.

Where do the calendar and the texts come from?

The new-calendar days are checked against the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, the old-calendar days against the OCA and ROCOR. Scripture is the Brenton Septuagint for the Old Testament, keeping the Septuagint psalm numbering, and the World English Bible for the New. The prayers rest on the Hapgood translation of 1906. Every source is named in Settings inside the app.

The free week and the subscription

What is free?

For the first week after you finish setting up, all of it. After that, Home stays free forever: the day's fast level in food words, where you are in the fast season, the feast and the saints, the appointed readings on the days that carry them, and the line about your priest. Setting the app up and changing your settings stay free too, as do the reminders the evening before a fast or a feast.

What needs a subscription?

The calendar, the prayer rule, the scanner, search, habits, favourites, the commemoration list, name-day reminders, rule-time reminders and the widgets.

What does it cost?

$39.99 a year, or $59.99 a year for the whole household through Family Sharing, both including the free week. $7.99 a month, or $11.99 a month for the household, both starting straight away. Those are United States prices; Apple charges the local equivalent everywhere else, so trust the figure the app shows you over this page.

My free week has ended and things are blurred.

That is deliberate. A locked area shows the real thing behind a blur rather than vanishing, so you can see what a subscription adds instead of guessing. Nothing behind it has been deleted.

I subscribed but the app still looks locked.

Open Settings inside the app and tap Restore. If you bought it under a different Apple Account, sign in with that one first. If it still will not unlock, write in with the date of the purchase.

How do I cancel?

In your Apple account settings, which is the only place iOS allows it. The app has a row that takes you straight there. Cancelling deletes nothing: your commemorations, your kept marks, your habits and your favourites all stay, and they come back unblurred if you subscribe again.

Does the family plan really cover my family?

Yes, through Apple's own Family Sharing group. The two single plans do not. If you are not sure which you bought, the subscription screen inside the app names the plan and says whether it arrived through Family Sharing.

The scanner

It says it cannot tell.

Then it genuinely could not read enough of the label to answer. The app would rather say so than tell you a half-read ingredient list contains nothing forbidden. Try again with the label flat and well lit. It shows you the text it actually read, above the verdict, so you can see what it was working from.

Which languages does it read?

English, Greek, Serbian, Russian, Romanian, Hungarian, German and Spanish.

Can I photograph a plate of food instead of a label?

No. That was built and then removed, because it could not be made reliable enough, and a scanner that is confidently wrong about food is worse than no scanner. It reads printed ingredient lists.

Why did it not flag the wine, or the shellfish?

Wine is not detected at all. Shellfish is widely permitted even on strict days, so it is surfaced as a note and never turns a verdict red. Oil is detected in all eight languages and named on a strict day, and it does not drive the verdict either.

Prayers, habits and notifications

Where are my commemorations in the prayer rule?

Inside the morning rule, at the traditional point, on the page that reads the whole occasion in order. The Commemorations card on the Prayers screen is where you add and edit the names.

My streak ended and nothing happened.

Correct. There is no alert, no red state and no interruption when a streak ends. An unkept day is an unfilled dot. Get up and continue.

A reminder did not arrive.

Check that notifications are allowed for Askesis in iOS Settings, and that the particular reminder is switched on inside the app. Name-day and rule-time reminders need a subscription; fast-eve and feast-eve reminders do not. Every reminder is scheduled on your device, so they keep working in Airplane Mode.

Where are the recipes?

Not written yet. The kitchen filters by the day's fast level and is tested, and it is empty, so it says so rather than showing filler.

Devices and iCloud

What do I need?

An iPhone or iPad running iOS 17 or later. A camera is needed only for the scanner. iCloud is optional.

Do I need an account?

No. There is no account, no sign-in and no email address to give. See the privacy policy.

Will it work without a signal?

Completely. The calendar, prayers, scripture and saints are all inside the app. Nothing is fetched, so nothing can fail to load.

My second device does not show my commemorations.

Both devices need to be signed in to the same Apple Account with iCloud on for Askesis. Sync is Apple's, and it can take a moment. Nothing is lost while it catches up.

If I reinstall, does my free week start again?

No. It is measured from when you finished setting up, and that moment syncs with the rest of your data, so reinstalling neither resets it nor extends it.

Writing in

A correction to the calendar is more useful than a compliment. If a day is wrong, send the date, your jurisdiction, and what your own calendar says. That is enough to reproduce it and fix it.

hello@no.spam.invalid.askesis.day

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