wow. MyFitnessPal puts its barcode scanner behind a paywall.
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(Pocket-lint) – MyFitnessPal, the popular nutrition and fitness app that millions of people use every day to log their meals and track their macros, is now charging its users for a feature it long offered for free. Starting October 1, 2022, you’ll need to subscribe to MyFitnesPayl Premium — the app’s ad-free subscription tier — for $19.99 per month if you want to use the barcode scanner.
For years, users with a free account have been able to use this feature to scan packages and easily log their meals. Don’t want to search for a specific Digorno pizza in the app’s extensive database? No problem. Flip the pizza box, open the MyFitnessPal app, tap the barcode scanner and scan. The app will immediately display the pizza’s official nutritional data and add it to your food diary. It only takes a second and it’s incredibly easy.
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This fall, those of you who rely on the app to track what you eat, whether for medical reasons or just to lose weight, will have to pay to use the scanner. Or you can continue to be a free user. This means that you will have to manually search for everything you eat in the MyFitnessPal database, and you will have to verify that the information is correct in the database. Indeed, MyFitnessPal allows all users of its platform to contribute to its food database, and sometimes the data is not correct. Scanning barcodes has always been the easiest and most reliable way to record your food.
Remember that at one time MyFitnessPal was completely free to use. Under Armor bought it back in 2015, then sold it to venture capital firm Francisco Partners in 2020. During that time, the app was transformed, and it’s currently just an empty shell. The most interesting features are all paid. Want to set personalized calorie and macronutrient goals? Subscribe to the premium service. Want to see macros by meal? Premium. Calorie goals per meal? Premium.
If you look at user reactions on Twitter and Reddit, you will see that things are not very encouraging. Many seem incredibly unhappy with this change.
It’s unfortunate but #myfitnesspal just killed his app. #barcode pic.twitter.com/sVwVBvCASj-
Sergio (@lostinthegc) August 24, 2022
Written by Maggie Tillman.
