support

Do I need an account?

No, and there is none to make. Solera has no sign-in, no password and no server. Everything you add is written to your phone and stays there. See privacy for what that means exactly.

I have a new phone. How do I bring my diary across?

Go to the bottom of the shelf on the old phone and choose write the file. That gives you a plain file of everything you have added — one that opens in a spreadsheet and one that keeps every field. Photographs are not inside it; they are large, and they stay in the phone’s own storage, named by the file rather than carried in it, so copy those across yourself if they matter to you.

Setting the new phone up from a Google backup will not bring it: Solera opts out of Android’s backup entirely, so the diary is never copied to your Google account in the first place. That is the same promise as everywhere else on this site. The file is the way across.

What does it cost?

The first five bottles on your shelf are free. Everything works on those five — the shop check, the map, the year, the export — so what you are trying is the actual app, not a preview of it. Bottles you have bought and not yet opened wait outside the count; the five is the shelf.

When the shelf is full, Solera asks you to buy it, once, and then the shelf stops having a size. One payment on Google Play, no tiers, and nothing else in the app is for sale. No subscription: nothing here runs on a server, so there is no monthly bill of mine for one to cover.

On a new phone, install it again from Google Play with the same Google Account and you are not charged twice. Google keeps that record, not me — Solera asks Google at every start, so it usually knows before you do. If it does not, i already bought it at the end of the shelf asks again.

It did not recognise the label.

It happens, and the app expects it. The camera only fills in the form. Typing the producer and the wine takes about ten seconds and works from the first entry.

A barcode, or the QR code on the back of an EU bottle, is read exactly rather than guessed. If the front of the label defeats it, try the back. Curved glass, gold printing and low light are what usually defeat it. Straight on, in normal light, works best.

My wine is not in the catalogue.

Then you found one it does not know yet. It will say so and let you type it in. That bottle is yours and counts towards your taste like any other. Nothing about it is sent anywhere.

A wine in the catalogue has the wrong region or grape.

Change it on your entry. Your copy is yours to correct. Then tell me, and the shared catalogue gets fixed for everyone in a later update. The name and the producer is enough to find it.

How do I delete a bottle, or all of them?

Open the bottle and choose forget this bottle. That takes its photographs with it. To remove everything, delete the app. There is no copy anywhere else, so that really is the end of it. Write the file first if you want to keep it.

Forgetting a bottle comes with the purchase. On the free shelf a bottle can be added but not taken back off, because otherwise five bottles would be five at a time rather than five bottles. Deleting the app still removes everything, whether you have bought it or not.

The long version, including why nothing is left in a backup after the app has gone.

Does it work without a signal?

Yes, all of it. The catalogue is inside the download instead of being looked up online. That is deliberate: you usually need Solera in a shop basement with one bar of signal.

The one thing that needs a signal is the purchase itself, because that is Google Play’s business rather than the app’s. Once it is bought, the app remembers on the phone and never asks again.

Larger text, TalkBack, dark mode

All three work. Type grows with your system setting up to the size where a shelf card stops being readable; past that the screens reflow to one column instead of growing further, and the screens that carry the most type are drawn and checked at it. Dark mode is drawn as its own set of colours, not an inversion. If a screen breaks at your text size, that is a bug and I want to hear about it.

Why is there no score out of a hundred?

Because a number claims to know more than it does. And the answer you want in a shop is a reason, not a figure. Solera tells you what you have liked and why it thinks this bottle is like it. When it does not have enough of your history, it says too early to guess rather than making something up.

Who makes it?

One person, published by HORIS INTERNATIONAL LIMITED, which is on Google Play as Alps project. The terms and the privacy policy are the formal version of that, and the postal address is at the end of either.

Is there an iPhone version?

Not yet, and there is no date to give you. Solera is one person’s work and it ships on Android first. It is one app rather than two, so an iPhone version is the plan rather than a rewrite — but it goes to the App Store when it is ready and not before, and until it is there, there is nothing to promise.