Once you have used Cronometer for a while, you may find yourself wanting to optimize your experience. We are an ever-evolving company and want to hear your suggestions. As a Cronometer user, YOU are the expert. We encourage you to suggest features on your wish list on our Community Forum
We have compiled a list of some common hacks that may help you out while our small team of developers works tirelessly to update our software with your feature requests. Most of the hacks contained in this list are specific to Gold users and focus on the Web version of Cronometer.
If you have a useful Crono-Hack of your own that you think could benefit this list, let us know on our community forum or by sending us an email at support@cronometer.com
Create a Recipe for your Daily supplements
You can consolidate your supplements into a Recipe in order to be able to access them more easily. On your Web Browser, you can create a recipe by clicking the Foods Tab and selecting Create new Recipe on the Left had side of the window. You can then add supplements to this group by adding all of your supplements as separate ingredients in your Recipe. Each day you can simply click add food and search for the name of your recipe to add all your supplements at one time.
As a Gold Subscriber, you also have the option of adding this recipe to a group in order to allow you to view it separately from your foods in your diary. In this way you will be able to see a distinction between nutrients obtained from meals and those from supplements if that is of interest to you.
If your supplement regimen changes one day or you forget to take something, you can easily Explode your recipe to edit each ingredient individually in that specific day once you have added it to your diary.
Add a nutrient that Cronometer doesn't track as a Biometric
Cronometer tracks nutrients that have good consistent data for many foods. You may be interested in tracking, for instance, CoQ10, Vitamin K subtypes, a specific herbal supplement, or some additive or quality of your food (ie. organic, raw, etc). You can add a custom biometric and add it to your diary when you consume the nutrient you wish to track. By adding this as a biometric instead of a custom food, this will allow you to easily track it over time in the trends Biometric graph.
Add a negative serving of an ingredient in a restaurant food
Did you eat a Big Mac without the bun? Or a Subway Sandwich without the Sauce? Most Fast Food restaurants have a comprehensive list of foods that they serve. You can add the dish to your diary from our database, then add a negative serving of the ingredient you did not eat!
Use the Professional Edition of Cronometer to Track family Member's diets
Unfortunately, we do not have a family plan, however you can purchase a Pro Subscription in which you can have internal profiles that do not require separate email addresses or Clients in which you can have separate email addresses, but still have access to all diaries on one account. You can learn more about the pro subscription at http://cronometer.com/#pro.
Use Multiselect to Create a recipe
While you can create a recipe using the recipe editor on the foods tab, Gold users can also create recipes on the Diary page. Enter all the ingredients of your recipe into your diary. Then select all of the items by holding down the shift key on your keyboard while clicking the diary entries. Then, right click on your selection and choose Create recipe from selected items. This will bring you to the Foods tab recipe editor with the ingredients list of a new recipe pre-populated from your diary. Simply add a name and serving size and save your recipe so you can use it again! You can also use the Explode recipe option to do the reverse of this!
Add a more convenient serving size to an existing food in the database
NCCDB listings typically have the most options for serving sizes (And contain the best data!). We are limited by the information contained in the nutrition facts table when adding serving sizes to the user submitted CRDB listings. Once you have measured the weight per mL or set amount of mL (ie. tbsp, Cup, fl oz) for a particular food you can easily add serving size options with the corresponding weights for that food by creating a custom copy of the database listing. Select the listing by searching for the food in the foods tab of Cronometer. Choose the settings menu in the top right corner and select Save a copy. Then add the convenient serving sizes that are relevant to you. Save this food as a custom food, and use this the next time you enter it into your diary.
Export Data to analyze your data in more depth
Cronometer offers a number of convenient graphs on both the Diary and trends tabs. However, once you have accrued lots of data, you may want to start looking at it in more depth. Use the Export Data function in the Account section of the Settings tab. Then create your own graphs in a data manager of your choice (eg. Microsoft Excel)
Explode Recipe
Exploding a recipe can help to highlight ingredients within a recipe or make one-time changes to recipes easier. To explode a recipe, add the recipe to your diary, then right click on the entry. You can do this on the mobile app by swiping the diary entry to the right to reveal the settings menu.
Then choose Explode Recipe. The ingredients will now be separated into their own separate entries where you can choose to delete, edit or add ingredients. You can easily save this new version by multiselecting the ingredients and choosing Create Recipe from Selected Items.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Ctrl-Enter or Alt-A: Click on a diary group, or food. Use Ctrl-Enter to open the add food Search dialogue
Multiselect: Hold down the shift key when selecting diary items
Delete diary items: delete key