Track calories without a barcode by photographing the meal, searching the dish, or typing it. That is the whole method. A barcode only exists on packaged food. The dinners that wreck a deficit are pots, restaurants, and leftovers. Those never had a stripe to scan. If your app locked the scanner behind Premium, you do not need to pay $20 a month to keep a log. You need a log that starts from the plate.
Khatwa does photo, search, and manual entry on iOS and Android, free. Favorites repeat the lunches you already cook. The coach uses leftover calories the same day. Download it, photograph tonight, and you are logging without a scanner.
The plate is the barcode
Khatwa logs homemade and takeout from a photo. No scanner paywall to finish the day.
Download Khatwa FreeWhy 1-star reviews keep mentioning the scanner
MyFitnessPal reviewers still talk about the barcode moving behind Premium years after it happened. They came to scan groceries. Then dinner was chicken and rice they cooked, and the scanner had nothing to do. The recurring complaint is not "I love barcodes." It is "logging became a job." Photo-first logging is how you skip that job. More on homemade plates in homemade meals without a food scale.
When a barcode still wins
A labeled yogurt cup is faster to scan than to guess. If that is your entire diet, a grocery scanner app is fine. If three of your meals are unlabeled, the scanner is a side door, not the front door. Search or a photo covers the unlabeled ones. Correct the oil if the estimate looks thin.