Email hello@edniroya.com for anything Lens-related. Bug reports, feature requests, billing questions, or just to say hello.
You can also send a message from inside the app: tap your initials on the Today screen, then Support → Share feedback.
It runs on the calendar month, not your pay cycle. Lens starts from your monthly spending budget and reserves your fixed outgoings off the top, so rent, bills and subscriptions are already set aside before you see a daily number. Bills that only land quarterly or yearly are spread across the months they cover, so one annual invoice doesn't flatten a single month.
What is left is your day-to-day pot. Lens subtracts the day-to-day spending you have already done this month, then divides by the days left in the month, counting today. Anything you earn above your monthly budget is treated as savings you are protecting, so it never quietly turns into spending money. Money you move into a goal is left out, and so is anything moving in or out of an investment, ISA or pension account, because shifting your own wealth around is not spending. A payment dated later does not count until its day comes, and a pending card payment counts on the day you made it. The number recalculates every time you log a transaction.
Runway is how long you could go without income. Lens takes the money you could actually reach today (current accounts, savings, cash and pots) and divides it by what you spend in an average month: your last three complete months, leaving out money you moved into goals. In your first month, Lens scales this month's spending so far up to a whole month from the day you joined. Investments, ISAs and pensions are deliberately left out, because that is long-term wealth rather than money for next month's shopping, and an overdrawn account pulls the number down, as it should.
You will find it on the Insights tab with the full breakdown, and Reports tells you whether it grew or shrank over the period. Early on the card sits in amber, because the figure is still based on the spending you described during setup. Once you have logged enough for Lens to see your real pattern, it turns blue.
Yes. Every account carries its own currency and its transactions use it, so a yen account stays in ¥ and a sterling account stays in £. You choose a primary currency when you set Lens up, starting from the one for your phone's region, and that is what totals, the Today screen and reports are shown in.
Accounts in other currencies are converted into your primary currency using mid-market rates, and anything converted is marked with ≈ so you always know when you are looking at an estimate rather than a bank quote. Rates refresh when you are online. To change your primary currency, tap your initials on the Today screen, then Preferences → Currency. Lens asks before it switches, then converts your monthly plan, income, goals, category budgets and card statement figures at today's rate. If it cannot get a rate, it tells you and changes nothing. Accounts, transactions and recurring items keep their own currency, with the converted value shown underneath, and changing the app language never changes your currency.
Yes. Lens comes in four looks: Lens, Cotton Candy, Afterglow and Lagoon. Tap your initials on the Today screen, then Preferences → Theme. Tap a look to preview your own Today in it, then tap Make it mine. A look changes the colours, the type and the scene behind your pages, never your numbers. Every look reads the same figures.
Light, Dark and System only apply to the Lens look, because Cotton Candy is always light and Afterglow and Lagoon are always dark. Home Screen widgets keep the Lens colours. There is more in the help article.
These accounts hold two things: cash sitting there waiting to be invested, and the holdings you own. Lens adds them together, so uninvested cash never disappears from your net worth.
Add a holding with its quantity and price per unit. If you are recording a purchase you just made, switch on "Paid from this account's cash" and the cost comes out of that account's cash. Leave it off when you are simply recording shares you already owned. To sell, open the holding, tap Sell, and choose the units and price; the proceeds land back in the account's cash. Selling every unit removes the holding.
Add money and Withdraw move cash in and out of the account itself. None of this touches safe to spend, because moving your own money between pots is not spending.
Lens does not connect to banks. It reads what Apple already holds on your iPhone, and only if you have set that up yourself and given Lens permission. Three things have to be true: you are on iPhone, your bank is added inside Apple Wallet as a Connected Card, and you have allowed Lens access when iOS asks. Accounts that meet all three appear in Lens. Everything else stays manual, and manual works perfectly well.
Whether your bank can be a Connected Card is Apple's side of things, and it is answered in the Wallet app rather than in Lens. Connected Cards is not offered in every country. It is not available in Japan today, so manual entry and CSV import are the way in there. If your bank does not appear in Wallet, there is nothing Lens can add to make it appear, and nothing you are missing out on inside the app.
Start in Wallet, since that part happens outside Lens. If your bank card is not in Wallet yet, add it (tap +, then Debit or Credit Card). Then tap the card in Wallet, tap the ••• button, choose Account Connection and approve it with your bank. If the card has no Account Connection option, Apple does not offer it as a Connected Card. Lens cannot do this step for you and cannot add a bank itself. Then come back to Lens, tap your initials on the Today screen, and open Connections → Bank Sync. iOS asks whether to give Lens access to that Wallet data, and once you allow it you can match each account to an existing Lens account or start a new one. Roughly 12 months of history comes in on the first sync. Bank sync is part of Pro.
The data goes from Wallet's on-device store straight into the app. No aggregator, no server, nothing leaves your phone. Synced transactions are read-only where it counts: the amount, date and details stay exactly as your bank reported them, and they cannot be deleted, because the next sync would bring them straight back. Category, notes and any linked goal are still yours to change.
On your device, in a local database. Lens has no cloud backend for your financial data. If you delete the app without backing up, the data is gone. See the Privacy Policy for the architecture details.
Tap your initials on the Today screen, then Privacy → Data & backup → Back up your data → Create backup. Pick where to save it (iCloud Drive is a sensible default). That file is your snapshot: transactions, accounts, holdings, goals, recurring items, category budgets, your own categories, card statement snapshots, your profile and your settings. It restores in the currency it was made in. To restore, install Lens on the new device, open the same screen and use Restore from backup → Choose backup file. Restoring replaces what is currently in the app, so it is a fresh-device move rather than a merge.
Backup and restore are free on every tier. CSV export is a separate thing and part of Pro, and it also stays open when Lens is read-only; it is for getting your transactions into a spreadsheet, not for moving between devices.
Prices come live from the App Store or Google Play, so the paywall inside the app always shows the current price in your own currency. There are three ways in: monthly, annual, or a one-off Lifetime purchase. The monthly and annual plans start with a 30-day free trial the first time you subscribe. The store takes your payment details when the trial starts, Lens reminds you five days before it ends if you allow notifications, and you are only charged if you have not cancelled by then. Lifetime is a single payment, so no trial applies.
New users start with that trial rather than a free plan. If you were using Lens before the trial arrived, you keep the earlier free plan until 30 April 2027, a little over six months after the update that introduced it. Lens tells you that date when you first open the update and keeps it in Settings, and in the final month it shows on the Today screen too. If you allow notifications, you also get a reminder a month and a week before it ends. That plan covers the Today screen and safe to spend, unlimited transactions, unlimited bills and recurring items, net worth, CSV import, an insight a day, plus 3 goals, 3 accounts and budgets on up to 5 categories.
Pro lifts the free plan's caps and adds custom categories, the Reports history (Last month and Year to date in full), the complete insights feed, CSV export, bank sync on iPhone, and the AI features (Ask AI and AI receipt parsing).
This month is free, in full. That is the verdict, what came in, what went out, what you kept, a pace chart of your everyday spending against your plan, your bills, your spending card, and a line each for goals and accounts. Knowing how you are doing right now is table stakes.
Looking back is Pro. Last month and Year to date carry the income breakdown, the net worth split, what each goal took, the spend and net worth trends, the month ledger and export. Without Pro you still see your own verdict for those periods, blurred, and a list of what Pro adds.
Both, and they are measuring different things.
The verdict at the top is about the whole month: everything that came in, minus your bills and your everyday spending. That is the figure the Kept column shows underneath it.
The pace line under the chart is only about your everyday money, compared against your plan spread evenly across the month. So you can be putting money aside and still be running hot on everyday, and both sentences are true at the same time.
Lens splits your money the same three ways everywhere: Bills is what is already committed, Everyday is what is left for you to decide about day to day, and Kept is whatever did not go out at all.
One more thing worth knowing: the kept figure is not the same as the Saved row in the year ledger. Saved counts only the money you actually put aside. Kept is that plus whatever was simply left over.
At the start of each month, Reports offers the month just gone as six cards you tap through: the verdict, the biggest shift in your spending, where the money went, your goals, your net worth, and what you kept. The last card can be saved as an image.
It is built on your device from your own figures, and nothing leaves your phone. The prompt appears during the first week of a month; after that you can still open it from the Last month tab.
Subscriptions are billed by Apple or Google rather than by Lens, so cancelling happens in your store account.
iPhone: Settings → tap your name at the top → Subscriptions → Lens → Cancel.
Android: open the Play Store → tap your profile picture → Payments and subscriptions → Subscriptions → Lens → Cancel subscription.
Either way, cancelling takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for, and Pro stays on until then. After that, Lens goes read-only rather than shutting you out: everything you entered stays, you can still see it, export it as a backup or a CSV and delete it. Adding or editing, budgets and recurring items included, needs Pro again, and bank sync pauses until you subscribe. If you are still on the earlier free plan, you go back to that instead. Lifetime is not a subscription, so there is nothing to cancel.
Open the paywall and tap Restore purchases at the bottom. The store sometimes takes a moment to propagate the purchase, especially if you have switched devices. If it still hasn't unlocked after 5 minutes, email us with your purchase receipt.
Ask AI is a Pro feature. You ask a question about your money and, with your permission, Lens sends it along with a snapshot of the figures on your phone so the answer can be worked out.
Your question and that snapshot go to a Lens-operated Firebase Cloud Function in Google's europe-west2 region. It checks that you are signed in, that your Pro subscription is active and that you have allowance left, then forwards the request to Google's Gemini API and returns the answer. The model is Gemini 2.5 Flash. The Gemini key is held server-side in Secret Manager and is not in the app you download. Lens does not log your question, your snapshot, or the answer. The Privacy Policy sets out the full path.
Pro includes 100 AI actions a month, with a ceiling of 20 in any single day. Ask AI messages and AI receipt parsing draw on the same pot. The daily count resets at midnight UTC and the monthly one on the 1st. The daily figure is a brake against runaway usage rather than a real restriction; 20 in one day is far beyond normal use.
The weekly briefing does not spend your allowance at all, and on-device receipt OCR is unlimited and never counted.
It is layered. First your phone reads the text off the photo by itself, with no internet needed. That step is free on every tier, and plain receipts are often handled entirely by local pattern matching.
If the receipt is more awkward, Pro subscribers get an AI pass. The OCR text goes to the same Lens Cloud Function that handles Ask AI, which checks your Pro status and your allowance before forwarding it to Gemini. If key details are still missing, a downscaled image of the receipt takes the same route. Neither layer talks to Google directly from your phone, and the API key is never in the app.
The quickest route is in the app: tap your initials on the Today screen, then Support → Share feedback. It opens an email with your support code already filled in, which is how we find your account, so please leave that line alone.
You can also email hello@edniroya.com directly. Tell us what you were doing, what you expected, and what actually happened. A screenshot helps. We read every message and reply within a few days.
privacy.html. Short version: your financial records stay on your device. The optional AI features send what they need, only after you say yes, and nothing is kept.
