What is Indigo Swallow?

Indigo Swallow is a free, open-source diet and calorie tracker that you run on your own server. Log what you eat — by typing it in plain language, snapping a photo, or scanning a barcode — and it estimates the calories and macros, keeps a running day view against your goal, and tracks your weight over time.

It is part of the ofbirds.org flock, and it follows the flock’s rules:

  • Always self-hostable. You install it on a machine you control — a home server, a NAS, a small VPS. There is no hosted version to sign up for.

  • Your data stays yours. Your food log, weigh-ins, and photos live on your server and never leave it.

  • Money is optional. The app is free and open source (AGPL). Donate if it helped you; otherwise you only pay for whatever box you run it on.

What it does

  • Log meals your way — type "chicken breast 200 g with a cup of rice and a side salad" and the app breaks it into items with calories and macros; or snap a photo of the plate and let it estimate from the image; or just enter foods by hand. Every estimate is shown for you to tweak before you save it.

  • Scan barcodes — point your phone at a grocery barcode and Indigo Swallow pulls the official product from Open Food Facts.

  • Day view — everything you logged that day, grouped by meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks) with per-item and per-meal times and a running calorie total against your daily goal.

  • A catalogue that learns — the foods you log build up a personal catalogue you can search, reuse, and sort by your own preference.

  • Profile & weight — set your details and a daily calorie goal, log your weight, and watch the trend.

  • Meal-pause reminders (optional) — a gentle nudge if you like to space meals apart.

  • Works offline — it is a progressive web app (PWA): add it to your phone’s home screen and it keeps working with cached data even without a connection.

  • Comfortable to use — mobile-first, light and dark themes, and adjustable text size and spacing.

A note on the AI

The numbers from a typed description or a photo are estimates — a good starting point you adjust before saving, not lab measurements. The more you correct, the better your catalogue gets. You decide which AI provider does the estimating (or turn it off entirely and log by hand or barcode) — the app talks to your chosen provider with your own key. Photos are sent only to estimate that one meal and are never stored.

What to expect

Accounts are protected by a password (or single sign-on, if you wire it up), and each person’s data is their own. Indigo Swallow is a tracker, not a coach: it records and adds up what you tell it, and leaves the judgement to you.

Ready to try it?

Head to the self-hosting quick start — if you have Docker on a machine somewhere, you are about ten minutes away from a running app. AI estimation is optional; even without it you can log by barcode or by hand from the first minute.

The source code, issue tracker, and release notes live on GitHub.