Version History

Nothing in the app itself changed in this update. It's the same app as 1.7, and I only updated the description on its App Store page.

1.7 is about finding the manual, and honestly it's because I caught the app missing ones I could find myself. I typed a camera's name into a search engine and had the page with its manual immediately, and my own app was showing me two catalogs and a copy in French. The whole point of this app is to find the manual on sites that don't need a login, without me doing the searching. So I went through why it didn't, and it was a handful of things that apply to any device, not just that one.

FINDING THE MANUAL

• A device has more than one name and the app was only searching one of them. If it had a catalog number that's all it asked for, and a manual is titled by the name. Now it searches under every name the device has, and the one people actually call it goes first.

• Scanning a medical device's barcode pulls up its FDA record, and that record doesn't write things the way a manual does. The company is filed under its legal name, with LP or Incorporated on the end, so a pulse oximeter's own manual got downloaded five times and turned away every time for not naming the company that way. An ultrasound got searched by its two part numbers and never by its name. Both are fixed, and so are a few more like them.

• When the manual is on a page the app can't pull a file from, it lists the page now, under Where the manual is. It used to just drop those. You tap one and it opens in Safari, and there's a Search the web yourself row after every search too.

• A recall notice, an FDA clearance letter, a brochure and a sell sheet all name your device just like its manual does, and the search used to stop as soon as it had one. Now it keeps going until it has an actual manual, a card that isn't one says so, and the screen tells you when no manual was downloaded.

• A manual that's only in another language doesn't end the search anymore, and its card says which languages it's in.

• A manual for a different device that only mentions yours gets turned away. A camera's guide that explains how to plug it into a hub was being offered as the hub's manual.

• It reads what a document is off its cover. A defibrillator's operating instructions were filed as an accessory guide and shown as not being a manual.

• Once you have the manual, the search stops waiting on a slow copy from somewhere else. A coffee machine's manual was on screen in 1 second and the search kept going for 2 more minutes behind one download that never showed up. Now it gives it 15 seconds.

• It asks three search engines now. It used to try seven addresses, and the other four never gave it a usable result in any check I have on record, so it made sense to remove them.

• A car you scan by its VIN is searched by its year and model, because that's how an owner's manual is titled.

ASKING A QUESTION

• Ask answers from any manual you kept now, and that includes a PDF you added yourself. On a medical device it used to answer only if the FDA's registry confirmed the device and the manual came from one of 18 manufacturers' own sites or a regulator. I measured that on 16 older devices and 1 of them qualified, which is the opposite of what this app is for.

• So now the answer tells you where that copy came from, and it says when the device isn't confirmed with the FDA's registry so you check the model on the cover.

• What didn't change is that it only quotes the manual with the page shown, every quote is checked against that page, and it still won't answer a question about a specific person or a clinical decision.

THE LOOK

• The app wasn't well laid out and I only just realized it. So there are four tabs now, Scan, Devices, Answers and Settings, and the first screen has the three ways in at the top: scan it, use a photo, or type it in.

• It uses your iPhone's own colors now, with six accents to pick from in Settings.

Everything you keep still stays on your phone, and in your backups. And the shared list of manuals others kept is gone.

1.6 is the correction to 1.5. After 1.5 went out I checked every sentence the app says about your data against what the code actually does, and where the two disagreed I fixed the code or the words.

WHAT LEAVES YOUR PHONE

• In 1.5 I said a VIN sends only the part that names the model. It's the first eight characters, the model year and the plant, and the serial part stays on your phone.

• A VIN the government's lookup couldn't read got passed along as the model number, so all of it could end up in a web search. A line on a label with the VIN on it could do the same. Both are closed for any VIN the app can recognize.

• A line on a label that's an expiry or production date, like EXP 2026-11-20, stays out of searches now.

• A barcode that carries a lot, serial number or expiration date after a slash, the HIBCC kind, sent nearly all of it before 1.5. 1.5 stopped that and I left it out of the notes. Now only the device identifier goes.

• Settings lists what goes out and where it goes, and says lookups start on their own as you scan, type or open a device.

THE WORDS IN THE APP

• Ask used to say a registry has to confirm a device before it answers. For anything but a medical device scanned from its UDI that can't happen, so now it says so.

• Removing a document says what it removes, which is the document and the answers that quote it. Backups you already made aren't touched.

• While it searches, the feed says when it's making a PDF of a page, not that it's saving one.

• A handful of other sentences said more or less than the app does, and now they don't.

Everything you keep still stays on your phone, and in your backups.

1.5 is a cleanup, and honestly it's the one I wanted before anything else, because I wanted this thing bulletproof. I went through the whole app looking for ways it could be wrong or send something it shouldn't, fixed what I found, and redrew every screen while I was in there.

WHAT LEAVES YOUR PHONE

• A VIN used to go to the government's vehicle lookup whole, the moment the camera read one, with no tap. Now only the part that names the model goes, and the serial part stays on your phone.

• A link you paste or share never goes to the Internet Archive. If a site said no or gone, the app used to ask the Archive for its copy of that exact link, and a link can carry a login token. Now it only asks about addresses it found itself.

FINDING THE RIGHT MANUAL

• A longer model name stopped passing for yours. If your model is BES870 and the manual is for the BES870XL, it used to be labeled an exact match. Now it's only a family match, and the card tells you which model the manual names, so you see it might not be yours before you keep it.

• "Official source" means the company that made your device. Another company's manual used to count as official for it. Now only the manufacturer does, including the other names the FDA files that manufacturer under.

• It reads the model line on a manual's cover now. A manual that lists a different model than yours gets set aside instead of offered.

ANSWERS

• A quote is the page's own words now. Cutting a long passage could split 2.5 mL into two pieces. Every quote is checked against the page it cites, and across 193 manuals I've collected, all 27,379 passages were on their pages.

• It only answers from a passage that's about your question. "How do I replace the fuse?" on a manual with no fuse used to come back with whatever matched "how" and "do". Now it tells you the manual doesn't cover it.

• Warnings come with the answer. A warning written "WARNING!" wasn't being recognized as one, and one that ran onto the next page lost its label. Warnings from a safety chapter now come along when they're about what you asked.

• On a medical device, a question that asks for a setting for a specific person, like "How do I set the pressure for my mother?", is refused now. It used to answer with the manual's pages on setting pressure.

YOUR DEVICES

• The same machine saved twice is one device now. Scanning one you already saved opens it, and any duplicates you already have get merged the first time you open 1.5.

• A few odd characters, like a Turkish dotted İ, on a label or in a manual could crash the app. They don't now.

• A unit isn't marked expired on its last day anymore.

Everything you keep still stays on your phone.

1.4 fixes the recall section showing the wrong stuff, and honestly it's the kind of thing I'd rather you hear from me. I caught it in a demo. And it shows you the manual a lot sooner now.

FINDING THE MANUAL

• Finding a manual could take like 2-3 minutes sometimes, and part of that was the app sitting on one it already had until the whole search was done. On a Honeywell thermostat in my tests it had the manual 5 seconds in and didn't show it until 103. Now each one shows up as soon as it's checked. Across the 26 devices I test with, the first one showed up in about 6 seconds on average, and the longest search took 41 seconds where the old version took up to almost 3 minutes.

• One slow download used to hold up everything behind it. Now the others keep going, so a giant file that isn't even for your device doesn't make you wait on the one that is.

• It doesn't keep retrying a site that isn't answering anymore. Four tries at one broken site took 48 seconds.

• If you stop a search, whatever it already found stays on screen.

• Refine searches locally now covers all of the Apple Intelligence the search uses. Part of the search was using it even with the setting off, and that's not what the setting says.

RECALLS

• On a medical device's page, the recall section was pulling in recalls from the device's whole FDA category instead of just the ones about your device. So a medical monitor showed a recall for surgical graspers from a completely different company. Now a recall only shows up if the FDA record actually names your device or the clearance it was sold under, and it tells you which. That monitor doesn't show any recalls now, because none of them were ever about it.

• Adverse-event reports work the same way now. It looks for reports that name your catalog or model number first, and if it has to fall back to the brand it says so, including when the brand is really just the company's name.

• A bunch of FDA searches that combined two things, like a maker and a model, were quietly coming back empty. They work now, so a saved medical device gets its recalls checked too.

• A brand with a ® in it used to break the report search completely. It doesn't anymore.

• A report count could end in a stray number with nothing after it. That was a report with no type filled in, and it says what it's supposed to now.

1.3 is a small one, and it's mostly a privacy fix, so I wanted to be upfront about it.

• Up to now, keeping a manual with sharing on filed its web address, title, page count, a fingerprint of the file and the time in a shared index under the maker and model, so the next person with the same device could find it. If you'd imported the PDF yourself, it even filed where the file sat on your phone and its name. That part was a bug, and honestly the sharing itself didn't fit an app that keeps your stuff on your phone, so it's gone. Nothing you keep leaves your phone anymore.
• Searches can still check the list people already built, and all they send is the maker and model. They skip any old entries that pointed at somebody's phone, and you can turn the whole thing off in Settings under Check manuals others kept.
• The unlock screen got cleaned up too. It says what the one-time purchase actually changes, shows the price right on the button, and if you open it from Settings it doesn't tell you you've used up your free devices when you haven't.

1.2 is a cleanup release, mostly stuff I found going back through the app screen by screen like I was seeing it for the first time.

• When the same manual shows up on three different sites you get one card now instead of three, and the card tells you where else it was. The copies don't take up the spots for other documents anymore either, so there's room for different ones instead of three of the same.
• If the maker has the manual on its own site, that one comes first now and the card says it's from the maker. Before, a copy on some manual site could land above the real thing.
• The archive search only opens things whose title actually names your device now, one file each. The Instant Pot search that used to take over a minute took about six seconds in my tests.
• The scan screen used to leave "Could not capture a frame" up even while it was reading the label just fine. It clears itself now as soon as the camera's working.
• On the medical device page the class and MRI badges were showing up as empty bubbles. They say what they're supposed to now.
• Answers used to start with a few stray bullet points before the actual quote. Those are gone.
• Typing a UDI or asking a question left the keyboard sitting on top of the answer. Identify and Ask put it away now.
• On iPad the screens stay a normal reading width instead of stretching across the whole thing, and the text holds up at the biggest text sizes without breaking words in half.
• When it saves a web page as a PDF it sticks to that page now and won't follow a redirect somewhere it shouldn't.
• The example list has a ResMed CPAP in it.
• There's a Rate OpenManual link in Settings now if you want to leave a review.

1.1 is mostly about labels that used to fool it, and about not making you tap things.

• You can scan the UDI barcode right from the device page now, and the camera screen opens that page on its own the second it reads one, so nobody has to type a DataMatrix by hand anymore.
• Asset tags don't become the brand anymore. A person's name, a login, a department or an inventory number gets read as the owner's and not the maker's, and the part number printed under the item's name gets read as the REF like it should have all along.
• Component labels read right now. A directive number isn't a date, a part number with a hyphen isn't a serial, and the bare number under them is.
• It tells you when the label you're looking at is an owner's tag and not the maker's plate, and where the real plate usually is.