How Retrohale works

Short version: set up a humidor, put your cigars in it, and log a smoke when you feel like it. That's the whole app. But here's the walkthrough anyway, in case you want it.

The five tabs

Along the bottom you've got five tabs, and that's the whole app.

Home — your dashboard. What you smoked last, a big button to log a new one, and a quick look at your numbers.

Journal — every cigar you've logged, newest first. Tap any one to read back your notes, your rating, your photo.

Humidor — your boxes and what's in them.

Find — browse cigars, compare two side by side, or hit Surprise me when you can't decide.

Gear — cutters, lighters, ashtrays. Honest note: those are affiliate links, and they're what pays the hosting bill so this app stays free. More on that below.

Your profile and your palate live behind your picture in the top-right corner, not in the tabs.

First thing: add a humidor

Go to the Humidor tab and tap + Add.

Give it a name (mine are just "Cabinet," "Acid," "Thompson"), tell it how many cigars it holds, and snap a photo of it if you want.

That capacity number is what feeds the fullness gauge — the round dial on each humidor. Green means you've got room, yellow means you're filling up, red means it's about time for another humidor. It's the same idea as the hygrometer dial on the front of a real box, except it's telling you something useful.

No humidity tracking. On purpose. Your RH swings all day, the "right" number is a matter of personal taste, and tracking it would mean either typing readings in by hand or buying hardware. Neither one sounded like fun. So the app tracks how full your box is, and leaves the humidity to you and your Bovedas.

Then: put cigars in it

Tap into a humidor, hit Add cigars.

Search for the cigar first — if it's already in the catalog, tap it and you're done. If it isn't there, add it, and the dropdowns will walk you through wrapper, size, and origin so you're not typing much.

Then tell it how many, when you bought them, and what you paid.

About that purchase date: if you know it, put it in. If you don't, leave it blank — the app would rather know it doesn't know than pretend. That date is how the app tracks aging, and a made-up date makes for a made-up answer.

Each purchase is its own batch. Buy five Padróns in January and five more in April, and the app keeps them on separate clocks. The January ones don't suddenly get younger because you bought more. Most apps get this wrong. It bugged me enough to build my own.

Logging a smoke

The big button on Home, or from a cigar in your humidor. Then it's up to you how much you want to say.

• ·Which cigar, and where it came from. If it wasn't from a humidor — somebody handed you one on their deck — that's fine, just say so.
• ·Notes by thirds. A cigar changes as it burns. Say something about each third, or don't. It's your journal.
• ·Flavors. Tap the ones you're getting — coffee, leather, pepper, cedar, whatever. Tap as many as you want. This is also what teaches the app your taste, so it's worth doing.
• ·Ratings. Overall, plus construction, flavor, draw, and burn if you care to.
• ·The moment. What you were drinking, where you were, what the occasion was. And one photo — cigar balanced on your coffee cup, that's all it takes.
• ·Who's with you. Add a buddy, and the app will offer to pull a stick out of your humidor for him. He's probably smoking something different than you are, so you pick which one.

Save it, and the cigar comes out of your humidor automatically. You don't have to do anything else.

The one thing worth understanding: how cigars leave

Cigars go in one way. They come out three ways. And there's exactly one remove button, which always stops and asks you the same question.

Here's why that matters.

When you log a session, the app already took the cigar out of your humidor for you. That's the whole point — you shouldn't have to do it twice.

So if you go into your humidor afterward and hit Remove on that same cigar, you'd be taking out a second one that you never smoked. Your count would drift, and a humidor app whose count is wrong is a humidor app you stop trusting.

That's why the remove button stops and asks: "Did you log this as a session? If so, it already came out."

• ·"I logged it — keep the stick" → nothing happens. You're good. Walk away.
• ·"Remove one" → out it comes, and you tell it why (gave it away, tossed it, adjusting my count).

Every way a cigar can leave runs through that same question. That's the whole trick, and it's why your count stays honest.

Deleting a session works the same careful way. If you mislogged one, delete it and the app will ask whether to put the cigar back in the box. Only you know whether you actually smoked it.

Your Palate

Behind your picture, top-right.

This gets built entirely from what you smoke. Not from what somebody paid to put in front of you. Log enough sessions and the app starts to show you your own fingerprint — the wrappers you keep reaching for, the strength you lean toward, where your favorites come from.

It starts out empty. That's not broken, that's just day one. It fills in as you smoke.

Once it knows you well enough, Surprise me in the Find tab gets a toggle: hand me something that fits my taste, or throw me a wildcard.

Does it get better with age?

The app knows how long each stick rested before you smoked it, and it knows what you rated it. Put those together and it can tell you whether a cigar actually improves in your box — "you rate this one about half a point higher after six months."

This one needs time and honest purchase dates to say anything real. It'll be quiet at first. Keep logging and it'll start talking.

Your data is yours

I mean this literally, and it's built in, not just promised:

• ·Export. From your profile, download everything — every humidor, every session, every note. Not a summary. All of it.
• ·Delete. Delete your account and it's actually gone. Not a hidden flag. Gone.
• ·Never sold. Not to advertisers, not to anybody. That's the deal.

Why there are affiliate links

Servers cost money. I didn't want to charge you, run ads at you, or sell your journal to somebody.

So: Mark's Picks in the Gear tab are things I actually use. The category links below them are just a doorway to go shop. If you buy something through one, I get a small cut at no extra cost to you, and it pays the hosting bill.

That's the entire business model. There isn't another one.

Stuck?

Email me: [email protected]

I'm one guy, not a support department, but I read everything.

Smoke slow.

— Mark