Try Dry help centre

Out of date app version

Sometimes issues might occur with old versions of the Try Dry® app. To find out whether you’re using the most recent version of the app, open the app and click on the ‘Settings’ tab. Scroll to the bottom of the page where you should see a number – this is the version number.

If you do not have this version, please update the Try Dry® app in your App Store (iPhone), or Google Play (Android).

If you can’t open the app but suspect you may be using an out of date version, simply uninstall and reinstall the app from the App Store or Google Play. Don’t worry – you won’t lose your data.

Old device operating system

If your phone is using an old operating system the app might not work as it should on your phone. To check if you are using the latest operating system for your device:

(Android) Select Settings > About phone > Android version

(IOS) Select Settings > General > About > Version.

Slow or no internet connection

It may be that you currently have a slow internet connection, or none at all. The app does not currently work offline, so you need a strong internet connection to use the app.

High demand on the server

At certain times during the day, especially in January, there are a lot of people using the app at the same time. We do all we can to make sure this doesn’t affect your experience, but sometimes it can cause problems. Please be patient – especially on 1 January - and check back after an hour or so. We monitor the server speed and make changes if we pick up any problems.

“Have you tried switching it off and on again?”

While this little gem of wisdom is a standing IT joke, it does often work wonders. From time to time, our phones need a little reset to get them working optimally again. Simply restarting your phone might sort out the problem. If this doesn’t work, it may be worth uninstalling and reinstalling the app. Don't worry – you won’t lose your data.

If none of these solutions work, please fill in this form. A member of our team will get back to you as soon as possible.

You can reset this yourself within the Try Dry app. Simply open the app > click ‘Login’ > click ‘Forgot your password?’. You will then receive an email from Try Dry. This may take a few minutes, especially during peak times like Dry January. From that email you will be directed to a website where you can set a new password. You’re back in business.

The time limit on the reset token is 9 hours. If the time limit has expired, you can request a new password reset link. Only one password reset link can be valid at any time. This means that if you click password reset multiple times only the latest reset link will be valid, voiding all the previous ones.

Please note that if you remember your existing password after you've requested a password reset, please ignore the password reset email and login as normal.

There’s more info on below on what you can do if you don’t receive your password reset email.

Password reset emails will only be generated if an account exists with that email address. If you are not receiving the forgot password email:

1. Check your spam / junk folder. The sender will display as Try Dry and the email will be sent from [email protected]

2. Check you are using the latest version of Try Dry®.

3. Check your email address. Many of us have several email addresses, so it’s possible that you may have registered with a different email on the app than the one for which you have requested a password reset.

4. If you have multiple email addresses, try password reset requests for each one.

5. Check that there are no typos in your email address – e.g. @gmail.con

6. Have you previously deleted your account or asked Alcohol Change UK to forget your details? In both instances your account will no longer be retrievable. You can set up a new account by clicking on “Create Account”.

7. If you still don’t receive the email, and can’t find it in your junk mail, please contact your Internet Service Provider and request that they allow mails from the following sender:

· IP: 77.32.162.187

· Domain: sibemails.alcoholchange.org.uk

You should not be logged out when there is a new update, but with certain phone models this can happen. The more we know about which phone models are affected, the better chance we have of stopping this happening, so do please fill out this form and in particular tell us exactly what your phone make and model are.

If you’ve found your password reset email, but it’s not working, this could be why:

If the email is more than 9 hours old, or not the most recent password reset email, it will not work. It’s tempting to request multiple password resets if the email isn’t coming through, but this could make the process more complicated. We suggest you submit one request and wait for that email. You can also only use the password reset link once, you cannot reuse an old one.

Occasionally some devices have difficulty opening the password reset in specific browsers, like Google Chrome or Safari. You click on the link, but nothing happens, or the browser doesn’t show any message. If this happens to you, try copy and pasting the URL from the bottom of the email into a different browser.

If none of these solutions work, please fill in this form. A member of our team will get back to you as soon as possible.

We have made improvements to the password reset flow so please make sure you are using the most current version of the app to have the best password reset experience.

When you click on the password reset link, three fields will appear - email address, password and confirm password. Enter the details and submit. You will be shown a success message when the password has been updated.

To login click on “Open app” or navigate to the app on your device.

This fairly rare problem occurs if the app is taking a bit longer to communicate with the UK-based server which securely holds your app data, for example during periods of exceptional demand or during server maintenance. It can usually be resolved by tapping the refresh data icon (the black ‘circle’ made up of two arrows) at the top right of the calendar page to refresh your data.

The calendar is designed to only show the current month and you can only enter data up until the current date. The calendar month for the upcoming month will display at 00:00am on the first day of the next month.

The new calendar view allows you to convert drinking days to units / standard drinks with a press of a button. Open up calendar and select "Units" from the selection below. Any drinking data will be converted to units, so each day will show a daily units total. Dry days will show as 0. Next to the name of the month you will also have a total units consumed over the month.

To monitor your unit intake select Progress > Charts. Enter a custom date to check your unit intake against or choose one of the pre-selected timeframes across week, month or year.

There are bronze, silver and gold badges in the app. Once you have earned all the bronze badges you will start earning silver badges. When you have earned all the silver badges you will start earning gold badges. The badges you haven’t earned yet show as a light grey padlock.

Each badge type has different milestones for when you’ll move from bronze badges. For day streaks you’ll move to silver at 31 days and gold at 6 months. For total dry days you’ll move to silver at 20 days and gold at 200 days.

To see the milestones for each badge, head to the “Progress” section, select “badges” and then “view all” for any badge you are interested in.

Some people find the silver badges a bit tricky to see; turning up the brightness on your phone should help.

If the reducer goal is not available to you, this may be because you've not set your baseline drinking yet. To do this, visit the dashboard and tap the 'Set baseline' option to input what you usually drink. The reducer goal calculates by estimating half of your baseline drinking information, so it needs this data to be inputted to function accurately.

A custom goal can be created so that it is unique to what you want to achieve.

To set a custom goal:

1. Select the “progress” tab at the bottom of the screen. You’ll find this to the right of the plus button in a yellow circle.
2. Select goals.
3. Select the yellow button “Set Goal. This will say edit goal if you already have a goal, you can only have one goal at a time.
4. Select “CUSTOM GOAL”. This is in the tab at the top, next to “PRE-SET GOAL”.
5. Select one of the three options to edit to suit you.

You can also set or edit a goal from your app dashboard.

To get you started there are 3 types of custom goal.

1. Stay dry
2. Stay dry on some days of the week
3. Limit the units I drink

You might notice that some goals are ‘greyed out’. Trying to set them as your new goal brings up a message that says ‘you’ve achieved this’ - even though you may have never set this as a goal.

The reason for this is that, at present, Try Dry® has two rules:

1. When a badge is awarded, the matching pre-set goal is also treated as achieved.
2. When a pre-set goal has been achieved once, it cannot be set and achieved again.

For example, if you successfully manage three dry days in a row, you will automatically be awarded the three day streak badge and will also have achieved the three day streak goal, whether you set this as your goal or not. That pre-set goal will be ‘greyed out’ and can no longer be set as a new goal to aim for, as you’ve already achieved it, congrats!

Should you wish to set yourself one of the ‘greyed out’ goals, you can recreate them, using the Custom Goal feature.

Yes. If you've entered a drink but had a dry day or if you had planned to drink but had a dry day you can go back and change your entry.

If you've entered data wrongly, you can change it on any day of the calendar.

If you entered a dry day but you had a drink:

1. Tap on the relevant day on your calendar
2. A screen will pop up with confetti. Tap “I had a drink…”
3. Enter your drink(s)

If you captured a drink but actually had a dry day:

1. Tap on the relevant day on your calendar
2. Tap on the drink(s) you entered
3. On the bottom left of the ‘Edit drink’ screen tap ‘Delete drink’
4. A pop up will appear. Tap ‘Delete’
5. If you have deleted all your drinks a screen will appear that says, ‘You said you had a drink but haven’t listed any yet.’ Tap ‘Actually I was dry’.

Currently it is not possible to do this. If you would like to start from scratch, we suggest registering on the Try Dry app with a new email address. If you want to clear your data for a few days, see above.

Within settings you can also delete your account. Please note that by submitting this request your entire account will be deleted and you will not be able to retrieve your data.

There are a few ways to enter your wellbeing scores. Go to your Dry Days calendar and select the day. The next screen will allow you to record your drinking status (dry, drank, drank as planned). Underneath you will see a "Your Wellbeing" section. You can record against one specific wellbeing measure (Mood, Energy, Sleep, Cravings) by clicking "+" next to the relevant one, or you can choose to "+ Record All" which will take you through each one. You can record a score or choose to skip one if you wish by clicking "Skip" at the bottom of the screen.

If you go to Calendar > Wellbeing you will be able to see what days you have recorded scores against. The wellbeing calendar will default to "Your Mood", you can see the other wellbeing scales (Your Energy; Your Sleep, Your Cravings) by using the navigation arrows underneath the Calendar options. If you move between the scales your calendar will show a thermometer icon on the ones that have data entered.

Any date with a "+" sign means that you have not yet entered any wellbeing data, you can click on this icon to add a score.

At the end of each week, your weekly savings will re-set to zero, so they are ready to start a new weekly count for the week ahead.

The figure will show as zero, until data has been inputted and savings have been made. The savings are calculated in comparison to the drinking data that you entered in the baseline quiz.

The same applies at the start of a new month, and the start of a new year.

Firstly, there are no right or wrong answers to these rating scales. And you may find that your scores vary across the scales. One thing to note is that the cravings scale asks you to rate the intensity of your cravings from lowest to highest. So, a high rating means that the craving is more intense than a lower rated craving. Cravings are a very normal part of the change process. Generally, a lower intensity of craving is preferred by people. This will be in contrast to the other scales where people would often prefer a higher rating. Again, there is no right/wrong and this is just to highlight the inverse nature of the cravings scale.

Your financial savings are based on two figures, both of which you can edit:

• Your baseline drinking setting
• The cost of the drinks you have drunk

To make your financial savings more accurate, edit these as required.

When entering your baseline drinking setting, the app will estimate your weekly expenditure on alcoholic drinks based on what you drink, using average UK prices. But of course prices vary considerably, especially from venue to venue, brand to brand, and country to country. So you can edit the baseline drinking cost by tapping on the pencil icon in the black circle next to ‘Cost’ and insert your own figure.

• When entering a drink on the ‘Add drink’ screen, Try Dry® will give you a rough estimate of the price based on where you bought it (click ‘shop bought’ or ‘bar/pub/restaurant’ at the top of the screen).
• However, you can enter the exact price per drink lower down that screen, by tapping on the pencil icon in the black circle next to ‘Cost per drink’.
• Once you have edited the price, you can also set this drink up as a favourite. Saving the drink as a Favourite with the edited price will mean you can easily select the drink from your list without the need to make amendments to the price again.

The Try Dry® app sends a helpful daily notification to your device with a direct link to the calendar, as well as notifications with reports, for example your weekly report and when you’ve achieved a new badge.

You can turn these off if you wish. Under the ‘Settings’ tab on the app there is a ‘Notifications’ toggle switch. If your notifications are turned ON, the toggle switch will show as yellow with the white dot on the right. You can tap the toggle to turn it off, or on.

You can also change the time of day that you get your daily notification. Many people like it before bed or mid-evening. Some people like it after lunch or in the morning, to make a commitment. It’s up to you. You change this in ‘Settings’ under ‘Set notification timing’.

If the app notifications don’t seem to work, they might be being overridden by your device settings. Go to “settings” on your device and look at “notifications”, checking that these are turned on in general and specifically for the Try Dry® app.

To receive notifications but avoid them showing on your lock screen:

1. Open your device’s Settings.
2. Tap Notifications (this may be called “apps and notifications")
3. Find the Try Dry app in this list
4. Unselect “lock screen” from the notifications

If you are not receiving emails but would like to, go to the ‘Settings’ tab, tap ‘Email preferences’, then tap ‘Opt in’.

If you are receiving emails but would like to stop receiving them, click the ‘Unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of any email you receive from us.

Sorry about that! There could be several reasons why this issue has occurred.

Slow or no internet connection

It may be that you currently have a slow internet connection, or none at all. The Try Dry® app does not currently work offline, so you need a strong internet connection to use the app.

High demand on the server

At certain times during the day, especially in January, there are a lot of people using the app at the same time. We do all we can to make sure this doesn’t affect your experience, but sometimes it can cause problems. Please be patient – especially on 1 January - and check back after an hour or so. We monitor the server speed and make changes if we pick up any problems.

“Have you tried switching it off and on again?”

While this little gem of wisdom is a standing IT joke, it does often work wonders. From time to time, our phones need a little reset to get them working optimally again. Simply restarting your phone might sort out the problem. If this doesn’t work, it may be worth uninstalling and reinstalling the Try Dry® app. Don't worry – you won’t lose your data.

Old device operating system

If your phone is using an old operating system the app might not work as it should on your phone. To check if you are using the latest operating system for your device:

(Android) Select Settings > About phone > Android version

(IOS) Select Settings > General > About > Version.

Out of date app version

Sometimes issues might occur with old versions of the app. To find out whether you’re using the most recent version of the app, open the app and click on the ‘Settings’ tab. Scroll to the bottom of the page where you should see a number – this is the version number.

If you do not have this version, please update the app in your App Store (iPhone), or Google Play (Android).

If you can’t open the app but suspect you may be using an out-of-date version, simply uninstall and reinstall the app from the App Store or Google Play. Don’t worry – you won’t lose your data.

Make sure you have the most up to date version of the app on your device as work has been done to improve the speed of the app in recent years.

If none of these solutions work, please fill in this form. A member of our team will get back to you as soon as possible.

Some people have reported receiving the following error messages: ‘Unable to connect to the internet', 'Some app features may not work as expected’ or ‘Failed to save status at this time, please check your connection’

You will receive these error messages if you are not connected to the internet. You can navigate the app when it is offline but it can only accept data if it is connected to the internet. That’s because your data is securely stored on our UK-based server (in case you lose or change your device). You will need to turn on wi-fi or mobile data for the device to enter data.

If you are experiencing an issue that isn’t listed here, then please follow these steps, in order.

1) You have the latest version of the Try Dry® app

Sometimes issues might occur with old versions of the Try Dry® app. To find out whether you’re using the most recent version of the app, open the app and click on the ‘Settings’ tab. Scroll to the bottom of the page where you should see a number – this is the version number.

If you do not have this version, please update the app in your App Store (iPhone), or Google Play (Android).

If you can’t open the app but suspect you may be using an out-of-date version, simply uninstall and reinstall the app from the App Store or Google Play. Don’t worry – you won’t lose your data.

2) Your operating system is up to date

If your phone is using an old operating system the app might not work as it should on your phone. To check if you are using the latest operating system for your device:

(Android) Select Settings > About phone > Android version

(IOS) Select Settings > General > About > Version.

We are aware that some users are seeing a blank screen when they log into the app. This issue is affecting certain iPhones and certain operating systems. iPhone users using an operating system that is earlier than version 13 may encounter a Javascript error. To resolve this, please update your phone’s operating system to version 13. Follow instructions on how to update your iPhone or iPad operating system here.

A small number of users with older iPhones, such the iPhone 6 and iPhone 5, may find that they are unable to update their operating system as these devices are no longer supported. We are very sorry about this.

3) You have an internet connection

If all of those are fine, here are some things you could try:

1. Come back in an hour or so - it could be that there is a high demand on the server
2. Restart your device
3. Uninstall and reinstall the app. Don’t worry, you won’t lose your data!

If your issues are still not resolved, please complete this form. We are a team of just a few people and cannot respond over weekends and Bank Holidays, but we will try to respond within seven working days.