Frequently asked questions

An app for people who like drinking in company. You capture what's in your glass and say where you are. Your friends see it and reply with a photo of their own glass — that becomes a conversation between the two of you. Alongside that: your crews, discovering places, and your journal — what you drank, where and when.

Nothing. There are no in-app purchases, no subscription and no advertising.

The one thing that costs money isn't ours: playing a soundtrack in full needs an Apple Music subscription — with Apple, not with us. See Do I need Apple Music?

iPhone to begin with. An Android version isn't in the works at the moment.

Yes — without one there'd be no way to tell whose post is whose. You can sign in with Apple, with Google, or with an email address and password. With “Sign in with Apple” you can hide your real address; Erwein works fully that way.

Erwein is for adults and rated 17+, because the app contains references to alcoholic drinks.

No. Of the nine categories in the drinks catalogue, four hold nothing alcoholic at all: alcohol-free cocktails, coffee, tea, and “other” for water, juice and everything else. You toast with whatever is in your glass.

Five flames with which you say how the evening is going for you. You add them to a drink after posting it, from the upload screen, together with music if you like. A mood isn't a post of its own; it shows on your drink, for the people who may see that post.

A mood ends with the night: at six in the morning it stops being current, whether you open the app or not. Your drink post stays; only the live status expires.

A fixed group with its own feed — the flatshare, the regulars' table, the club.

Everyone in a crew can invite someone or accept a request to join. Whoever founded the crew is an admin and can make others admins; admins can remove members. You can leave whenever you like.

A post you file in a crew is always visible to its members. Where else it shows up is up to you, as with any other post.

No, and Erwein works fully without it. After posting, you can add songs to a drink: searching the catalogue and putting the list together works without a subscription, because the app only stores which songs they are.

Playing those songs in full, and saving a list to your own Apple Music library, needs a subscription — that's Apple's condition, not ours. Without one you still see what's on the list.

Yes, two: the drink of the day with a fact about it, and a shortcut for sharing a drink. The shortcut also exists as a control, so you can put it in Control Centre, on the lock screen or on the action button.

You decide for each post individually, separately for each place in the app:

• Feed — the people you're connected to.
• Map — at the place you were. Anyone can open a post on the map.
• Search — findable by anyone, including through your profile.

All three together are Public; none of them is Only me. You can also file a post in one of your crews, where its members always see it.

You can set your default in the app's settings.

Only the person you're replying to. A reply is a photo of your glass, and it opens a conversation between the two of you where you can also write to each other. It doesn't show up anywhere else — not in the feed, not on the map, not in search. In your journal it still counts as your drink.

You can reply to any post you can see, even if you don't know the person yet. Anyone you block can no longer write to you, and you can't write to them either.

Two ways. You can pass on your personal link or QR code — that needs no access to your address book whatsoever. Or you can allow contact matching, where Erwein checks whether the email addresses and phone numbers in your contacts belong to Erwein accounts.

Matching is optional and can be revoked at any time in the iOS settings. The app works fully without it.

No, but without it you'll miss the features built on places: suggesting venues nearby, attaching a place to a post, and seeing where glasses are being raised. You can also set the place by hand instead of having it detected.

Yes. Blocked people no longer see your posts and can't contact you, and you stop receiving notifications about their activity.

No. The app contains no analytics and no crash reporting toolkit — it isn't recorded which screens you look at or how long you use the app. This website sets no cookies and embeds nothing from third-party servers either.

On your device. Once the photo is taken, the app reads the text on the label and asks Apple's on-device model what family and which drink it is likely to be. Nothing is uploaded for that, and the suggestion is only ever a suggestion — the drink is set when you tap it.

If the model isn't available on your device, the app simply doesn't offer a suggestion. Nothing else changes.

On Google Firebase servers in the European Union. Photos and videos live in the associated file storage, also in the EU. Details are in the privacy policy.

Yes, fully and from inside the app: Settings → Delete account. For security reasons you'll be asked to sign in again.

Deleted are your profile, all your posts including photos and videos, your reactions and comments — including those under other people's posts — your notifications, friendships, crew memberships and messages in crews. A crew nobody is left in disappears with you. Your conversations are deleted in full, including the other person's messages in them — a conversation with someone who no longer exists can't go on. Deletion carries on in the background even if you remove the app straight afterwards, and it is final; recovery is not possible.

Once everything is gone we send a confirmation to the address you signed in with.

Your own posts and replies disappear. Other people's posts remain, even if you appeared in them — they belong to whoever wrote them. Conversations with you, on the other hand, disappear entirely — for both sides.

Write to support@erwein.app. We answer access, rectification and erasure requests under the GDPR.

Erwein keeps a started post and picks it up again on the next launch, so you won't lose it. If sending keeps failing, check your connection — for videos, Wi-Fi is worth it. If it persists, write to us through the contact form.

First check under iOS Settings → Notifications that Erwein is allowed to send them. If it is and still nothing arrives, sign out and back in once — that renews the device token used for delivery.

Use the menu on the post itself in the app. We look at reported content and remove it where it breaches our terms. For urgent cases, also write to support@erwein.app.