Butcher's Hot Tip
Tip calculator & relationship ledger
Bill in, tip out, zero taps to a usable answer. Round the total up or down to a clean number and watch the effective percentage move. Split by heads. Shake to clear.
And then the part no other tip calculator has: the Ledger. Log what you spend on the people you date, straight from the finished check. Charts like a real finance app. Burn rate. Category mix. A portfolio view when there's more than one.
If it ends, the Breakup Invoice: every line item, itemized, terms Net Never, stamped PAST DUE. Export it and send it. Or don't. It's yours.
No ads. Not now, not later.
No account. Nothing to sign up for.
No server of its own. The app never talks to us. Your ledger lives on your phone and, if you choose, in your own iCloud Drive.
No analytics, no advertising SDK, no tracking of any kind. The one thing the app asks the network is the weather, from Apple, at reduced accuracy, and you can turn that off.
Hot Tip is free and complete. Every room, every feature and every update is included. Nothing is locked, nothing is a trial, and nothing expires. There is a tip jar at the bottom of Settings if you want to leave something. It buys nothing, unlocks nothing, and the app never asks.
SUPPORT
Email [email protected] and you will get a reply from the person who wrote the app.
Common questions
How do I type a bill?
The keypad works right to left, like a cash register. 4237 is $42.37.
Why did my total go up a few cents?
Out of the box the total rounds up to the next dollar. The TOTAL line says "ROUNDED ↑" when that happens, and the TIP line shows what you actually left. Change it in Settings ▸ Rounding.
The Open Road seems to praise small tips.
It does. That character is cheap and his scale runs backwards on purpose. Every other room reads a tip the normal way.
Where did my souvenir photo go?
To your camera roll, if you allowed Photos access when asked. You can make it again any time: swipe or press and hold a stop in the Road Log and choose Souvenir.
Can I get my data out?
Settings ▸ Your data ▸ Export writes the whole ledger — every run, stop, person, expense, milestone and photo — as a .hottip package (a ledger.json plus a photos folder) into a folder you own: iCloud Drive ▸ Hot Tip when iCloud Drive is on, otherwise On My iPhone ▸ Hot Tip. A backup of the same package is refreshed there automatically whenever you leave the app with something new. To move to a new phone or take a friend's rides, tap the package in Files, or use Settings ▸ Import — it adds what is missing and never deletes.
Does the app track me or show ads?
No ads, no analytics, no tracking and no account, and it will stay that way. See the privacy policy.
Why does the app ask for my location and camera?
Location does two jobs, both only while the app is open: it stamps the town, county and coordinates on a road-stop souvenir, and — at reduced accuracy — it lets the rooms ask Apple Weather what it is like outside, so the highway can go gold at sunset and rain can show through the diner window. Your location goes to Apple for that answer and nowhere else; it is never stored and never sent to the developer. Turn it off in Settings ▸ Outside. The camera is only for photographing a receipt, a place or a plate, and that photo stays in the app's own store on your phone.
How do I split a check?
Set the split to two or more with the + button, and a button appears on that row. It asks who was there and who picked up the check, then hands everyone their share as a printed page you can send straight into Messages. For an even split that is three taps. To split by what each person actually ate, photograph the receipt: the lines are read on your phone, you tap who had each one, and anything you do not tag — tax, the shared appetiser, whatever the camera missed — divides evenly. The tip follows the food, and the shares always add up to the check exactly.
How do I change rooms?
Settings ▸ Theme. Six rooms, each with its own cast, jokes and music, and a seventh — Straight Up — with nobody in it at all, which is just the calculator when you are not in the mood for any of them. Two of the six keep a road trip instead of a tab, so the bottom two tabs change with the room — if your people seem to have vanished, you are on The Open Road. Nothing is deleted by switching, and switching back brings it all straight back.
What is Dogstar Mode?
A lock on the ledger. Settings ▸ Dogstar Mode puts Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode in front of the two ledger tabs, and locks them again every time you leave the app. The calculator itself is never locked, so you can still hand the phone across the table. The name is a nod to a band; tap the ⓘ beside it for that story.
Do the rooms really know the weather?
Yes, if you let them. With Weather on in Settings ▸ Outside, the app asks Apple Weather about your area — the highway goes gold around sunset and dark after it, the sky outside the diner's windows goes with the hour, and a small mark in each room shows the current conditions. Off, the rooms simply do not know, and nothing else changes.
What is the RAIN +3 line on the Straight Up receipt?
A courtesy, not a charge. Tipping a little more for service in rough weather is a long-standing convention, and the only question it raises is how much — so the receipt works it out: rain and heat add three points, snow and storms five, and a weather alert five whatever the sky looks like. Tap the line to take it, or ignore it. It never changes the rate on its own, and once you are already at or above it the line says so and stops asking. Ordinary weather adds nothing: clear, cloud and fog never show a line at all.
Which version am I on?
Settings, at the bottom of the last section. Version is the number the App Store knows. Local version appears only on a build installed straight from a Mac during development — if it shows a dash, you have exactly what everyone else has.
What does the app cost?
Nothing. Every room, every feature and every update is included. Nothing is locked, nothing is a trial, and nothing expires. There is a tip jar at the bottom of Settings if you want to leave something — it buys nothing, unlocks nothing, and the app never asks.
Hot Tip is made by Ryan Butcher.
PRIVACY POLICY
Last updated 7 September 2026
Hot Tip has no account, no server of its own, no analytics and no advertising. Your ledger stays on your iPhone. One feature — the rooms reacting to the weather outside — asks Apple's weather service about your area, and that is described below.
What the app stores, and where
Your checks, the people you log them to, your trips and stops, and any photos you attach are saved in a database on your own iPhone.
None of it is uploaded to the developer. There is no Hot Tip account and no Hot Tip server to upload it to.
When you save or share a souvenir, that is your own action through iOS. The app never posts anything anywhere for you.
You can export the whole ledger — every record and photo — as a package (a JSON file plus the photos) and take it with you. When iCloud Drive is on, the app also keeps a backup of that package in your iCloud Drive, under Hot Tip; with it off, the backup stays on the phone. Either way it is your storage, not ours, and it never passes through us.
Deleting the app removes everything it kept on the phone. A backup already written to your iCloud Drive is yours and stays there until you delete it, the same as any other file in your Drive.
The weather in the rooms
The rooms can react to what it is like outside — the highway goes gold around sunset, rain shows through the diner window, somebody mentions the forecast. To do that the app asks Apple Weather about your area, the same service the Weather app uses.
The request uses a reduced-accuracy location, not your exact position, and it goes from your phone to Apple. It does not come to the developer, and there is nowhere else for it to go.
It happens at most once every few hours, and only while the app is open on a theme that uses it.
What comes back — the sky, the sunset, an alert headline and three days of conditions — is held only for the moment it is used. No coordinates are written down, and nothing is attached to your ledger.
You can turn it off in Settings ▸ Outside. Off, the rooms simply don't know, and nothing else changes.
Weather data provided by Apple Weather.
Permissions the app may ask for
Camera — only when you photograph a receipt, a place or a plate. The photo is downscaled and saved into the app's own database on your device. The camera is not used for anything else.
Photos (add only) — so a trip souvenir can be saved to your camera roll. The app can add a photo and cannot read the photos already there.
Location (while using the app) — used in two places, and only while the app is open. When you log a road-trip stop, one position fix is taken so the town, county and coordinates can be printed on that stop's souvenir; that stays on your phone, and the lookup that turns coordinates into a place name is performed by Apple's own system service. Separately, a reduced-accuracy location is used to ask Apple Weather what it is like outside, as described above. There is no tracking, no background location, and no location history beyond the stops you save.
Face ID — only if you turn on Dogstar Mode, which puts a lock in front of your ledger. The result is checked by iOS; the app never sees biometric data.
Contacts — the app uses Apple's contact picker, which runs outside the app. It receives only the one contact you tap and never has access to your address book.
What is never done
Nothing about you is sold, rented, or handed to a data broker. There is no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, and no third-party tracking of any kind in this app.
The tip jar
Hot Tip is free and complete. If you choose to leave a tip, the purchase is handled entirely by Apple through the App Store — the developer never sees your payment details, and the app does not record who tipped or whether you did. Nothing in the app is locked behind it.
Children
Hot Tip is not directed at children and collects no personal information from anyone.
Changes
If this policy ever changes, the updated version will be posted at this address with a new date at the top.
Contact
Questions about privacy in Hot Tip: [email protected]
Hot Tip is made by Ryan Butcher.
© 2026 Ryan Butcher