User Guide

This guide walks through everything Stoke BBQ does, from your very first cook to advanced multi-pit, multi-protein sessions. It’s organized so you can read it top to bottom or jump straight to the part you need. Every in-app label is in bold, and tips, notes, and warnings are called out in quote blocks.

Platforms: Stoke runs on iPhone, with a companion Apple Watch app (part of Stoke Pro). iPad and Mac apps are coming. This guide is written for iPhone, where every feature lives; the Apple Watch, Widgets & Live Activity section covers what you get beyond the phone.

1. Getting Started

The first time you open Stoke BBQ, a one-time, three-step setup gets you cooking. Every step has a Skip button in the top-right, so you can breeze past anything and set it up properly later. The whole flow is always dark-themed with an ember glow behind it, and three page dots track your progress.

Step 1 — Welcome

A quick intro to the whole idea: Put every cook on the record. Log temps, fuel, and results so every brisket is better than the last. Nothing to fill in here — tap Continue.

Step 2 — Add your pit

Tell Stoke about your smoker or grill. This isn’t a throwaway field — it writes a real pit into your inventory and registers it as a cooker option everywhere you pick one.

1. Type a name into the Name (e.g. 120 Gallon Offset) field — Weber Kettle, Traeger Timberline, whatever you run.
2. Tap the Fuel row and choose a fuel type (defaults to Wood Splits).
3. Tap Add smoker.

Once it saves, the button flips to Pit added with a green checkmark.

Note: The Add smoker button stays disabled until you type a name, and stays disabled after you save — you add one pit here, and more later in Pit Manager & Maintenance.

Step 3 — How will you track temps?

Choose how you’ll watch temperatures during a cook:

• Wireless probe — tap a brand to select it. This only records your intent; the actual pairing happens later in the Probes & Hardware tab. Brands marked Coming soon are greyed out and can’t be selected.
• I’ll hand-probe — Manual mode — free, no hardware. You take readings with your own instant-read thermometer and log them; Stoke reminds you when to check and graphs what you enter.

Tap Start cooking and you’re in.

You can change everything later. Nothing in onboarding is permanent — pits, probes, and preferences are all editable from the app. Onboarding only appears once; it won’t come back after you finish or skip it.

2. Finding Your Way Around

Stoke lives inside a bottom dock with a raised, circular orange Live Fire flame button floating in the center.

The dock

Five slots, left to right: two customizable tabs, the fixed center Live Fire flame, a third customizable tab, and the fixed More tab (an ”…” icon) on the end.

• Three customizable tabs — arrange which tabs (such as Home, Cook Log, and Rubs) sit on the dock via Edit Tabs; whatever doesn’t fit lives under More.
• Live Fire (center flame) — starts a new cook, or opens your active cook. When a cook is running the flame animates — a burning, swaying flame with a glowing ember core — so you always know the pit is live. (With Reduce Motion on, it settles to a gentle glow pulse.)
• More — everything that isn’t docked, plus Equipment and Settings.

The Live Fire button

Tap the raised center flame anytime:

1. If no cook is active, the Start Cook sheet opens.
2. If a cook is already live, it switches you to the Live Fire tab to view it.

Customizing your tabs

From the More tab, tap Edit Tabs (top-right):

• Under On the Dock, drag tabs by their handles to reorder them.
• Under In More, tap the green ⊕ next to any tab to promote it onto the dock. The dock always holds exactly three customizable tabs, so whatever was last drops back into More.

Live Fire always keeps the center spot and More always stays last. Nothing ever gets hidden — every tab stays reachable under More. Tap Done when you’re happy.

The More tab

• Undocked tabs — whichever arrangeable tabs aren’t currently on the dock.
• Equipment — Probes (free) and Pit Plan Templates (Stoke Pro).
• Settings — app preferences, account & billing, data export, and support.

3. The Home Dashboard

Home is your jumping-off point. What it shows depends on whether a cook is running, and sections only appear once you have the data to fill them.

When the pit is cold (idle)

• A Ready to cook hero — “The pit is cold. Pick a protein, light the fire, and let Stoke BBQ keep watch.” — with a big Start Cook button.
• A LAST COOK · … teaser for your most recent finished cook, showing its letter grade (or a star), so you can tap straight into its full record.

When a cook is live

A LIVE hero card showing the cook name, a running ELAPSED clock (counting up in HH:MM:SS, updating every second), the latest PIT and MEAT readouts (falling back to your targets if no probe reading exists yet, or ”—” if neither), and — with Stoke Pro and the Coach on — the newest coach tip. Tap the card to jump to Live Fire.

Always on Home

• Upcoming Tasks — pit maintenance that’s Due (orange) or Overdue (red), plus low-fuel warnings like Wood supply low. Tap a maintenance row to open that pit; tap a low-fuel row to log a restock. The whole card hides itself when everything’s clear.
• Wood Supply / Fuel Supply — remaining fuel with a fill bar and a ”≈ N more cooks at your average burn” estimate. A splits-only setup shows the full Wood Supply gauge; multiple fuel kinds collapse into compact per-kind rows under Fuel Supply. Tap Manage to open your inventory.
• Your Stats — a 3-up tile strip (Total Cooks, Avg Rating, Hours) plus your headline charts. Tap See all for the full Stats detail. (Appears once you have at least one cook.)
• Recent Cooks — a horizontal strip of your last four finished cooks; tap any to open its record. (Appears once you have at least one finished cook.)

4. Starting a Cook

Tap the Live Fire flame — or Start Cook on Home, or Start This Cook Live from the Cook Log — to open the New Cook sheet. This creates a brand-new logged cook and lights a live session for it in one step.

Note: You need at least one pit before you can start a cook. On a fresh install the form is replaced by an Add Your Pit gate — “…cooks need a real pit, not just a name.” — with an Add a Pit button. Add your pit and the form appears, bound to it.

Tip: New Cook always creates a new logged cook. To go live on a cook you’ve already logged without making a duplicate, use Go Live on that cook’s detail screen instead (see The Cook Log).

4.1 Quick vs Detailed

A segmented control at the top toggles the detail level. Your choice is remembered across launches (defaults to Quick).

• Quick — today’s light-the-fire essentials, so you can get cooking fast.
• Detailed — adds the full cook-log data inline (PIT & FIRE, MEAT & PREP, PIT TEMP PLAN, RECIPE PROCESS), so the cook is fully logged the moment the fire’s lit. (Outcome fields like rating and final weights stay in the post-cook editor.)

4.2 Smoke vs Grill cook mode

A second segmented control picks the cook mode — Smoke for low-and-slow, Grill for hot-and-fast (defaults to Smoke). The mode is saved onto the cook and changes how a few things behave:

• Estimated length units — Smoke uses an hours stepper; Grill uses a minutes stepper (see Estimated length).
• Doneness helpers — Grill mode unlocks one-tap doneness presets and a carryover note under the pull temp (see below).
• The live coach — the smoke coach stays silent on grill cooks, since low-and-slow advice doesn’t help in the few minutes a steak is on (see The Cook Coach).

Note: Switching Smoke ↔ Grill only resets the estimated-length default (8h for Smoke, 20 min for Grill) if you haven’t manually changed it.

4.3 The essentials

• Cook Name (required) — placeholder e.g. Saturday Brisket. The Light the Fire button stays disabled until you name the cook.
• Protein and Cut — pick both; a dashed Add another protein button lets you build a multi-protein fire (see Multi-protein fires).
• Cooker — pick the pit. Choosing a pit drives fuel tracking, the maintenance heads-up, and smart defaults (fuel, fire style, and meat source auto-fill by repeating your most recent cook on that pit — but only for fields you haven’t touched).
• Target pit temp — tap the readout to open the temperature dial. Range 150–2000°F.
• Pull temp — the internal temp you’ll pull at, in an ember-yellow readout. Range 90–215°F, default 203°F. (Hidden on a by-feel pit.)

Maintenance heads-up. If the chosen pit has maintenance due, a non-blocking banner appears — “N task(s) due on this pit… — View.” Tap it to open the pit, or ignore it and cook on.

Grill doneness presets. In Grill mode with a single protein, a row of one-tap pills appears under the pull temp — Rare 125°, Med-Rare 130°, Medium 140°, Med-Well 150°, Well 160°, Chicken 165°, Fish 145°. Tap one to set the pull temp instantly.

Carryover (Grill): A note reads “Carries over ~5–10°F while resting — pull a few degrees before your target.” Pull the meat a touch early and let carryover finish the job.

4.4 Estimated length & check-in reminders

This section only appears if you own at least one manual probe.

Set how long you expect the cook to run and Stoke spreads probe check-in reminders across it — “…so you know when to go probe and log temps.”

• Smoke mode — an hours stepper in 30-minute steps, 0.5–36h (default 8h).
• Grill mode — a minutes stepper in 1-minute steps, 1–360 min (default 20 minutes).

Note: Check-in reminders anchor to when the meat goes on, not when the fire is lit. If you preheat first, they don’t start until you tap Put meat on.

4.5 The temperature dial

Anywhere you set a temperature, tap the number to open the dial — a smooth, camera-zoom-style wheel. Drag to scrub; it ticks every 1°F (taller marks every 10°, labeled every 50°), gives a haptic nudge as you cross each 5°, and lands on the exact degree you release on (no 5° snapping). A full swipe covers about 50°. Tap Done when set. The same dial handles pit targets, pull temps, and plan-stage target/tolerance fields.

4.6 Meat on the pit

A MEAT ON THE PIT section with a Put the meat on now toggle controls your cook clock:

• On — “Cook timer and pit-plan stages start at light-up.” The meat goes on with the fire.
• Off (default) — “Preheat first — tap ‘Put meat on’ when it goes on. The plan and alerts start from there.” You’ll tap Put the meat on later from the live dashboard.

Two clocks: The fire clock starts when you light up; the cook clock starts when the meat goes on. Pit-plan stages, plan alerts, and manual check-ins all anchor to meat-on.

4.7 Multi-protein fires

Cooking more than one thing on one fire? With Stoke Pro, tap Add another protein to build a multi-protein fire (the free tier cooks one protein per fire — tapping it opens the paywall).

• The section header becomes PROTEINS ON THIS FIRE, and each protein gets its own card: protein, cut, pull temp, quantity, and (in Detailed) a Prep disclosure for source, rubs, weight, and wrap method.
• Assign probes per protein — tap a meat-probe chip on a card to assign it; tap it on another card to move it. Each probe lives on one protein at a time.
• Per-protein seeding — each card past the first has its own Start from a previous cook link that fills just that item and keeps its own lineage (Stoke Pro).
• Remove an unwanted protein with the x on its card.

4.8 Start from a previous cook (Stoke Pro)

With Stoke Pro, tap Start from a previous cook to open the Start From a Cook picker and load an earlier cook as your starting point — protein, cut, pull temp, rub, source, cooker, pit target, estimated length, and (in Detailed) plan stages and process all carry over. On the free tier, tapping it opens the paywall.

The picker keeps your go-tos within reach: Favorites at the top, then Refined Recipes (the newest cook of each refined lineage, with an “N cooks” badge), then Recent. Search previous cooks, filter by protein or folder, or sort however you like. Once loaded, the button shows that cook’s name and “Cooking this again — Nth cook.”

The new cook is linked to the original as a lineage (it shows “2nd cook,” “3rd cook,” and so on), which powers the Coach’s “you’re improving” comparisons and the Refined over N cooks badge on shared recipes.

Note: Physical per-cook facts — raw weight, trim weight, and cost per pound — do not carry over when you seed from a previous cook.

4.9 Start from a community recipe

You can also open New Cook pre-filled from a recipe you downloaded from the Community (via Cook This on the recipe). The form fills in name, protein, cut, pull temp, rubs, cooker, pit target, estimated length, plan stages, and process — “so you can follow it exactly (or tweak it).” Missing rubs are added to your library automatically.

When you light the fire, the community author’s attribution (name and handle) is stamped onto the cook and shows as a provenance chip on its detail screen. If you change the plan so it diverges from the recipe, the cook is flagged modified — so you always know whether you cooked it as-published or made it your own.

4.10 Detailed mode extras

Switching to Detailed adds:

• PIT & FIRE — Pitmaster, Fire style, Fuel.
• MEAT & PREP — Quantity (1–20), Meat source, Rubs, Raw weight, Cost / raw lb, Trim weight, Wrap temp, Wrap method (a per-item Prep disclosure on multi-protein fires).
• PIT TEMP PLAN — build a stepped, multi-stage pit-temp plan (see Pit Temp Plans).
• RECIPE PROCESS — free-text process notes for the cook.

4.11 By-feel (non-probe) pits

If the pit you pick cooks by feel, the pull-temp, probe, and wrap-temp fields disappear and a quiet note takes their place — with a button to reveal probe UI for just this one cook if you want it. See Non-Probe Mode for the full picture.

4.12 Light the Fire

When everything looks right, tap the big Light the Fire button. It applies your pit target and cook mode to every protein, starts the live session, and drops you on the Live Fire dashboard.

5. The Live Fire Dashboard

Once the fire’s lit, Live Fire is your command center. When no cook is running it shows a No Cook Running empty state with a Start a Cook button.

5.1 The hero header

A fire-gradient hero across the top:

• A green-dot LIVE chip.
• The cook name and, below it, a subtitle (protein · pit, or “N proteins · pit”).
• A giant elapsed clock. Before the meat’s on it reads PREHEATING · FIRE and counts the fire clock, with a “Fire lit …” footnote. Once the meat’s on it switches to COOK TIME (from meat-on) with a “Meat on … · fire …” footnote.
• An alert countdown badge — pinned to the LIVE row, it counts down (with a timer icon) to your soonest pending time alert, showing +N if more are queued. It hides when nothing’s pending. (Temperature alerts fire on a live-temp crossing, so they never appear here.)

Put the meat on. While preheating a single-protein cook, a white Put the meat on button appears. On a probe pit it opens the pairing sheet; on a by-feel pit it stamps meat-on directly. Either way, the cook clock starts and your plan and check-in reminders reschedule from that moment.

5.2 Gauges & the Pit Temp Plan

• TARGET PIT (fire orange) and PULL TEMP (ember yellow) — two circular gauges of live temp vs target, refreshing about every 30 seconds. Tap TARGET PIT to edit the target (or the plan, if one’s set); tap PULL TEMP to set the pull temp.
• PIT TEMP PLAN — a tappable card reading Step pit targets over time (empty) or N stages. When a multi-stage plan is set, the TARGET PIT readout auto-steps to whichever stage is active on the cook clock.

On a multi-protein fire, the pull gauge is replaced by a compact TARGET PIT card with a last-two-hours pit sparkline — per-protein temps live in the On This Fire list instead.

5.3 Wrap cues

On a single-protein cook with a wrap temp set and the meat on, a banner reads Wrap at N°. Once the live internal temp reaches it, it flips to Wrap now · N° and a one-time push notification fires (Wrap ). Manual/by-feel cuts show the target number but never auto-chime.

5.4 On This Fire (multi-protein)

On a fire with 2+ proteins, an On This Fire section lists a row per protein (2–20 items) with its status (Not on the pit yet / On the pit · / Pulled at ), live meat temp, and pull target:

• Put on — put that protein on the pit (pairs its probe).
• Pull — take a finished protein off while the fire keeps burning; it records its own duration.
• Swipe a row for Edit or Remove (Remove deletes that protein — you’re asked to confirm, and it’s only available on multi-protein fires so at least one always remains).

5.5 Fuel tracker

A live fuel tally shaped by your pit’s fuel, with a Manage link to the inventory:

• Wood splits — a +/− counter (Add Split / Remove split) plus the add-split reminder (below).
• Charcoal — a chimney counter (LBS ADDED), an Add exact pounds dial (1–50 lb), and an adjustable 1 chimney ≈ N lb row.
• Pellets — a LBS THIS COOK readout and a Top Up Hopper button.
• Gas — a TANKS LEFT readout.

Non-gas kinds show a supply bar with ”≈ N left in supply.”

Add-split reminder (Stoke Pro). On wood-split cooks, toggle Add-split reminder to be nudged to feed the fire every N minutes (default 45, range 1–360, stepped by 5). Without Pro the row shows a Pro lock badge.

5.6 Probe channels & chart

• Probe Channels — every active probe with its live reading, trend arrow (°F/hour), and Live/Offline status (live temps poll every 15 seconds). Manual probes show the last hand-logged reading with its time and a Log button. On a multi-protein fire, each meat channel gets an Assign to protein picker.
• Temperature chart — a live line graph (detailed in §7, Live Temperature Charts). Tap expand for a full-screen view across all pits.
• Live Coach card — the smoke coach (Stoke Pro), hidden on grill cooks.
• Cook Alerts card — view and manage time and temp alerts (see Manual Logging, Alerts & Timers).
• Progress Photos — snap or import photos as the cook runs (Take Photo / Library, up to 10 at a time) to track bark and color. Long-press a thumbnail to delete.

5.7 Pop Out, multi-pit & ending

• Pop Out (toolbar) — a floating Picture-in-Picture mini-dashboard that keeps the live cook visible over other apps. Only works on a real device (hidden in the simulator).
• Multi-pit — with Stoke Pro, the toolbar + menu offers Start a New Pit and Add Protein to This Pit. Running two or more pits adds a chip switcher at the top, each chip named by its pit nickname (e.g. Bessy, Offset 2) with its proteins listed underneath. The free tier runs one live cook at a time.
• End Cook (red, toolbar) — ends the fire, records durations, cancels pending reminders, and (with Stoke Pro) generates a graded post-cook report per protein. The cook moves to your Cook Log.

6. Probes & Hardware

Open More → Equipment → Probes to manage everything that measures temperature. Probes come in three Kinds: Pit / Gateway, Meat probe, and Ambient. The Probes screen shows live readings for any connected probe — even with no cook running — refreshing about every 15 seconds.

Tap + to add a probe, then pick your brand under What brand is your probe?

Mixing brands is Stoke Pro. Your first probe brand is free — connect as many probes from that brand as you like. Adding a probe from a second brand (say a MEATER alongside your ThermoWorks) is part of Stoke Pro; those brand rows show a Pro lock badge. (Yoder ACS counts as Fireboard, so the two don’t gate against each other.)

Manual probe (free, no hardware)

Under No wireless hardware?, tap Manual probe. Name it, pick its Kind, and save. During a cook you log readings by hand (with optional check-in reminders), and they graph exactly like hardware readings.

One manual probe per kind. You can have one manual pit, one manual meat, and one manual ambient probe. Saving a second of a kind renames the existing one instead of duplicating it.

ThermoWorks (free)

Uses a shared link — no login or API key. Works with Signals, Smoke X, and RFX.

1. In the ThermoWorks app or Cloud, share the session and copy the link.
2. In Stoke: Probes → + → ThermoWorks, enter a Name, pick a Kind, and paste the link into Shared Link.
3. Tap Save.

A ThermoWorks device is considered online if it checked in within the last 15 minutes.

MEATER / MEATER+ (free)

Sign in with your MEATER account:

1. Probes → + → MEATER, enter your MEATER Email and Password, tap Sign In.
2. Powered-on probes appear under Your Probes — tap one, set a Name and Kind, and tap Save.

Each MEATER records two channels — internal (meat) and ambient. Your login is stored in the device Keychain (never the password). If the session expires mid-cook, a MEATER sign-in expired row appears at the top of the Probes list; tap it to sign back in.

Fireboard / Yoder ACS (free)

Fireboard (FBX, Spark, Drive) and Yoder ACS Wi-Fi smokers connect with your Fireboard.io account (Yoder ACS smokers run on Fireboard).

1. Probes → + → Fireboard (or Yoder Smokers), enter your Fireboard email and password, tap Sign In.
2. Each device’s channels are listed — tap a channel, set a Name and Kind, and Save. Add the device’s other channels the same way; each channel becomes its own probe.

A Fireboard channel is online if its latest reading is within the last 15 minutes.

Note: MEATER and Fireboard devices only appear in their setup lists while the hardware is powered on. If nothing shows, take a MEATER out of the charger (or confirm a Fireboard is on Wi-Fi) and tap refresh.

Managing probes

Tap a probe to rename it, change its Kind, edit Notes, or (for ThermoWorks) update the Share URL. Swipe or long-press for Edit / Delete. During a live cook, online probes feed the chart automatically, and you can reassign meat channels to specific proteins on a multi-protein fire.

7. Live Temperature Charts

Inside a fire, the Temperature card plots every probe channel over time — pit, meat, and ambient — against your plan’s goal line. It refreshes live (about every 3 seconds) and stays attached to the record afterward so you can review a finished cook in the Cook Log.

All vs Split

A small All / Split toggle appears whenever there’s more than one thing to chart:

• All — every channel on one combined chart.
• Split — each group gets its own small chart with its own scale. On a single-protein cook it splits by kind (Pit, Meat, Ambient); on a multi-protein fire it splits into one chart per protein (each carrying the pit for context plus that protein’s own meat and pull line).

Tap the expand icon to open the full-screen Charts page, which adds a Combined vs Split Layout control and groups multiple simultaneous pits under their own headers.

What’s on the chart

• Goal line — your planned pit temperature as a dashed green stepped line surrounded by a soft tolerance band. Green is reserved system-wide for the goal, so a live probe line can never be mistaken for it.
• Finish / pull lines — a green dashed horizontal rule at each protein’s pull temp (labeled Finish in the legend for a single-protein cook).
• Target zone — on a protein’s own split chart, a light-green band ±3°F around its pull temp, so you can see it entering the done range.
• Meat on marker — an orange dashed vertical rule where the cook clock begins.
• Split markers — on wood-split cooks, a brown dashed rule with a flame icon at each split you add, so you can read your fire-feeding cadence.
• Manual points — hand-logged readings show as dots on a smooth curve; live probe lines get a fainter smoothed-trend overlay on split charts.

The y-axis auto-frames all your probes — even meat starting at room temperature stays on screen. Before any readings arrive, a live cook shows Waiting for readings.

8. The Cook Log

The Cook Log is your complete, searchable history of every cook.

Browsing

• Summary strip — Cooks, Avg ★, and Hrs across your whole history (it ignores any active filter).
• Favorites strip — quick access to cooks you’ve starred.
• The list — each row shows a protein icon, name, date, rating (★ N), and duration. Live cooks are pinned at the top under Cooking Now with a green LIVE badge, above your finished history under Log. An orange 1st / 2nd / 3rd badge marks cooks in a lineage. Multi-protein fires are grouped under a shared one fire header showing the pit, date, duration, and “N proteins.”

Finding cooks

• Search cooks by name, protein, or cut.
• Filter by protein (All Proteins clears it).
• Sort by Date (Newest), Date (Oldest), Rating, Duration, or Protein A–Z (your choice sticks).
• Folders — group cooks (e.g. Competition, Briskets, Weeknight) and tap a folder chip to filter. Manage folders via Move to Folder → Manage; deleting a folder keeps its cooks (they’re just unfiled).

Quick actions

Trailing-swipe a row for Delete, Edit, or Move to Folder; leading-swipe for Favorite / Unfavorite and Share to Social. Long-press for a full menu that adds Cook This Again (Stoke Pro) and Recipe PDF.

Adding a past cook

Tap + → Log a Past Cook to record a cook you’ve already done (this is free). The form mirrors a live cook, organized into Basic Info, Pit & Fire Setup, Meat & Process, Results & Evaluation (with an auto-calculated Yield), an optional Pit Temp Plan, and Notes. Smart defaults fill in fuel, fire style, and meat source from the pit and your recent cooks — only for fields you haven’t touched.

Tip: + → Start This Cook Live instead opens the live Start Cook flow. A first live cook is free; a second concurrent one is Stoke Pro.

The cook detail screen

Tap any cook for its full record: header and rating, a stat strip (Duration, Pulled at, Splits), the Coach report (a graded post-cook breakdown, Stoke Pro), the temperature chart, every logged field grouped by section, and your photos. A provenance chip (From · @) shows if the cook came from a community recipe.

Go Live vs Cook This Again. In the live section, Go Live attaches a session to this record with no duplicate; View Live Cook appears if it’s already live. Cook This Again (Stoke Pro) starts a fresh pre-filled cook and tracks the lineage.

Sharing. The toolbar and more-menu offer:

• Share to Social — a branded cook card (PNG) with the name, protein/cut, date, a stats strip (Duration, Coach Grade, Pulled At, Splits), and optionally the chart and up to 4 photos (controlled by the Include graphs & photos in shared cooks setting).
• Recipe PDF — a printable one-page recipe/cook sheet with the chart and every variable.
• Share Recipe File — a portable .stokerecipe file others can import.

There’s also a branded recipe card that shares the method (rub, fire & fuel, pit plan, coach tips), resolved across a lineage with a Refined over N cooks chip.

9. Stats

Tap See all on Home’s Your Stats module to open the full Stats screen — a deeper look at your cooking, built from your logged cooks. (Until you’ve logged at least one cook, the whole screen is a No Stats Yet empty state.)

AI Cook Coach link

At the top sits an AI Cook Coach card — “Find ways to improve your cooks.” Tap it to open Insights, the whole-log analysis.

Built-in metric cards

A two-column grid of numbers computed from your history. Always shown:

• Total Cooks — every cook you’ve logged.
• Avg Rating — the average of your rated cooks (to one decimal).
• Total Hours Smoked — summed cook time (e.g. “42.5h”).
• Proteins Tried — how many distinct proteins you’ve cooked.

More cards appear once you have the data for them: Best Yield, Most Used Rub, Splits Burned, Avg Splits / Cook, and Splits Left.

BEST COOK hero

A full-width BEST COOK card on a fire gradient highlights your highest-rated cook — its name, Rating (e.g. ”★ 5.0”), Duration, and Pulled at temp. (Appears once you’ve rated at least one cook.)

Custom stat cards (Stoke Pro)

Compose your own metric card and pin it to the grid. Tap the dashed Add Stat card at the end of the grid (it reads Add Stat — Pro with a lock until you upgrade). In the New Stat editor you choose:

• Track — the metric: Cooks, Raw Weight, Cooked Weight, Hours Smoked, Meat Cost, Avg Rating, Avg Yield, or Splits Burned.
• Protein — an optional filter (default All proteins).
• Period — the time window: All time, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 90 days, This year, or Last 12 months.

A live Preview shows the card as you build it. Tap an existing custom card to Edit it, or long-press to Delete. Adding and editing custom stats require Stoke Pro; your built-in cards, the BEST COOK hero, and the coach link are all free.

Note: Your headline charts (Avg Rating by Protein, Cooks by Protein, Splits per Cook) live in the Your Stats module on Home, not on this detail screen.

10. The Cook Coach

With Stoke Pro, the AI Cook Coach watches your cook’s numbers — temps, trends, time in band — and helps you manage the fire. Free users see upgrade prompts in its place. On supported devices it runs entirely on-device using Apple Intelligence; otherwise a full-featured rule-based engine drives it.

Live tips

The AI Cook Coach card on the live screen shows one tip at a time, re-checking every ~10 minutes (and right after you log a split). Tips are color-coded by severity:

• 🟢 All good — you’re on track.
• 🟡 Suggestion — an idea to improve (the stall, big swings, slow recoveries).
• 🟠 Heads-up — act now (pit sagging, running hot, almost at pull temp).

Heads-up tips can also push a notification (capped to one per 30 minutes). Dismiss the current tip with the x, or expand Session tips to browse the cook’s history.

Grill cooks: The live coach stays silent on Grill (hot-and-fast) cooks by design — there’s nothing useful to say in the few minutes a steak is on. This is not a bug.

Voices

Choose the Coach’s voice in Settings: Pitmaster (plain-spoken and folksy, default) or Precise (data-first, leads with the numbers). Voice affects the AI engine’s tone.

Post-cook Coach Report

After a cook ends (with probe readings), its detail screen gets a Coach Report card: a letter grade for fire management (A through D, in a colored badge), a short summary, specific findings, and a NEXT TIME list of concrete tips. The grade is derived from time-in-band, pit variance, sags, and recovery speed, and it compares against your past cooks of the same protein/cut — or, in a Cook This Again lineage, across repeats of that recipe (e.g. “2nd cook of this recipe”).

Insights (Cook Coach screen)

The Cook Coach insights screen analyzes your entire cook log and lists concrete Opportunities — pit-temp management, timing and rest, yield, quality outcomes, fuel, and economics. Tap the refresh button to re-run it. You reach it from the AI Cook Coach card at the top of the Stats detail (Home → Your Stats → See all).

11. Pit Temp Plans & Templates

Instead of one flat target, you can map out how the pit temperature should change over the cook — a multi-stage plan like 250°F for the first 4 hours, then 275°F to push through the stall.

Building a plan

Each stage has a label (e.g. Stall, Wrap), a Start time (hours from meat-on), a Target temp, and a ± Tol (tolerance band). A live preview chart mirrors the live cook chart — same green stepped line and soft tolerance band — so what you build is what you’ll see.

• Tap Add Stage to append one (it starts an hour after the previous stage and copies its target).
• Set Target (150–2000°F) and ± Tol (0–50°F) with the temperature dial.
• Swipe a stage row to delete it.

Stage-transition alerts. Turn on Notify on stage transitions to get a 📈 New pit target notification each time the plan steps to a new target — scheduled up front, so they fire even when the app is backgrounded. (The first stage never chimes — it’s the starting target.)

You can build a plan in three places, using the same editor: the Detailed cook form, the mid-cook Pit Plan sheet (tap the PIT TEMP PLAN card on the live dashboard), and the Templates library. Editing mid-cook reschedules alerts immediately on Save.

Reusable templates (Stoke Pro)

With Stoke Pro, save any plan as a reusable Pit Plan Template under More → Equipment → Pit Plan Templates:

• Create, edit, delete, share, or import a template.
• Share exports a .stokeplan.json file via the iOS share sheet; Import reads one back. If an imported template references a protein you don’t have, Stoke offers to Add to Proteins.
• Optionally tag a template with a protein.

12. Manual Logging, Alerts & Timers

Stoke handles cooks without smart probes just as well as cooks with them, and layers custom alerts and quick timers on top of any cook.

Logging temps by hand

Tap Log on a manual probe channel (or a check-in reminder notification) to open the Log Temp keypad:

1. If you have more than one target, tap the target chip — Pit or a protein name — for what you probed.
2. Type the temperature on the number pad (whole numbers, 32–700°F).
3. Optionally tap a backdate chip — Now, −2 min, −5 min, −10 min — if you read it a moment ago.
4. Tap Log Temp.

One hand probe, many targets. A hand probe is treated as one shared tool — instead of binding it to a single channel, you pick the target (pit or a specific protein) each time you log. On a multi-protein fire, meat readings attribute to the right protein.

Check-in reminders

When you start a manual-probe cook with an estimated duration, Stoke spreads gentle reminders across it — the first about an hour in (🌡️ Time to check the meat), then roughly every ~50 minutes, with a final 🌡️ Estimated finish — final check at your estimated finish. Tap a reminder and Stoke jumps straight to the temp-entry sheet.

Non-Probe Mode (cook by feel)

A per-pit setting (No Probes vs With Probes) lets you run a pit entirely by feel — hiding probe gauges, meat temps, and the chart, leaving fire, time, fuel, and your own call on doneness. The live badge reads NO PROBES, and a banner reminds you to “Watch the smoke, read the bark — trust your hands.” You can still use time-based alerts and check-ins, and a per-cook Show probes for this cook override reveals probe UI for a single cook without flipping the pit’s whole setting.

Custom alerts

The Alerts card lets you add chimes for a cook. Tap + to open New Alert:

• Time — chime after an elapsed duration (Hours 0–24, Minutes 0–59, Seconds 0–59), with an optional Repeat chime (every 1–240 min).
• Temperature — chime when a Channel (Meat or Pit) reaches a target (default 203°F).

Add an optional Label, then tap Add. Fired alerts show a green checkmark.

How temp alerts behave: Meat alerts chime only on the way up to the target (a pull target). Pit alerts act as bounds — a target above the current temp chimes on the way up, below chimes on the way down — so set one of each to alert on a band. A 3°F hysteresis prevents a continuous tone.

By-feel pits offer time alerts only — the channel picker and temp dial are dropped.

Quick flip/rest grill timers

In Grill mode, the Alerts card surfaces one-tap timers above the list — Flip 30s, Flip 90s, Flip 2m, Rest 5m. Tapping one adds that countdown instantly.

Split timer (Stoke Pro)

For offset / stick-burner cooks, a repeating 🪵 Time to add a split reminder nudges you to feed the fire on a steady cadence (see the add-split reminder). Adding a split restarts the cadence.

Notifications

All chimes arrive as local notifications, shown even in the foreground. Stoke requests permission before the first chime; if notifications are off, the Alerts card shows Notifications off — alerts can’t chime. with a Settings shortcut.

13. Fuel Inventory

The Fuel tab (More → Fuel, or Manage from Home) is a running ledger of your fuel — one card per fuel kind you use (splits, pellets, charcoal, gas):

• Each card shows how much is left, a fill bar, and ”≈ N cook(s) left at your average burn.”
• Restock with a quick preset increment (e.g. +10 splits) or tap Custom… to open the full Add Restock sheet, where you can set a quantity, date, optional Total cost, and notes.
• Tap a card to open its Restock Log — a summary (Restocked, Burned, Avg / Cook) and every restock entry (tap to edit, swipe to delete).

How the math works. Remaining = total restocked minus total burned across cooks. Wood splits use a dedicated splits counter (also fed by the Apple Watch); pellets and charcoal track by pounds; gas tracks by tanks. The cooks-left estimate needs a burn history to appear.

Note: Gas is restock-only (no per-cook burn tracking), so it never shows a cooks-left estimate. Old restock entries with no fuel kind are treated as firewood.

14. Pit Manager & Maintenance

Pit Manager (in Settings) keeps your smokers and grills organized and maintained.

Pits

Add each pit with a Name, a Fuel type (which decides what Live Fire tracks), How you run this pit (probe vs cook-by-feel), an optional Photo (camera or library), and Notes. New pits show up automatically wherever you pick a cooker. Rename freely — the old name is kept on record so past cooks still count toward that pit’s maintenance.

Note: Every pit is deletable. Deleting a pit removes its maintenance tasks and photo, but its Maintenance Log entries survive.

Maintenance tasks

On a pit’s detail screen, add maintenance tasks (oil the surface, clean grates, clear the grease drain, remove rust, etc.) that repeat By time (Weekly through Yearly) or By cooks (every N completed cooks). Stoke shows what’s Due now, Due in N cooks, or Overdue by Nd — on the pit, on Home, and as a heads-up when you start a cook. Tap a task’s circle to mark it done, which logs it and resets its schedule (a one-shot task is removed).

A cook counts toward “every N cooks” only once it’s no longer live and its cooker matches the pit’s name, a former name, or its type.

Maintenance Log

The Maintenance Log (the clock icon in Pit Manager) is a permanent, pit-grouped history of every completed task, each showing the date and how many cooks were logged at the time. History survives pit renames and deletions.

15. Rubs & Recipe Lab

Rubs

Your personal rub library (More → Rubs). For each rub, record a Name, Brand, Ingredients, and Notes. Stoke tracks Used in N cooks, so your go-tos rise to the top. Renaming a rub updates it on every cook that used it.

Recipe Lab

Recipe Lab (More → Recipe Lab) holds your private recipe-development notes plus recipes you’ve downloaded from the community. Log an experiment with a name, date, protein, cut, cook methods, a Success toggle, a rating, Iterations / notes, a Final recipe, and up to three reference URLs. Entries are private, sorted newest-first, and badged Success (green) or In progress (orange).

• Downloaded — recipes you saved from the Community sit here, separate from your own cooks. Tap one for a detail with Cook This (pre-fills a new cook), an editor to tweak targets/rubs/process/tips, and a Remove option.
• Community — a card at the top opens the recipe Community. It’s Stoke Pro (see Community).

Getting recipes into Downloaded requires the Pro-gated Community, but viewing, editing, and cooking a downloaded recipe is free.

16. Apple Watch, Widgets & Live Activity

The Stoke Watch app is part of Stoke Pro — a live glance for the cook on your wrist. Your iPhone does the heavy lifting; the watch shows what the phone streams. Without Pro, the watch shows a Stoke Pro upgrade prompt; subscribe on your iPhone and it unlocks automatically.

While a cook is running, the watch shows:

• A big orange elapsed timer.
• Pit (current → target) and Meat (current → pull temp) — or, on a by-feel pit, a NEXT timer label with a live countdown.
• Splits this cook, an ≈ N left in supply line, and an Add Split button — tap to log a split right from the firebox (with a haptic confirm); it syncs to your phone.
• An Updated … ago note if the data is more than a couple of minutes stale.

Complications put the cook on your watch face (Stoke Pro):

• Pit Temp and Meat Temp ring gauges (temp vs target).
• Cook Overview — pit, meat, and a live-updating timer, including a one-line inline version like 🔥 282° • 146° • 4:32:08.

Complications keep working while the watch app is closed — the phone wakes the watch to refresh them at cook start, cook end, and roughly every 15 minutes. Temps dim to ”—” if data goes stale (older than 20 minutes) so old numbers never masquerade as live.

Widgets, Live Activity & Dynamic Island

Beyond the Watch, Stoke keeps a live cook visible without opening the app. These work for everyone — no Stoke Pro required.

Live Activity & Dynamic Island. The moment you light a fire, Stoke posts a Live Activity:

• Lock Screen — a banner with the flame, cook name, Pit and Meat chips (current° / target°), a big live elapsed timer, and a short status note.
• Dynamic Island (iPhone 14 Pro and later) — the flame and running timer at a glance when collapsed (just the flame in the minimal view). Touch and hold to expand for the cook name, the timer, and full Pit and Meat lines (temp / target).

The Live Activity appears automatically when a cook starts and clears itself when you end the cook.

Home Screen & Lock Screen widgets. Add the Live Cook widget from the widget gallery:

• Home Screen — small, medium, and large sizes. Each shows the flame, cook name, a live elapsed timer, and Pit (temp/target) and Meat (temp/pull) badges; medium and large add the protein and a green LIVE marker, and the large size breaks the fire out into full Target Pit and Meat / Pull tiles.
• Lock Screen — inline, rectangular, and circular accessory widgets for an at-a-glance pit / meat / timer read.

When nothing’s cooking, the widget reads No cook running — “Start a cook to track it here.”

17. Community

The Community is Stoke’s social hub — a feed of posted BBQ recipes, each lifted from a real logged cook. Reach it Stoke Pro-gated from Recipe Lab.

First entry: You must accept the Community Guidelines agreement (zero tolerance for objectionable content) before you can browse. Declining backs you out of Community.

The feed & posts

The feed lists posted recipes newest-first. Each card shows the author, a cover photo, the recipe name and subtitle, an optional caption, an upvote button with count, and a comment count. Tap a card for the full post detail: the author’s plan (stats grid, tappable RUBS, PIT PLAN, PROCESS, PITMASTER TIPS) and a RESULTS proof chart of their actual cook.

From a post you can:

• Upvote (tap the up-arrow; tap again to remove).
• Save Recipe — downloads it into Recipe Lab → Downloaded. (Photos stay on the post; you get the plan and results.)
• Cook This — launches the Start Cook flow preloaded with the recipe.
• Join the Discussion — comment via Add a comment…, and Reply to a comment (one level of threading).

Posting your own cooks

From the + menu, choose Post a Recipe:

1. Under Pick a cook to share as a recipe, tap one of your logged cooks.
2. Under Photos on the post, tap thumbnails to include or leave out (all selected by default).
3. Write a Caption in What makes this one good?
4. Tap Post.

Photos live on the post only — anyone who saves or exports the recipe gets the plan and your result chart, not your photos.

The + menu also offers Import Recipe File (opens a .stokerecipe to cook), and a post’s overflow menu offers Export Recipe File.

Direct messages

Tap the message icon (top-left) to open Messages — your DM threads. Start a new one from another pitmaster’s profile via Message. Send with the paperplane.

Profiles & custom avatars

Tap your avatar for Your Profile (avatar, display name, @handle, title, stats, bio, and your posted recipes). Edit Profile lets you set a custom avatar three ways:

• Upload a photo (Choose Photo / Change Photo / Remove Photo).
• Pick an SF-Symbol Icon (12 choices) — used as the fallback when there’s no photo.
• Pick an accent Color (8 choices).

You also edit Display name, Handle, Title, Location, and Bio.

Identity, safety & your account

You don’t sign up — the app quietly signs you in with an anonymous identity on first use so you can post immediately.

• Sign in with Apple (Continue with Apple, remote backend only) — links your Apple ID so your posts and votes survive reinstalls and new versions. It merges all your existing posts, votes, and DMs onto the permanent account; once linked, your profile shows Linked with Apple.
• Report — flag any post (Report Post), comment (Report Comment), or user for moderation. Reports are reviewed within 24 hours.
• Block — Block User hides that pitmaster’s posts and comments from your feed everywhere.
• Delete Post — remove one of your own posts and its comments.
• Delete Account (remote backend only) — permanently deletes your account and all your posts, comments, and messages, then resets you to a fresh anonymous identity. This can’t be undone.

Note: Sign in with Apple, the account UUID, and Delete Account only appear when Community is running against the live shared server. Report and Block appear only on content that isn’t yours (your own posts show Delete Post instead).

18. Exporting Your Data

Your data is yours. In Settings → Data → Export All Cook Data, Stoke builds a ZIP containing:

• cooks.json — every cook with all structured fields, plus nested live sessions and probe readings (with per-reading channel, kind, and manual-vs-hardware source), plan stages, and Coach reports.
• cooks.csv — one row per cook, ready for a spreadsheet.
• README.md — documents the format so AI tools or other apps can read it.

Temperatures are in °F, weights in lbs, durations in hours, costs in USD, and dates in ISO 8601. Import Cook Data reads that archive (the .zip or its cooks.json) back in, skipping any cook already on the device.

Photos aren’t part of the export (the archive notes how many each cook has), so they can’t be re-imported. Clear All Data permanently wipes every cook, session, reading, rub, probe, and fuel log — export a backup first.

19. Settings Reference

Open More → Settings.

• App Settings — Include graphs & photos in shared cooks (on by default).
• AI Cook Coach — choose the Coach Voice: Pitmaster (folksy) or Precise (data-first).
• Appearance — Theme: System, Light, or Dark.
• iCloud Sync — sync your cooks across your devices (Stoke Pro; usually needs a relaunch to take effect).
• Data — Export All Cook Data, Import Cook Data, and Clear All Data (see Exporting Your Data).
• Account & Billing — your plan status (Stoke Pro, Trial · Nd, or Free) and subscription management (see Stoke Pro).
• Support — links to the Website, Instagram, Tutorials, and Contact & Help.
• Legal — Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and Community Guidelines.

The app version is shown in the top corner of Settings.

20. Stoke Pro

Stoke is free to log cooks, run one live cook at a time, chart temps, use manual and supported wireless probes (from one brand), share, and export your data. Stoke Pro unlocks the advanced experience.

Pricing

• Premium Monthly — $4.99/month
• Premium Yearly — $39.99/year (best value)
• Each plan includes a 1-week free introductory offer.

On top of that, the app grants a 7-day free trial starting on first launch that unlocks every Pro feature — so a new user gets everything free for their first week, whether or not they subscribe.

What Stoke Pro adds

• AI Cook Coach + live-cook suggestions — live in-cook tips in your chosen voice, a graded post-cook report on every cook, and deeper trend analysis.
• Multi-pit cooks — run several pits at once and switch between them.
• Multi-protein cooks — every cut on one fire, each tracked on its own.
• Mix probes from any brand — MEATER, ThermoWorks, Fireboard/Yoder, and more on the same setup.
• Recipe templates — Cook This Again to restart any past cook, plus reusable Pit Plan Templates.
• Advanced stats & custom metrics — build your own metric cards on the Stats screen.
• Stoke on Apple Watch — the live glance on your wrist. (iPad & Mac coming.)
• iCloud Sync — keep your cooks in sync across devices.
• Community — post, download, upvote, comment, and DM in the recipe community.
• Add-split reminders for offset cooks.

Managing your subscription

Go to Settings → Account & Billing to see your status, tap Upgrade to Stoke Pro to open the paywall, or Restore Purchases if you reinstall. Manage in App Store deep-links to your subscriptions, where plans renew until cancelled and can be changed or cancelled anytime.

21. Tips & Troubleshooting

• “No probe data was recorded during this cook.” The cook ran live but no probe was connected and no manual readings were logged. Connect a probe, or use Log to hand-enter temps.
• Not getting notifications? Stoke needs notification permission for alerts, check-in reminders, and Coach heads-ups. If you declined, enable it in iOS Settings — the Alerts card shows a Notifications off banner with a shortcut.
• MEATER (or Fireboard) says sign-in expired. Open Probes and sign back in; your readings resume.
• My probe isn’t showing up when I add it. MEATER and Fireboard devices only appear while powered on. Take a MEATER out of the charger (or confirm the Fireboard is on Wi-Fi) and tap refresh.
• Maintenance keeps showing as due. Tap the task’s circle on the pit’s detail screen to mark it done — that resets its schedule.
• The estimated-length field is missing. It only appears once you own a manual probe (it’s what powers check-in reminders).
• Pop Out won’t turn on. Picture-in-Picture only works on a real device, not the iOS Simulator.
• Watch shows stale data. The watch mirrors your iPhone; keep the phone nearby with the live cook active. An Updated … ago note appears if data is older than a couple of minutes.
• Where did Probes / Pit Plan Templates go? They live under More → Equipment.

Questions or feedback? Reach us via the links in Settings → Support. Happy cooking. 🔥