Support

How Quenelle works, and how to reach a person.

Contact

Email james@tryquenelle.com. We read every message and aim to reply within a couple of business days. Include the email you sign in with and a short description of what happened, and we can usually answer in one reply.

How Quenelle works

Quenelle is health and the body, from the research: Controversial Habits, a series for the time you are driving, free to listen, and with Quenelle Pro a question by voice any time. It explains research; it is not medical advice.

• Series, written ahead. Each episode is written from research papers, each judged by its journal, how often it is cited and the kind of study it is, and an open textbook for the basics; nothing else. Every sentence that tells you something is checked, word for word, against a quote from the source it came from, and a claim its source does not support is cut before you hear it. Nothing is written from the model's memory.
• Experimental, never advice. Every episode is tagged Experimental: the research on these habits is early or limited, so an episode is information, not an endorsement. It ends on where the evidence stands and never tells you what to do.
• Two synthetic voices. Maya, the host, and Theo, the scientist, talk it through, and Maya reads the research's own words, word for word. Press play and it plays, with nothing for you to download or manage. Signed in, it remembers where you stopped in every episode, on every device; signed out, this phone remembers your place in the episode you were last playing.
• You can interrupt it. With Quenelle Pro, press the microphone, or the back button on your car or headset, and ask out loud, hands on the wheel. If the podcast already holds the answer you hear it in seconds. If it does not, it is looked up while the podcast plays on, and the answer arrives at the next pause. A press with nothing behind it — "never mind" — is simply left alone. Your questions and the answers are yours alone: no other listener sees them.
• It works in the car. CarPlay shows the podcast with big controls and the microphone a tap away. Your phone can stay in your pocket.

Subscription

• Listening is free. Every series in the App plays without a subscription.
• Asking questions out loud needs Quenelle Pro — $29.99 a month, with a one-week free trial for new subscribers. It covers up to one hundred spoken questions a month. Past those, asking pauses until your subscription renews for the next month, and everything keeps playing.
• Manage or cancel in Settings on your iPhone, under your name, then Subscriptions. Cancelling stops the next renewal and keeps your access to the end of the period you paid for.
• Restore purchases from Settings in the App if you have a subscription but the App does not see it — after reinstalling, or on a second device signed in to the same Apple Account.

Trouble

• A question was not heard. Ask again once the podcast is playing. In a loud car, the microphone sometimes hears only road noise; the app answers with silence rather than guessing at what you said.
• You cannot sign in. Listening needs no account; asking does. Sign in with Apple or Google, whichever you used first. If Apple sign-in fails right after reinstalling, revoke Quenelle in Settings under your Apple Account, then Sign in with Apple, and try again.
• A podcast is objectionable. On its page, open the menu at the top and press Report this podcast, or press and hold it on Browse: the App opens an email to us that names the podcast, and we look at every report.
• Something else. In the App, open Settings and press Report a problem, which opens an email to us with the App's version filled in, or email us; if it is about one podcast, include its title.

What a message means

These are the words the App shows when something is refused or goes wrong, and what each one means for you.

Asking a question

• “Subscribe to ask questions while you listen.” Asking out loud needs Quenelle Pro. Every podcast still plays without it.
• “You've asked a lot this month. This resets when your billing month does.” You have asked the one hundred questions a month the subscription covers. Listening carries on as normal.
• “Your question was lost: the server did not answer. Ask again.” The question left the phone but no answer came back. On CarPlay the same thing reads “Your question didn't go through. Ask again.”
• “Nothing was found for this one.” The question was looked up in the research and nothing that answers it could be quoted, so you are told so rather than given a guess.
• “Microphone is off” Every podcast still plays; asking out loud needs the microphone. Turn it on in Settings, under Quenelle.

Subscription

• “That didn't go through. You haven't been charged.” The purchase did not complete. Try again, or check the payment method on your Apple Account.
• “This purchase is waiting on a step outside the app, like a parent's approval. It'll unlock once that's done.” Apple is holding the purchase: Ask to Buy approval from your family organizer, a check by your bank, or a step Apple asked of you (new terms, a payment method to update). It unlocks by itself once that is done; if a request is declined, nothing is charged.
• “We couldn't confirm this purchase. If you were charged, Help & support in Settings will put it right.” Apple completed a purchase, but it could not be verified as a real App Store purchase. Email us from this page with the date and we will sort it out.
• “We couldn't confirm your subscription. It'll retry automatically.” The purchase went through with Apple, but our server could not record it yet. The App keeps trying; you do not need to buy again.
• “No subscription on this Apple Account.” Restore found no Quenelle Pro subscription on the Apple Account this phone is signed in to.
• “Temporarily unavailable. Please try again shortly.” Our server could not read your subscription just then. It is never treated as a missing subscription; try again in a minute.

Signing in and connecting

• “You've been signed out. Sign in again to continue.” Your session on this phone ended. Sign in with the same Apple or Google account and everything is where you left it.
• “sign-in is temporarily unavailable — please try again” Our server could not complete Sign in with Apple just then. Nothing is wrong with your account.
• “Can't reach Quenelle. Check your connection.” The phone could not reach Quenelle. An episode is downloaded whole before it plays, so one already playing carries on through a tunnel, but the phone keeps an episode for only ten minutes after Quenelle last confirmed it, and does not start one older than that without asking again. In a car it usually clears when the signal does; press Try again.

Your account

• Delete it any time from Settings in the app. It signs you out everywhere and erases your questions, the answers, the recordings of them, your listening progress and your phone's crash reports. We keep a deactivated record of the account, without your email, and our record of your subscription, which is a billing record; signing in again with the same account reopens it empty.
• What we keep and for how long is set out in the Privacy Policy. The short version: we keep the audio of a question for up to ninety days to check how well it was heard, and we never sell anything.