Potwise sorts out the money after a home poker game. It tracks buy-ins and rebuys as you play, checks that the chips add up, and turns the mess of who-owes-who into a short list of payments.
It is not a poker game. It deals no cards, runs no tables, and never touches money: there is no payment feature in it at all.
Get help
Email hacsid@gmail.com and you will get a reply from a human, usually within two working days.
It saves time if you include:
- Your iPhone model and iOS version (Settings, then General, then About)
- The Potwise version (on your iPhone: Settings, then General, then iPhone Storage, then Potwise)
- What you expected to happen, and what happened instead
- A screenshot, if the problem is something you can see
Common questions
Does Potwise handle money?
No, and it has no payment feature at all. There is no payment provider, no in-app purchase, no wallet, and no link out to any payment app.
Players agree their buy-ins and settle up between themselves, however they normally do. Marking a line as settled updates the record and nothing else: Potwise has no way of knowing whether anything was actually handed over, which is why you tick each one off yourself.
Is Potwise a gambling app?
Potwise is rated 18+ and carries Apple's Gambling content descriptor. It is a record-keeping tool used alongside a privately arranged home card game, and 18+ describes its audience accurately.
The app itself deals no cards, runs or simulates no game, takes no wagers, holds no money and takes no rake or fee. It is a ledger: it records what people agreed away from the app, checks the totals balance, and works out a short list of transfers.
Where is my data stored?
On your phone. Potwise has no account, no sign-up, no server, and makes no network calls, so nothing is uploaded to us. If you back up your iPhone to iCloud or a computer, that backup includes Potwise's data, unless you have turned Potwise off in the list of apps your iCloud backup includes. See the Potwise privacy policy for the full detail, and the terms of use for what Potwise is and is not responsible for.
The totals do not match. What now?
That is Potwise doing its job. When you count the chips, it compares the total counted against everything that went in and tells you plainly if the count is over or short, before anyone pays anyone.
Usually it means a rebuy was not recorded, which makes the count come out over, or a stack was miscounted. Go back, check each player's buy-ins against what you remember, and correct them. If one player is still to count, Potwise offers them the remainder so the books balance.
Someone tapped Rebuy by mistake
Tap the minus button on that player's card to undo the last buy-in. It is designed for exactly this, because it happens in a noisy room.
A player ran out of chips and bought some from another player
Record it as a chip transfer. The seller is credited, the buyer is charged, and the settle-up accounts for it, so nobody ends up owing anyone privately outside the app.
Why does Potwise ask for Contacts access?
Only so you can pick the friends you play with instead of typing their names every week. iOS asks first, and you can allow all your contacts or only some of them. Potwise reads the contacts iOS lets it see, on your phone, so it can show you a list you can search.
It keeps only the people you tap: their name and, if they have one, one phone number, stored on your device. Potwise shows the number on the player's card and uses it to recognise that person if you add them from Contacts again. Beyond that, it is used only if you choose to text that person a link to Potwise. Potwise itself never uploads contact details, though like the rest of its data they are included in your own iPhone backups.
You can decline and type names by hand instead. Everything still works except the offer to text newly added players a link, and you can still send friends a link from Tell your friends in Potwise's Settings.
Can I show amounts in a currency?
Yes. 33 symbols are available and you pick one when you start a game. A new game starts with the symbol you used for your last game, or the one you have picked in Potwise's Settings since. Until you choose, Potwise suggests the symbol for your iPhone's region if it offers one.
It changes only how amounts are drawn. There is no conversion and no exchange rate: a 1,000 buy-in is stored as 1,000 whether it shows as "1,000" or with a currency symbol in front. Each game keeps the symbol it was started with. Choose Chips (no symbol) and amounts read as plain chip counts.
How do I keep my history if I change phone or delete the app?
Potwise keeps no copy on a server, so there is nothing we can recover for you. Deleting the app deletes its data from your iPhone. A backup of your iPhone to iCloud or a computer includes Potwise's data, so setting up a new iPhone from that backup brings your games across, and restoring your iPhone from a backup made before you deleted the app brings the data back.
Exporting a CSV gives you a spreadsheet of finished games, with one row for each player in each game. It is a record rather than a backup: Potwise cannot import it back.
Can two people track the same game at once?
Not in this version. One person tracks the game and shares the summary at the end. Shared, synced games need an account and a server, which Potwise deliberately does not have yet.
Found a bug, or want something added?
Send it to hacsid@gmail.com. Feature requests do get read.
About
Potwise is made by Siddhesh Rane, who also runs Omnitics, an AI demand generation agency. It started as a way to stop doing napkin arithmetic at 2am, which is the entire origin story.