Support

I changed phone. How do I get my purchase back?

Sign in to the same Apple Account on the new iPhone, then follow this path in the app:

Home screen → the gear at the top right → Full version → Unlock everything → the purchase screen opens → Restore a purchase, under the purchase button.

The Full version section is only there while the app is locked. If you no longer see it, the app is already unlocked on this iPhone and there is nothing to restore.

Restoring asks the App Store, so it needs a connection. If the store cannot be reached, the app locks nothing in the meantime — you keep access until it can answer.

What is free and what is paid?

Free, permanently:

• The calculator and its 8 methods — hechrachi, gadol, katan, siduri, atbash, albam, kidmi, perati — showing the calculation letter by letter.
• The Daily Gate.
• Your own name in Hebrew letters.
• Act 0, the silent table, and Act 1 — no numeric table is handed to you at any point; you deduce the values.

The purchase unlocks: the acts after the second and their Vessels, the full Codex — 127 words with their meanings — every word spoken in Hebrew, the Proof, and it stays ad-free and offline.

One purchase, on every device signed in to the same Apple Account.

I want a refund.

Apple sells the app and Apple handles refunds. Go to reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in with your Apple Account, find the purchase and choose to request a refund.

We cannot issue a refund, cancel a charge or see your payment details — none of that reaches us. Do write to us anyway if something went wrong: a refund is Apple's business, but a bug is ours.

I hear nothing.

There are two switches, and the one inside the app wins over the phone.

• In the app: the gear at the top right → Sound and colour → Sound. When this is off, everything is silent, spoken words included.
• On the phone: the silent switch on the side (or Silent mode in Control Centre) silences the clicks and the chimes. Spoken words are still heard — a gate that asks you to write down what you hear has to be answerable on a silenced phone.

So: hearing nothing at all points at the switch inside the app. Hearing the words but not the clicks is the silent switch, and it is intentional. Also check the volume with the phone's side buttons while the app is open.

Sha'ar never interrupts what you were already listening to.

Can I lose my progress?

Yes, and this is a real limitation worth stating plainly: your progress lives on the device and nowhere else. There is no account and no cloud sync. Deleting the app erases your Codex, your progress and your best score, and reinstalling starts you again at Act 0.

Your purchase is not affected: it is attached to your Apple Account and comes back with Restore a purchase.

A full iPhone backup made before deleting (iCloud backup, or a computer backup) contains the app's data, so restoring the whole phone from that backup also brings the progress back. There is no per-app sync between two iPhones.

Is my data sent anywhere?

No. No account, no sign-up, no analytics, no ads, no tracking. What you play, what you have worked out and the name you typed stay in your iPhone.

The app works entirely offline. The only network exchange is the one a purchase requires: the App Store, which tells the app whether this Apple Account owns the full version.

Read the privacy policy

Why can I only play the Daily Gate once?

Because a daily puzzle that can be retried says nothing. The Daily Gate is one gate, identical for everyone, changing at midnight UTC, with a single attempt. Once it is closed, it is closed until the next day.

Not to be confused with the Proof, in the settings: that one is five gates with nothing displayed, nothing to buy and no second try — and it changes no score.

Why does it require iOS 26?

Sha'ar was written for iOS 26 and uses that version's interface toolkit throughout. Supporting earlier versions would mean maintaining a second version of nearly every screen. There is no build for older iPhones.

iPhone only, portrait only: the path, the gate and the altar are built for one thumb in a portrait column. There is no iPad version.

How does the app treat the divine Name?

The Name יהוה is never used as a scored word and is never spoken aloud. How it is displayed is your choice: as written, יי, יקוק, or ה׳.

The gear at the top right → The divine Name.

The substitution is applied on screen only. The values shown remain those of the letters as written — substituting inside the data would make the arithmetic wrong, which would be the worst of both worlds.

Why is one word never spoken?

The Codex holds 127 words and 126 of them are voiced. The one missing is the Name, excluded from the audio for the same reason it is excluded from scoring. The speaker button simply does not appear on it.

Who or what is the voice?

The words are spoken by a text-to-speech model, generated once and shipped inside the app — which is why the audio works offline and why nothing is transmitted while you listen.

What is read out is the vocalised form of each word, which the app never displays: written without vowels, שער could be read sha'ar, a gate, or se'ar, hair. If a pronunciation sounds wrong to you, please report it — see below.