A jester runs the jam kitchen. Crush down, seal across, and get the lid on before the jar boils over.
Jam Jar is a single-player game that runs entirely offline, so most questions are about the rules rather than about anything going wrong. The answers below cover almost everything. If yours is not here, write to us and we will reply.
Please include your device model and iOS version. We usually answer within two working days.
Two ways, and the difference is the whole game. Crush down: three or more of one fruit stacked upright in a column crush into jam and clear. Seal across: fill an entire row with a single fruit and that row seals into a jam layer, sinks out of the jar and counts toward the recipe.
That is correct. Horizontal groups do nothing unless they span the whole row. Only complete rows seal. Only upright stacks crush.
Swipe a piece toward a neighbour and the two trade places. A trade that makes no match is still allowed and still counts as a move — that is how you lay a layer down one piece at a time. Sugar cubes and cherry pits cannot be moved.
The neck of the jar. Every few moves more fruit pours in from the chute. If any column reaches the very top, the batch boils over and the pot is lost.
A cap tile on the board counts as whatever fruit it sits with, in a stack or in a layer. The Stir the top button spends one cap charge and shuffles the fruit in the top three rows. The button glows when the game notices you are stuck.
Crush fruit directly beside them. A sugar cube dissolves after one knock and a cherry pit splits after two. The gold pips on a pit show the knocks remaining. Neither will move, and a row holding either one cannot seal.
Meeting every goal in a recipe earns one star. Passing the recipe's second and third score marks earns the other two. Stars are what open new preserve shelves — coins alone are not enough.
Coins arrive when a batch is sealed, and again when you sell that jar at the market. They open new preserve shelves and buy charms, which change every batch you cook afterwards. Coins cannot be bought with real money; there are no in-app purchases of any kind.
One card turns each day and bends the rules of every batch you cook that day — doubling crushes, slowing the pour, banning caps, flooding the jar with sugar. There are fourteen cards. Playing on consecutive days builds a streak, and streaks pay out.
At most two local notifications a day: one when the new fortune card turns, and one if your streak is about to lapse. Nothing else, ever. Turn them off any time in Settings, or in iOS Settings under Notifications.
Open Labels from the kitchen, tap New label, then choose Camera or Library. Pick a shape and a colour, give the batch a name and save. Pin a label and every new jar wears it; you can also change the label on any jar from its page in the Pantry.
A resized copy is written into the app's own private folder on your device. The original in your photo library is never altered, and no picture is ever uploaded anywhere. Jam Jar has no networking code at all.
Open the iOS Settings app, find Jam Jar in the list and switch Camera or Photos back on. The app also offers a shortcut to that screen when it notices access is off.
| Feature | How it works |
|---|---|
| Dynamic Type | Every screen follows the system text size, including the help and policy pages inside the app. |
| Colour vision | All nine fruits differ by shape as well as colour, so the board reads without relying on hue. |
| VoiceOver | Each piece is announced with its name, column and row, and offers Trade up, down, left and right as custom actions. |
| Reduce Motion | Turning it on in iOS settles the jar without the bounce and stops the looping flourishes. |
| Bolder outlines | A switch in Settings thickens every edge in the game for higher contrast. |
| Dark Mode | Supported, and can be forced on or off with the Appearance setting. |
Your kitchen is stored in files on the device only — there is no cloud backup inside the app. Deleting the app, resetting the device, or using Empty Kitchen in Settings erases it permanently. A device backup made through iCloud or a computer will restore it along with the rest of the app's data.
That means the saved kitchen file could not be read. Tap Try Again first. If it keeps failing, Start a Clean Kitchen will clear the damaged save and begin again — this erases local progress.
No. There is no connection at any point. Everything — all forty-eight recipes, the fortune deck, the market and every document in the app — ships inside the download.
Jam Jar collects nothing, sends nothing and has no servers. The full policy is in the app under Settings › Privacy Policy, and also on this site.