Ingredient guide
Fragrance is often one word, parfum or fragrance, plus a tail of allergen names the brand has to print when they cross a threshold. Those names are not a full recipe. They are the part of the perfume the label is required to show. GlowCheck reads both the umbrella word and the allergen names. It does not claim the product will irritate you. It marks the pattern against the skin type you set.
On a sensitive profile, each matching fragrance name is tagged watch and pulls the score down. On oily, dry, or combination skin the same names are listed, without that sensitive-skin penalty. The app is showing the list. It is not saying the product will sting.
Parfum, fragrance, limonene, linalool, citronellol, geraniol, eugenol, cinnamal, benzyl alcohol, hexyl cinnamal, lavandula, citrus aurantium, mentha piperita, eucalyptus, melaleuca, and the words essential oil. Four allergen names on one label can be four hits.
A “fragrance-free” front label can still carry an essential oil or one of these allergens. The scan follows the INCI, not the claim on the front. The reverse is also true: a pleasant scent is not automatically a problem for every profile.
If you set sensitive skin, each of these hits pulls the score down and the ingredient is tagged watch. Acids and retinoids are watched on that profile too, so a scented acid toner can collect more than one caution. If you set oily, dry, or combination, the same fragrance names are listed so you can see them, and they do not take the sensitive-skin penalty. You can still skip a scented product. The app is showing you the list, not ordering you to avoid it.
Benzyl alcohol is in this fragrance group. It is not treated as a drying alcohol. Drying alcohols are a separate check, described on the alcohol denat page. Mixing those two up is how people throw out a cream for the wrong line on the label.
Parfum is usually near the end, because the dose is small. Small does not mean absent. People who react to fragrance often react at those low levels, which is why the allergens are declared at all. GlowCheck does not know your patch-test history. If you already know linalool stings, read that line yourself even when the overall score looks fine on a non-sensitive profile.
Essential oils are fashionable and still fragrance. Lavender, peppermint, tea tree, and eucalyptus on an INCI land in this group. A product marketed as “natural scent” is not unmarked.
On the result screen, a fragrance name can show up in two ways. Listed means the app saw it and left it on the record without the sensitive-skin penalty. Watch means the profile is sensitive, so the name is called out and the score moves down. The same photo can do both. Run it once on sensitive if you want the strict pass, and once on your real day-to-day profile if that profile is oily or dry. Do not set sensitive only to manufacture a scary score for a video, then buy or skip a product on that basis.
A long allergen tail under one parfum is several names, and each name in the fragrance group can count. Linalool plus limonene plus geraniol plus parfum is four hits, not one. That is why a scented cream sometimes drops harder than a person expects from the single word “fragrance” on the front.
Set the profile to sensitive if you want the strict reading, then photograph the ingredient panel in the INCI checker. Look for watch tags on parfum and the allergen names, not only the word fragrance. If your profile is oily and you care more about heavy oils than scent, read the comedogenic ingredients guide as well. The score can talk about both at once. The first scan is free, and it is not medical advice.