NoWaste: Food Inventory List

I like the concept, it’s well designed, not expensive (I upgraded), and I was excited to use it! So I scanned about 20 items in my pantry, went through and edited categories and amounts, and then clicked “add all” and the app crashed and went I went back in none of the stuff I added saved. It probably only took about 5 to 10 minutes to do, but it was tedious and I was too frustrated to do it again. I probably could scan each item individually but then it would be even more tedious. Also: when you click “add all” and it actually does work, you get a message saying something like “added!” You’re supposed to click “ok” but no matter how many times you do the message won’t go away. Lastly: there isn’t an icon for oils. I use oils. In spite of all of this, I do like the app, so I’ll keep it and hope for bug fixes.

I love the idea behind this app tho there are some glitches. I can understand that it wouldn’t have every barcode for everything. I can even understand that it wouldn’t have the correct expiration for every item, but can’t some items be correct!? This app keeps putting my dry beans in my fridge for some reason. Who stores dry beans in their fridge? I can’t get it to read receipts. And it would be really nice if when I have a shopping list and I enter new items that match that the list would be linked somehow and check off on its own because I’m doing enough manually as it is. But no I have to go through one by one with the same screen to say whether its been wasted, eaten or just delete it. I am still learning how to use this app to its fullest potential but with so much manual entry work I worry about errors. Did I miss dates, is the app changing them, are items in the right place, who puts dry beans in my fridge and frozen cauliflower in my pantry? Can it just get ONE expiration date right?

Overall this is a useful app. My main goal in downloading it and getting the pro version (very reasonable since it’s a one time cost) was to get notifications of when food is about to expire so that we don’t waste as much. For the most part this app works, but there are some glitches that hopefully will continue to get fixed with future updates. For example, once in a while when you scan the barcode, the wrong expiration date pops up. There are still other times where it doesn’t recognize the type of food, and when you try to enter it manually, it doesn’t let you put an expiration date or puts the date that you enter as the expiration date. For this to be useful, the expiration dates have to be accurate. Overall though, I’m hopeful as I do think this will help me keep better track of our food and when it’s expiring. I haven’t used the receipt feature yet but I’m hoping that will work too.