Use the shared family shopping list

Your household has one shopping list. Everyone at home sees the same list, and anyone can add to it or tick things off. You don’t need a meal plan to use it.

It lives in the meal planner:

• Meals tab, then Shopping list at the top. The card says how many things are left to get, and it is there even when your meal plans can’t load, such as in a shop with no signal.
• A meal plan’s own list has Open the household shopping list at its foot.

What’s on it

Things you add yourself, such as bin bags, milk or a birthday card. Tap Add an item. Only the name is needed. You can also give an amount, a unit and a note, like “the big pack”.

You can also ask Bric to add something, for example “Add handwash to my shopping list”. He adds it straight away.

Your meals’ ingredients. Any meal plan with a day in the next week puts its shopping list here, in the same aisles. Under each ingredient it says which meal it’s for, for example “for Tue’s Chicken curry”. If more than one meal needs it, you’ll see “+1” or “+2”.

If you swap or skip a meal on the plan, the list changes with it. You don’t need to copy anything across.

If you add something you already put on the list and haven’t ticked yet, the list adds the amounts together. You get one line and one tick. A line with a different note stays a separate line. Something you add that a meal also needs sits next to the meal’s line, and each is ticked on its own.

In shop order

The list has 26 aisles, in the order you walk round a UK supermarket. It starts where the shop does: fruit and veg first, then the bakery, meat and fish, and the chilled aisles. After those come the long aisles of pasta, tins and sauces, then drinks, the freezers, and the household things. Other is always at the very end.

Each ingredient has one place, whichever recipe asked for it. For example, soy sauce is under World Foods for every meal. Anything measured two ways is one line too. Olive oil in tablespoons and in millilitres adds up in millilitres, and “garlic cloves” and “garlic” are one line of garlic.

When you add something, the aisle says Auto — by its name unless you choose one. The list files it by that name: bin bags under Household, nappies under Baby & Toddler, milk next to the recipes’ milk. Anything it can’t place goes under Other.

Check the cupboard

Oils, spices, salt and pepper the recipes need are folded away at the foot of the list under Check the cupboard, because most kitchens have them already. Open it to see them, then tick or remove them like any other line. These lines don’t count towards the number left to get.

Anything you add yourself stays in its aisle. If you typed olive oil, you have run out of it.

Ticking things off

Tap a line to tick it off. Everyone sees the tick. Two adults in two different shops, or one at home checking the cupboard, stop buying the same things twice. Ticks appear on the other person’s phone within moments.

A tick on a meal’s ingredient is also a tick on that meal plan’s own list, so the two always agree.

When you tick the last thing on a list of three or more, a small card says That’s the shopping done. It appears once a day. Ticks made on someone else’s phone don’t show it on yours.

When you’re back from the shop

From version 1.17.0 of the app, a bar stays at the foot of the list whenever anything on it is ticked, however far down you’ve scrolled. It says how many things are ticked, for example “6 ticked”, and has Remove ticked. One tap takes every ticked thing off the list, your meal plan’s ingredients too, and leaves everything that isn’t ticked exactly as it is. Those ingredients come off the way Remove takes one off, so you can put them back from the meal plan. A note says how many came off, for example “Removed 6 things”, with Undo to put them all back, ticks included. Undo still works if you’ve gone back to the meal planner, for as long as the note is showing.

In that version the ⋮ menu has Remove ticked too, with the count, and Done shopping…, so both are a tap away wherever you are on the list. The ⋮ menu is then the only place for Done shopping: there’s no longer a button for it under the count. It works just as described below. Clear ticks there is called Untick all, which is what it does.

Remove ticked takes off what your phone shows ticked when you tap it. Something someone ticks on another phone at that moment stays on the list, ticked. Something you can see ticked that someone has just unticked comes off with the rest, and Undo puts it back unticked.

• Done shopping… (under ⋮) is there once anything is ticked. On an older version of the app it is a button under the count. It finishes the shop: everything ticked comes off the list, your meal plan’s ingredients too. Those come off the way Remove takes one off, so you can put them back from the meal plan. Then it asks about the things you added and didn’t get:

  • Carry over to the next list keeps them on the list, marked Carried over, until they’re bought. It’s chosen to start with.
  • Leave them off takes them off the list, whoever added them. The note after it has Undo, to put them back.

  Your meal plan’s ingredients that you didn’t get aren’t part of that choice, and they never come off this way. As the app says, “A meal plan’s ingredients stay on the list while their meals are still to come.” A note then says how the shop went, for example “Shop done. 4 things carried over to the next list.”

  On an older version of the app, Done shopping takes off only the things you added and ticked.

• Untick all (under ⋮) unticks everything, for the week you shop twice. Nothing is taken off the list. An older version of the app calls it Clear ticks.

• Clear the list… (under ⋮) starts the list again when you’re done with it. Everything on it comes off, ticked or not, whoever added it, and that includes your meal plan’s ingredients and the cupboard’s oils and spices. It asks first, and says how many things will go, for example “Clear all 14 things?”. A note says how many came off, with Undo to put everything back as it was, ticks included. Undo still works if you’ve gone back to the meal planner, for as long as the note is showing.

A meal plan’s ingredients aren’t deleted when you clear the list. They come off the way Remove takes one off, so swapping or skipping a meal doesn’t bring them back. If you want one back after the note has gone, open the meal plan: they’re under Removed (2) · Show, at the foot of its list, with Put back. Anything that was added to the meal plan’s own list by hand is deleted, like the things you added here, and only Undo brings it back.

Clearing the list takes off what your phone was showing when you cleared it. If someone adds something on another phone at that moment, it stays on the list: you never saw it, and it wasn’t counted. Only the phone that cleared the list gets Undo.

Changing or removing a line

Every line has a ⋯ at its end. Tapping the line itself still ticks it.

• Edit… changes the name, the amount, the unit, the aisle or the note. If you edit a meal’s ingredient, it changes on the meal plan too, and your amount takes the place of the recipes’ amount for as long as a meal on the plan needs it. A skipped meal still counts, so skipping it and bringing it back doesn’t add the recipe’s amount on top of yours. If you swap in another meal that needs the same thing meanwhile, check your amount covers that meal too. Once you swap away every meal that needs it, your line stays as one you added yourself, and a meal you swap in later adds its amount to yours.
• Remove takes the line off, because you have it already or don’t need it. A note says Removed, with Undo in case it was the wrong line.
• Open the meal plan, on a meal’s ingredient, takes you to the plan it comes from.

An ingredient you remove stays off when you swap or skip a meal, for as long as a meal on the plan still needs it. A skipped meal still counts, so bringing it back doesn’t put the ingredient back on the list. Once you swap away every meal that needs it, the removal is forgotten, and a meal you swap in later that needs it adds it again. To put one back yourself, open the meal plan: Removed (2) · Show, at the foot of its list, shows what was taken off, and Put back returns it.

Removing a line on one phone removes it on every phone in the household.

On the meal plan

Each meal plan also has its own shopping list, at the foot of the plan, with just that plan’s ingredients. It works the same way, with the same aisles, ticks, Edit…, Remove and Add an item. Anything you add there stays when you swap a meal or regenerate the plan, along with its tick. Open the household shopping list, under it, takes you to the list with everything on it.

Clearing the household list clears the meal plan’s own list too, because they’re the same lines. Its ingredients are under Removed, ready to put back.

Related

Plan a week of meals is where the meals’ ingredients come from.