I’m looking for a good way to share grocery lists in my household. Currently we’re using Grocy but it has too much bells and whistles.
It’s really nice that Grocy suggests known products and can be used with the android app. But the process of adding new products feels a bit tedious.
I’m curious what other setups there are. Any suggestions?
My wife likes AnyList so I use it too. If you’re looking for privacy-focused group lists I would suggest Home Assistant to-do lists (assuming you’re running Home Assistant already).
We use anylist and it’s pretty good, except for the lube and buttplugs that someone keeps adding to the grocery list.
We’ve been using KitchenOwl (on f-droid) for a few months and we’re hapoy with it.
Link for reference: https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.tombursch.kitchenowl/
This is the best suggestion so far. Thank you, will be checking it out.
My wife and I use SimpleNote. I know it’s not a proper grocery app but it works really well. One person can create the grocery list initially then share with another. Either of us can then add to the list if we think of things we need or tick the box if we have bought it. Instantly updated on each others tablets, phone, desktop automatically. It’s free too!
My family uses a custom Todo list on home assistant. I’ve got a separate dashboard of items we can just click to add to the grocery list, and then when shopping, checking them will move them out of the way. Very convenient, quick, and shared. So if you use HA, it might be good option, especially since you’re wanting something simpler (I was in the same boat)
that is an idea I might take :) how does this handle being offline? for example i sometimes lose connection in same stores here, but I still need to at least see the entries on the list :)
Hmm that’s actually something I hadn’t thought about, but yeah it probably wouldn’t work for an offline mode… If the app is already open, maybe it would work, but I’m not 100% sure. In general, it does require internet to connect to your home assistant (my phone is setup with wireguard to VPN into mind so it’s not internet facing). So yeah unless it can be used during those random connection drops, maybe not a perfect option :(
oh ok. I am using Nabu Casa Cloud for mine so i am always online via cloud. i tested it with enabling flight-mode and the app goes directly to the disconnected state. Altought the app I developed for a share grocery-list has the same issue, so I will give HA a try anyway :) so still a good recommendation 😀👍
I’ll add another vote to how good Google Keep is for this, but as this is a privacy community, I’m not sure that is a suggestion that you want to hear.
I’ve also had good luck sharing documents with Syncthing, but because we tend to only have it sync on wifi it didn’t work as well for groceries specifically because you can’t add items to the list after the person shopping has left the home and expect them to see them.
Recently started using Appflowy for this, as a replacement for shared Apple Reminders/Notes.
An app named “Bring!”. It’s pretty barebones, the only few features in it are
- shared list
- organise items by category
- recipe ingredients (as in save the ingredients for a recipe and then add the recipe to add all the ingredients to the list)
It’s pretty much all we need.
Yep, this is what we use. I always found the others too prescriptive. I don’t need to add the type, size or brand of cheese, I just want to put cheese, and me or my wife knows what sort of cheese to buy.
If we need something specific, you can add that detail too.
Super quick, super simple. I would love a self hosted alternative, bit there is nothing as simple that I have found.
i use https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.tombursch.kitchenowl/ And once you set it up with all your products, it becomes really easy to manage the household.
Ome thing I don’t quite like about kitchenowl is how the grocery list doesn’t really seem to allow entering amounts of stuff, which is especially annoying when you try to shop for ingredients for a recipe. Otherwise it’s a phenomenal app in terms of unifying cookbook recipes as well. The autosummaties also work quite well, it seems.
Removed by mod
We have a really nice pad of scrap paper held together with a clip that stays on a magnet on the fridge with a pen. Works great. Everyone that comes in our house can read it if they choose however.
We use Google Keep.
I haven’t seen Our Groceries listed yet. I don’t know Grocy so I don’t know how this one compares, bells-wise, but it’s pretty straightforward, you can share a list with any number of users, and manage/add/edit/remove lists and items via a web app or mobile app.
I’ve sent the devs more than one feature suggestion / bug report, and they were impressively responsive and forthcoming.
You might also be able to make that work with syncthing 🤔
You can use https://webxdc.org/ apps with XMPP or Deltachat and shared grocery or task lists are a common use-case.
Buy Me a Pie! https://buymeapie.com/ It is free for limited use; you need to pay for syncing and more than one list IIRC. But they do have lifetime subscription options which I always go for. I’m not sure how android works, but on iPhone it supports family sharing so you only have to pay for one subscription for your family.
Nextcloud notes, but the setup isn’t obvious:
- Create a list with user A
- Share the list .md file from the Notes folder via regular Nextcloud Files to user B
- As user B, move the shared note file to the Notes folder in the Files app
And you have a shared note. The Notes folder refers to the folder containing the user’s note files, not sure what the English name is.
Not sure how well concurrency is handled, as Notes doesn’t really support sharing, but if it’s for groceries, I doubt it’s a frequent issue. Has been working well for 2 years now.
I use todo lists for groceries. So getting things setup on nextcloud and then mobile devices with any caldav compatible app is pretty easy. We have a couple shared lists.
You can use tasks.org for android and reminders for iOS.
This is what I do too.
It drives me crazy that notes does not reorganize the list when you check things, but that’s probably because it’s just markdown. My wife also refuses to use it. Carnet is the google keep like alternative that I think would work for me, but the sharing isn’t working currently, whenever the note is updated the share is removed.
