QuickAdvice: Get Your Shopping List Organized With Items App
Items ($0.99) by Ideas IO Ltd. is an app designed to help you get your grocery list organized by the various stores you may go to on a regular basis.
Unless you are purely devoted to getting your groceries and shopping done at one single store, you most likely go to several stores for different reasons. Items is designed to help you organize your groceries and shopping by just that - store.
To add a new item to your shopping list, just hit the '+' button at the bottom menu bar. Type in your item - if it's a common, basic item, results will start popping up as you type, which can be selected to save you from typing it out. Recently added items will be displayed if you don't type, of course only if you've entered in items before.
Enter your item and then you can enter in the quantity you need, or leave it blank if there's no specific number. Now comes the best part - you can begin adding your shops with the '+ Shop' button. Once you add a store, it will show up below the quantity keypad for you to select. Once a store is selected (or Any Store if you don't care), you'll be taken back to the main screen with your grocery list.
Once you get a couple of items in and pick certain stores for items, you will find the list selection option (first button on bottom menu bar) to be extremely useful. The button will pop up with a little menu that displays your various lists by store. Included is a little number badge on each list to show you at a glance how many items you need to pick up at a certain location. Selecting one of the store lists will filter out you groceries, so this is great if you frequent various stores.
Once you get an item, tap off the check box to mark it off. The little eye button will hide all completed items so the list will become less cluttered. This feature is great to help you keep focused on what's remaining.
Did you change your mind about something, or everything? Swipe on an item to bring up a delete button, or do a batch delete by checking stuff off and hitting the fourth button and selecting 'Delete all checked items'. Or just erase everything from existence by hitting that bright red 'Delete all items' button. I found the button icon to be an odd choice, since it represents what is normally a 'Share' option in other apps. This icon could cause confusion, and I believe a better icon for a 'delete' option would be a trash can. Just a note to the developer..
Speaking of sharing, if you were wanting a grocery list that you could share with your spouse or whatever, then you won't find it here. This could be a glaring problem for you if you are dependent on sharing and splitting the responsibility of the grocery list with your spouse. But if you are just shopping alone, this app serves you just fine.
The settings in the app just allow you to manage your shops and pick from two languages for the suggestions language. There's also an About, Send Feedback, and Help section if you need them.
Items provides a great way to organize your groceries by store for those that aren't devoted to one store. Different stores carry different things, so this would not be a rare thing among potential users.
The only thing that needs to be added to the app is the ability to share your grocery lists, which is pretty common amongst spouses and families.
The icon for deleting items needs to be changed to the common trash can icon to avoid misleading people that there may be a sharing option.
But for a buck, this is a great grocery list app to check out if you have several different stores that you go to for various items.
