Make Shopping Fun Again With Any.do’s Smart Shopping List
iOS: There are so many task management apps out there that picking the perfect one for you is a task in itself that you probably want to keep track of in a to-do list or, frankly, a huge spreadsheet. However, if you are always stuck buying groceries from your family, a brand new feature that you find in the Any.do app could elevate it to the top of your (app) shopping list.
Before I showcase the awesome new Any.do shopping list feature, I have one little note. At the moment, you can only find it in the iOS or Android versions of the any.do app . The company says , that someday will be a web version of this tool.
In my opinion, it’s worth the wait.
First, make sure you have the latest version of the Any.do iOS app installed. Open it and find a new icon in the upper left corner that looks like a shopping cart:
Tap it and you will be prompted to “Check out the shopping list of the future” if this is your first time using this feature. Click Show Me to get started, and this is where the fun begins.
You will see a small text input that is pre-filled with some of the standard items you might want to get in the store: milk, eggs, bread, butter, etc. You can also enter your own product requests and feel free to clarify. when you do. I was glad to see that any.do correctly automatically suggested “Haribo gummy bears” after I entered only the first few letters of “Haribo”. Whatever your needs, click on items as they pop up to quickly add them to your shopping list.
Only you don’t add what you need to buy to one mega-popular shopping list like most task management apps. Instead, Any.do will automatically sort your products into categories. This means that when it comes time to shop at the store, you don’t have to run back to the fruit / vegetable aisle when you get to the bottom of your list and realize you’ve forgotten canned peas. It’s an incredibly handy feature that works pretty well – at least the app sorted everything in my big shopping list correctly.
You can also import items to your shopping list from your device’s clipboard. This is useful if you want exactly what you need for a specific recipe. I did find that recipes that add a dimension before the item names — for example, “1/4 cup cooked tomato sauce” — confuse Any.do’s sorting mechanism, which means the item falls into the “other” category. After I renamed the item to “Tomato Sauce”, the application sorted it correctly under the “Pantry” category.
Any.do makes it easy to create collaboration lists with other people like your roommates or family members. They’ll need their own Any.do accounts of course, but then you can all contribute to the same shopping list.
I recommend creating different shopping lists for each major store that everyone should visit, such as separate Trader Joe and Whole Foods shopping lists, so you don’t get confused about what and where to buy (if you’re picky). … And while you can’t assign items to specific people you’ve shared your list with (unless!), At least that doesn’t allow everyone to buy a loaf of bread on their way home when you only need one.