"Yoghurt" is not an item. It is a family argument waiting in aisle four. Greek or plain, the big tub or the small ones, the brand on offer or the one we actually like? For years the answer arrived as a phone call from the shop, me standing in front of forty yoghurts with the phone on my shoulder, my wife describing a lid colour. Listo has had two small things on every item for a while now that ended those calls in our house, and I keep meeting people who do not know they are there: a note, and a photo.
Both live on the item itself, not on the list. Open any item and you will see a speech bubble and a camera. The bubble is for a note: "the one with the blue lid", "two if they are on offer", "not the lactose-free one again". The camera is for the thing itself: snap the empty pack before it goes in the bin, or the shelf label from last time, and the next person sees exactly what to pick up.
A note says which one
Notes are short, up to five hundred characters, and they are a conversation, not a field. Anyone on the list can add one, and each note shows who wrote it. On the list, an item with notes gets a filled speech bubble with a count, so you can tell at a glance that there is something to read before you reach for the shelf. Notes travel with the item: when the list syncs, the people you share it with get a notification that someone added a comment, and a tap on it takes them straight to that item.
One small thing I am proud of: you can write the note while you are still typing the item, before you have even pressed Enter. For a long time that was the one moment a note could get lost, because the item did not exist yet. It does now. Type "paprika", open the bubble, write "the sweet one, not the smoked", press Enter, and both arrive together.
A photo shows it
A note tells you which one; a photo lets you find it. Supermarket shelves are a wall of near-identical packaging, and the fastest way to the right one is a picture of the right one. Tap the camera on an item, take a photo or choose one from your gallery, and a small image icon appears on the row for everyone on the list. Tap the icon to see it full size. The person at the shelf holds the phone up, looks for the match, done.
It works the other way too. The person shopping can photograph what they found when there are three plausible candidates, and the person at home answers in a note. That is still a conversation, but it is a short one, and nobody has to describe a lid.
Where the pictures live
A photo on an item is shared with the people who share the list, so it has to go through my server; it cannot stay only on your phone the way a private list can. Here is what that means in practice.
How to use them
- Open an item on any list, yours or a shared one, by tapping its name.
- Tap the speech bubble to write a note. It appears on the row with a count, and the others get a notification.
- Tap the camera to attach a photo: Take Photo or Choose from Gallery. An image icon appears on the row; tap it to see the picture full size.
- At the shelf, read the note, look at the photo, pick the right one, tick it off. The person at home sees the tick and, if you took a photo of what you found, the photo too.
If you are sharing lists with someone who has not noticed the bubble yet, this is the post to send them. And if you have a note on an item that still caused a phone call, I would like to hear it: support@rolisto.com. Half of Listo's best behavior started as one of those mails. If you are new to sharing, Shop together covers how lists are shared in the first place.
— Andrei