NoWaste - Food Inventory List Reviews

by _CLL_

I loved NoWaste and used it daily. Then I woke up this morning to find a new version which requires setting up a new account. My old (large) inventory of my fridge, pantry, two freezers, and spice cabinet are gone and unrecoverable. There is a way to import an inventory, but it requires having previously exported it in preparation for this update. There was no announcement within NoWaste , by email, etc., to let users know about this. Instead, it was buried in the update notes (which, if you—like me—have apps set to auto-update—will never see). It would take me hours to recreate the inventory (and, ironically, some food waste will be involved, as I have some things I only have an inkling of the expiration on in my now-vanished inventory). It is now understandably difficult to trust that spending those hours in NoWaste is a wise idea.

by Usedtoactuallylikethis

It takes many many hours of upfront and ongoing investment to set up and use NoWaste. It would be worth it, but it has proven so glitchy as to barely be usable at the best of times. (My husband finally swore it off a few months ago and said I’d have to do all the input and deleting myself, because it was so glitchy.)

But the real issue is that the developer decided to move the database to a new server this month, and in the process MANY users’ food was lost, including mine. This is apparently the users’ fault for not responding to some notification that the developer purportedly gave that they’d have to export and then import their food. I still have no idea how this “notification” supposedly happened (I have no emails, noticed no pop ups, saw nothing in NoWaste ), so it was either a 1-time unclear notification, or it was hidden well. Regardless, my food is now lost and many hours of my life wasted, and my $6 for NoWaste wasted.

Seriously, just use a google spreadsheet to track your food.... cause NoWaste is not worth the pain. The barcode scanning feature seldom works for our food, anyway.

Edit: apparently the “notification” to export your food was in the NOTES TO THE UPDATE DESCRIPTION IN THE APPLE STORE. As if anyone EVER reads those; all our apps auto update. What a joke.

by C.Hartmann

We signed up with NoWaste and also added the pro subscription for $5.99 per year.

NoWaste has some quarks but in general its a good app. I would say NoWaste deserves 4 stars, but support left us high and dry, so that gets them one star.

We have used NoWaste for about 6 months and have about 600 items in the list. All of a sudden when opening NoWaste , NoWaste greeted us with a welcome screen. This happened on all our iOS devices.

We tried resetting the password but never got the email. We contacted support and for several weeks we did not receive an answer. We emailed them again, another few weeks have gone by, still no answer.

Just as a test, we tried signing up as a new user with the exact same email address, a new account was created but all our items are lost and we cannot restore the $5.99 pro license. It seems our account was deleted!

I leave this review and it’s up to you to decide if you want an app where you enter a ton of products, spend a lot of time doing so and when there is a problem, support does not care and does not respond.

I am very, very disappointed.

by Big Ships

One week ago this would have been a 5 star rating, loved the organization and all the entry methods. We spent a great deal of time inventorying our freezers. A notice was out to upload everything to cloud before the update, and we did. The program updated and we are no longer recognized. Trying to enter your email and claiming you want to reset password results in the little spinny going around for hours and no reset link sent in the mail. I honestly don't think I have the patience to start from scratch knowing this developers lack of update skills may cause me to lose everything once again.

by Korppi8

I really like the idea behind NoWaste and have wanted to be more conscious about food waste. I got the pro to help with notifications but I’ve noticed that NoWaste will not actually communicate correctly with my phone’s notification system. While the notifications keep appearing in NoWaste , I’m not getting notified outside NoWaste (checked the settings too). It also seems to do double entries when scanning barcodes and putting in inaccurate expirations dates for certain items. The scan receipt feature also seemed to be stuck when I tried to use it (wasn’t even a long grocery list). I think NoWaste has potential but has quite a few bugs which I’m hoping will be fixed soon.

by Btelf

Such a shame. I liked this because the interface was cleaner, simpler, but it is glitchy with the expiration dates, categories, and editing the names of things. It automatically puts things in categories or freezer-pantry-fridge that I want to move to a different area, but if there’s any kind of quantity you can’t do that. I wish I had the option to build a grocery list directly from my inventory, not just recently added inventory. ...little annoyances here and there that pile up and make NoWaste frustrating. Bummed.

by WhoDean

My family has been using this app for several weeks now. Love the idea (WANT to live NoWaste ) and NoWaste is a great start, but it needs a lot of work.

Adding items isn't intuitive, for instance the system shows you defaults based on the last item you entered, but you have to re-enter or at least tap on each option (size, number of items, category) to set them for the current item. You have to scroll through the categories list each time, you can't search for the category. It takes NoWaste a significant time to sync your list each time you add or remove items. Need to partner with sure database of UPC codes so that users don't have to enter details of so many items. Lots of small bugs like that around adding/moving items means that it takes WAY too long to add your new items after grocery shopping. This friction will cause many potential users to give up.

It would be nice to interface with existing shopping list apps like Anylist. Instead this app offers its own inferior shopping list option. Stick with your core concept, providing access to the list of the food you have in your home.

There have been several app updates since we purchased it so at least the developer is actively working on it.

by Bob2554

I bought a subscription because I really liked the capability of NoWaste . It worked well, although a little crashy, for about a week. Barcoding was sort of ok, but not great, but I didn't mind manually entering pantry items. Functionality is very good when it works. I was able to enter more than 1600 items into a variety of locations. Then all of a sudden it stopped letting me add items. The other functions still work. After about a week to trying to enter more items and unsuccessfully trying to contact the author for support, I gave up and exported my data to an apple numbers spread sheet that is working ok for me. I would have hung in longer if I received any response from the support email address. Too bad, it has the potential to be a great app.

by JinxKitty

I love the idea behind NoWaste tho there are some glitches. I can understand that it wouldn’t have every barcode for everything. I can even understand that it wouldn’t have the correct expiration for every item, but can’t some items be correct!?
NoWaste keeps putting my dry beans in my fridge for some reason. Who stores dry beans in their fridge?
I can’t get it to read receipts. And it would be really nice if when I have a shopping list and I enter new items that match that the list would be linked somehow and check off on its own because I’m doing enough manually as it is. But no I have to go through one by one with the same screen to say whether its been wasted, eaten or just delete it.
I am still learning how to use NoWaste to its fullest potential but with so much manual entry work I worry about errors. Did I miss dates, is NoWaste changing them, are items in the right place, who puts dry beans in my fridge and frozen cauliflower in my pantry? Can it just get ONE expiration date right?

by Ageagainstthemachine

I like the concept, it’s well designed, not expensive (I upgraded), and I was excited to use it! So I scanned about 20 items in my pantry, went through and edited categories and amounts, and then clicked “add all” and NoWaste crashed and went I went back in none of the stuff I added saved. It probably only took about 5 to 10 minutes to do, but it was tedious and I was too frustrated to do it again. I probably could scan each item individually but then it would be even more tedious. Also: when you click “add all” and it actually does work, you get a message saying something like “added!” You’re supposed to click “ok” but no matter how many times you do the message won’t go away. Lastly: there isn’t an icon for oils. I use oils. In spite of all of this, I do like NoWaste , so I’ll keep it and hope for bug fixes.

by _Mystique_

NoWaste is has all the main features I am looking for and then some.

- meal planning option
- shopping list
- pantry (freezer, fridge and pantry)

I have few issues with NoWaste which is why it got 4 stars.

1. It seems to sync after every single change made. If I have my data off it just keeps waiting to update. I wish syncing would be done on the opening and closing of NoWaste with a manual option to sync on demand.

2. Also there is no prompt on the sign out feature. I touched it and I immediately got signed out. I wish there was a prompt for this.

What I wish NoWaste had:

- allowing item price as well as tax percent. This would definitely help with budgeting which is one of the reasons I searched for and got NoWaste.

by Snow Shark

I have used NoWaste for awhile and generally have liked it. I went to check my inventory and have been locked out of some locations. I paid a one time price for access to 3 pantries, 3 freezers, 3 refrigerators. Without any notice NoWaste has switched to a subscription and locked me out of seeing most of my inventory. This is an unfair business practice and I would not buy any app from this developer. It’s sneaky and malicious.

After emailing with the developer this problem has been resolved satisfactorily. It is a great app for keeping inventory and modifications were made quickly once they were aware of the problem.

by Equinecm

If you’re looking to get NoWaste, I would go ahead! It’s really great to track all your food items.

I’ve just recently downloaded NoWaste, and from what I can see it’s pretty great. Most of the bad reviews on here are pretty old and have been fixed already.

A few tips I have for the developers are:
- Add more categories!!! I find it a bit funny that you have a category for “Chocolate creme” (which basically means Nutella)but not for something as simple as baking ingredients or sauce. Some of the categories are a bit too specific as well, like flour. People usually don’t have multiple types of flour at once.
- Maybe make there be a way to eat some of a product but not all? For example, if I have 5 packages I could just check it off and it will move down to 4 packages or something.

Keep working on NoWaste! I love it so far and I think it will just keep getting better!

by A858DE45F56D9BC10

What separates NoWaste from its competitors, for me, is the fact that it is being actively updated by its developers. I think this is excellent, so great job to the developers who didn’t abandon this :)

NoWaste ’s UI is a bit clunky though. I wish it was more compact and menus/settings required less taps to access. The date selection/quantity selection is quite horrendous, with the option box being terribly tiny. The quantities of items should also accept custom values from the user.

by Abernie2303

I really discovered NoWaste looking for a way to track the food in my house currently, but I LOVE the “no waste” feature! I felt like I wasting a lot of food and want to do better about that to save money. And NoWaste made it SO easy! Only a few days in but I have already made efforts to eat soon-to-be expired foods and eat out less, since I have a clear picture of what is already at home. Thank you!!

by JumboTee

I got through cataloging almost my entire pantry with Free and decided to upgrade because I wanted to export. Am loving it so far.

My only ask is that you could have different expiration dates within each item so I don’t have to have 5 separate listings for each item in my stash. I’ve been keeping 1 listing and just using the most recent date, but there’s room for improvement there.

by Souperstar1233

My family uses NoWaste to track our food in our different refrigerators and freezers. NoWaste helps us plan our meals much easier, and know what we need to buy at the store in a pinch.

We purchased Pro soon after downloading, the barcode scanner is robust and having multiple inventories was very helpful.

As far as I can tell, NoWaste is unique in its features, UI, and function for food inventory. It’s the only one that kept a proper inventory when we were searching.

Been a user for a long time now, the latest versions (late 2020, early 2021) are even better and more functional. This is an example of an app that gets better with time, something that doesn’t always happen.

Keep up the good work!

by Griffen13

I downloaded NoWaste to try it out. I tried several others but they each had something that wasn’t quite what I was looking for. NoWaste has some flexibility that allows you to get a handle on your inventory. Though it may not be prefect for everyone as we all have a different idea on what we need an app to do. In my opinion it is close to what most of us need from this type of app.

Now that being said I did have a slight issue when upgrading to pro, which I like the ability to send to CSV by the way. It was having trouble upgrading, I sent an email advising of my issue and had a response in 24 hrs and the issue was resolved within 48 hrs.

Thank you for taking care of this issue so quickly.

by Jessicalouise

NoWaste might not be the most intuitive when you first open it up, but, stick with it for just a little bit and it gets easy! Brilliant way to track food, plan meals, and make shopping lists. It paid for itself the very first time it reminded me to eat some frozen kale that was about to expire. Also, from a moral/ethical standpoint I'm so happy to be reducing my food waste. I'd been throwing away a lot of food because I forgot I had it or missed the expiration date, and this is helping so much.

by Pakitt

NoWaste hangs when editing an item in the shopping list. It shows “updating” text with a spinning wheel and stops working.

NoWaste is clunky in many other aspects too.
For example: The shopping list shows items in the general overview together with “pantry” and “freezer”, but it will not show any of those items if you don’t select the exact date you have planned to buy the items. So there is no quick way to know what you need to buy when or a quick way to change the date you plan to buy something.
I set the language to English, but when I add groceries to a new meal, it will show a label in danish instead for the total added groceries in the overview page once I have added an item.

Sorry, but it seems to be that NoWaste needs a lot of debugging although the basic idea is a good one.

by Lcdrforbes

I did a lot of searching and this seems to be the best app for pantry organization. There are 3 locations ; freezer, fridge and pantry. Each location has only 3 sub-locations. I wish they were unlimited or at least way more than 3. Otherwise NoWaste has barcode ability to add items, track expiration dates as well as different locations. I haven’t seen all 3 together outside of NoWaste.

by Kasey1918

I am using NoWaste to keep up with food in my freezer. It is easy to set up and use! Until now food got “lost” in my upright freezer, but not now. I have not been using this app long but am finding it indispensable. I’ve already saved money according to the included tracker, and I have noticed it. No doubt about it, I am very pleased by this app.