🥫 Pantry
What’s in your fridge, freezer and cupboards. Recipes tick off what you have, and the grocery list leaves it off.
Meals → Pantry
Adding Things
- Type it: “2 cans black beans” or “milk” in the box at the top, then Add. It goes where you keep things like it (meat to the fridge, snacks to the shelf).
- Quick Add: one tap for things your family usually buys and doesn’t have yet.
- 📷 Add from Photos Premium: take a picture of a shelf or the fridge, or of a grocery receipt. You check the list before anything’s added. On a shelf photo, each item shows how sure the reading is: a green ✓ for sure, a yellow dot for worth a look, a red dot for a guess (with what to check). Fixing one marks it checked.
- Type or Paste a List (under Add from Photos, free): paste a shopping list, one item a line or separated by commas.
- From the grocery list: after shopping, Add to Pantry puts away what you ticked.
You don’t have to list everything. Start with what you cook with most. Salt, pepper and water are always counted as on hand.
Amounts and Running Out
- − and + change an amount by a sensible step. Everyday items are counted the way you buy them: butter by the stick, milk by the gallon, broth by the carton, pasta by the box.
- A gold Low tag means you’re nearly out. Tap it to put the item on the grocery list.
- Oils, spices, vinegars and condiments just count as “have it”: any amount is enough for a recipe.
- × marks it out. For a few seconds a green Add to List button takes its place, to put it straight on the grocery list. Then it moves to Restock on Groceries (Pantry’s last line says how many ran out, with a link there).
- Restock is a row of buttons under the Groceries add box: tap one to put it on the list. Anything left there for 3 months is cleared out on its own, and an item stays out of Restock while it’s on the list or you have something like it in stock (whole milk for milk).
The Back of the Fridge
Milk, snacks and bread get used up without a recipe, so AprèsSchool learns how often your family buys each thing (from receipts and grocery lists you put away). Once something has been bought a few times, and it’s well past when you usually buy it again, it’s probably gone. Once a week, Pantry asks Check the back of your fridge?: a short list of those, all ticked. Untick anything you still have and tap Confirm: the rest move to Restock, and the app learns from what you kept. Auto-approve from now on moves them to Restock on its own each week; Turn this off stops it. Change either in Settings → Meals → Back-of-the-Fridge Check. Something a planned dinner needs is never on the list.
Milk, bread, berries, fresh meat and other food that keeps only days works one more way: when you buy it again, the new one replaces what was in your pantry instead of adding to it, since the old one is gone by now. Bought twice in a few days, both count.
Renaming and Moving Things
Tap an item’s name to rename it. Rename it to something you already have and the two become one, with their amounts added (2 cans and 3 cans of beans make 5; 4 oz of butter is one more stick). When they can’t be added, the amount you already had is kept and the message says so; Undo puts both back. Under the box, Move To sends it to the Fridge, Freezer or Pantry. With lots of items, each place is grouped by kind (Dairy, Produce, Snacks…); the filter box finds anything by name, kind or place.
What Cooking Takes Out
When you mark a dinner Cooked on Home (or tap ✓ Finish Cooking in Cook mode), its ingredients come out of the pantry. Bottles stay (oils, spices, soy sauce, dressings: one dinner rarely finishes them), an opened can is used up, and sauces a dinner usually empties, like marinara or salsa, lose what the recipe calls for. A skipped dinner, or one no one marks, takes nothing.
Recipes check the pantry for you: on a recipe, a green tick means you have it, yellow means some but not enough. What other planned dinners need is set aside first, so two recipes don’t both count on the same pound of beef.
Grocery Receipts Premium
Reading receipts is part of Premium, and counts toward your family’s 60 receipts and emails a month (shared with takeout receipts and emailed events). Without Premium, your family’s first 5 are read free, to try it.
Forward a store’s emailed receipt to [email protected], or take a photo or screenshot with Add from Photos. A line at the top of Pantry says “Your receipt is waiting · Review”. Check the list (untick anything that isn’t food, fix names or amounts), then Add to Pantry.
- Everything on the receipt comes off your grocery list, ticked for the pantry or not.
- Each item says where it goes: “Joins your Ground beef”, or “New in your pantry”. When you have something named like it, Use That Name keeps it one item.
- Things you already put away from the grocery list aren’t added twice, and if most of a receipt was added in the last few days, the review says so before you add it again.
- Settings → Groceries → Snacks & Drinks in Pantry: Don’t Track leaves chips, bars and drinks unticked.
- Closing the review keeps it waiting, with your changes, until you add it or discard it.
- Some stores’ emails (like Instacart’s) don’t list every item yet; we’ll say so instead of adding half a receipt.
Still Stuck?
Email [email protected] and we’ll get back to you. Or see all help articles.