There used to be a running joke in my house that anytime we tried to plan groceries together, we’d somehow end up making things worse. The fridge was practically a museum of duplicates. Someone always grabbed the wrong cereal, and someone else always forgot something important. It wasn’t that we were careless. It was just the usual chaos of too many people and too many half-finished lists.
Somewhere between frustration and giving up, I found Bring!, a grocery list app that claimed to make shopping as a team less painful. I didn’t expect much at first and thought it was just another to-do list with a fancy interface. But after using it for some time, it seems like we’ve actually hacked our grocery shopping—precisely what apps designed to make grocery planning less chaotic promise to do.
Setup takes two minutes
And collaboration starts immediately
Getting started with Bring! is quite straightforward. The app guides you through three simple steps before you can begin shopping.
First, you’ll name your list. It gives you a few suggestions, but you can call it whatever fits your routine. I went with “Home Groceries,” though you could easily make separate lists for different items. Maybe one for groceries, another for pharmacy items, or even one specifically for party supplies.
Next, Bring! helps you add your loyalty cards so you can keep them all in one place. The screen shows five color-coded retailer icons and a big scanning area with a barcode symbol. Tap “Scan card,” point your camera at any of your store cards, and the app will save them digitally.
In the final step, you can invite others to your list through WhatsApp, Messenger, email, or any other sharing option your phone supports. There’s even a field where you can type in someone’s contact information directly. And if you prefer to work solo initially, there’s a “Use shopping list alone” option at the bottom.
Once setup is complete, the app presents a brief tutorial showcasing its traffic light urgency system. You’ll see illustrations of a chocolate bar, cheese, and a water bottle, each demonstrating how the color-coding works. But I’ll get into that part a bit later.
- Price model
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Freemium
- Platform
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iOS/iPadOS, Android, Web
A visual interface that makes sense
Color-coding my way out of chaos
After setup, you land on your main list, and this is where Bring! really shows off its smart design. You’ll find categories like “Fruits & Vegetables,” “Bread & Pastries,” etc., each expandable to reveal a whole lineup of familiar items waiting to be added.
A search bar sits at the bottom, ready for anything you type. The app already comes packed with hundreds of items, each represented by a playful little icon. Tap one, and it slides onto your list with a smooth, satisfying animation.
Instead of drowning you in text, everything is laid out as bright, friendly tiles with little icons that make the list actually fun to look at. The red tiles sit at the top, marking the most urgent items, while the rest fall neatly below.
Below the main list, there’s a “Recently Used” section that displays items you’ve previously added but checked off, like canned tomatoes, spaghetti, and squash. These appear in green tiles, ready to be quickly re-added to your active list with a single tap.
If you share the list with others, everyone sees changes in real time. There’s no need to refresh, resend, or double-check anything.
Customization that makes each item work for your household
Milk for me, oat milk for them, peace for everyone
Bring! goes way beyond just listing item names. When you tap on something, a neat little panel slides up from the bottom of the screen, giving you more control over how you shop. At the top, there’s a space to specify quantity. So if I’m adding milk, I can type in “2 liters,” and that note appears right on the main tile for easy reference.
Just below that are three handy buttons that help fine-tune how urgent something is. You can mark an item as “Urgent” if it’s a must-buy, tag it as “Offer” if you’ll only grab it when it’s on sale, or choose “If convenient” when it’s not a big priority. These small tags make a big difference, especially when someone else is doing the shopping and you want to avoid the endless back-and-forth messages.
Scroll down a little further and you’ll find a few more useful options under Settings. You can switch out the default icon for something your household recognizes more easily, add a photo of a specific brand or product, move the item into another category if you think Bring! misplaced it, or even shift it to a completely different list.
Recipe inspiration that actually leads to action
Turning scrolls into actual dinners
The “Inspiration” tab, tucked away in the bottom menu, is where Bring! stops being just a shopping list and starts feeling like a meal planner. When you open it, you’ll see two filters at the top: “All” and “My recipes.”
In the “All” section, Bring! serves up a scrolling feed of meal ideas paired with gorgeous food photos. The first one you’ll usually see is “Sunday Brunch by Bring!,” showing a cozy spread of breakfast favorites. Each recipe card comes with a heart icon to save it, a “See recipe” button that links out to the full version, a “Share” button, and the real deal—“Add Items.” Tap that, and every ingredient from the recipe drops straight into your shopping list, no copy-pasting or guesswork needed.
“My recipes” is where you get to be creative. Tap the green plus button, and you can build your own template from scratch. Add a photo, name your recipe, write a quick description, and even include a link to where you found it online. Then you divide the ingredients into two groups—things you need to buy and things you usually already have. It’s a small but clever touch that keeps your shopping list from being cluttered with stuff that’s already sitting in your kitchen.
Once you save a recipe, it stays in the app forever, ready to load onto your list whenever you feel like making it again. This feature quietly makes planning meals feel less like a chore and more like something to actually look forward to—very much in the spirit of apps that turn recipes into shopping lists.
Grocery peace is possible, and I have proof
What I love most about Bring! is its focused ambition. It does one thing—helping families coordinate shopping—and does it exceptionally well. It does not try to track your spending habits, gamify your grocery shopping with points and badges, or upsell you to premium features you don’t need. It feels refreshingly single-minded, the way good minimalist apps built around one core task usually are.