Are you sick and tired of eating fresh food?
Me neither!
Best Before is an app that allows you to keep track of your food and their expiry dates. What’s that thing in the deep, dark corner of your vegetable drawer? Oh, yeah, it’s that arugula you bought a month ago. With Best Before, you’ll never be surprised again!
Best Before lets you:
• rapidly add food items to your fridge, freezer, and pantry lists,
• easily color tag food items (especially if you have those handy color stickers to also physically tag your items…but everyone has his own system),
• sort your food items chronologically by expiry date,
• sort your food items alphabetically,
• sort your food items by color tags
Don’t know how long you should keep the carrots or cheese you just bought? A database of recommended expiry dates for many popular fresh produces and opened products will conveniently tag your food items with an expiry date, saving you the trouble of manually setting the expiry date.
If you think you don’t have time to manage what’s in your fridge, freezer, or pantry, think again. Spoiled leftovers = wasted time and money. You *could* have been eating that meal but instead you’ll be cooking yourself another meal, ordering pizza, or running to the grocery store.
Update to people giving me bad reviews because they’ve somehow never been exposed to the ‘swipe-to-delete’ gesture and can’t be bothered to ask for help here or through the blog or the support e-mail 🙂 :
Instructions to delete items:
- Swipe your finger on the item you want to delete.
- Tap your finger on the ‘Delete’ button.
- There is no step 3.
Magic Keyboard +5 
Hi there,
May I check with you whether the program allows us manually input description of the item? Or, whether the item is preset for us to choose?
Thanks
Candice
If your item isn’t in the presets, you can add it anyway under your own description. Of course, you’ll have to set the expiry date yourself so there will be that extra step. But even with that extra step, it shouldn’t take more than 20 seconds to input an item: name, color tag (if need be), and expiry date.
If there are some basic food items that you feel should be in the presets, let me know. I’ll add them in an update.
Today I bought your Best Before app. So far it suits me better than any other available app that deals with fridge content. Two wishes: 1. The possibility of setting alarms, one on the day of expiration, the other a few days in advance (adjustable).
2. Use of monthly calendars for entering expiration dates in stead of scrolling wheels (less cumbersome).
Jos, I will be adding push notification (alarms) in an upcoming update. As for the calendar, that’s a nice idea and definitely easier, especially if the expiration is within the month. I will try to implement a calendar date picker soon.
Dear Marc-Antoine, Thanks for your kind words and fast reply. Today I cleaned my fridge, threw everything away that was out of date and used your app for the first time. It looks great and very useful! Whilst entering all items I noticed that your food item list is very limited indeed. Even Heinz tomato ketchup was not recognized, although is is a common item here in the Netherlands. One other suggestion: each manually entered item should automatically end up on the list (thus enabling quick re-entry after subsequent purchases). Best wishes.
Jos, for Heinz ketchup, the list simply has a generic ‘Ketchup’. While I could begin the arduous process of adding every commercial brand of foods in existence, it would take me several lifetimes to do so.
However, I much prefer your last suggestion. Items that are not found in the database should be added to it. Well, the way this will work is that it will be separate from the core data and act more like a ‘Favorite’ list. And this list will be user editable. In other words, if a user enters an item but misspelled it or put the wrong date, he/she will be able to rename items, change the suggested expiry date of items, or delete items.
The suggestion list will simply combine the core food items and the user’s items as you’ve suggested.
I will start working on this soon enough.
The next update will include push notifications, a calendar date picker, and ‘Favorites’.
I will also add an option for those that don’t want to bother adding an expiry date to see how long items have been in the fridge. For example, people will at least know that there’s some chicken sitting in the fridge for over 1 month. Even though they didn’t put an expiry on it, common sense would kick in and they’ll throw away the chicken.
Marc-Antoine, I’m glad we agree. Your last suggestion seems useful too.
At present, I noticed a small bug in your app whilst sorting the fridge list in various ways: going back to sorting by date results in the wrong heading of the item at the top of the list. (BTW, why do you call sorting by date Az and why do you use an icon of a clock in sorting by category?)
The storage lists your app produces tend to need a lot of scrolling. This is caused by using big fonts and many headings. May I suggest you do it differently? Take a look at Savealator Professional’s last screen shot and see what I mean: the list is conveniently arranged, colour code tells you what items are past exp. date (red), due to expire soon ( yellow) or still fresh (green). The four headings he uses (Category, Items, Exp Date and Days) could be conveniently extended with Storage Location, such as Fridge, Freezer or Pantry (in your case) or even medicine cabinet (prescriptions). Remember, the whole adding new items process should be flexible, as easy as possible, requiring the least amount of clicks and, of course, self explanatory.
In short, the ‘Ad New Item Screen’ should contain the following, all manually adjustable options: 1. Category; 2. Items; 3. Location; 4. Exp Date; 5. Picture; 7. Alarms. This approach enables great flexibility for users all over the world and produces fantastic storage lists (perhaps not only food), needing only one glance.
Finally, I would like to suggest the following: 1. Enable at the top of each screen the present date to be displayed (after all, we’re talking here mostly about deteriorating food). 2. Allow not only portrait, but also landscape screens (convenient in displaying storage lists).
Perhaps in the future you might also add a shopping list, sync by Blue Tooth with your partner’s iPhone (see Fridge Buddy), emailing shopping lists and a help section.
Once completed, you will have produced the BEST app in this field that certainly will concur the entire world and allows you to make more money. In that case I would be grateful you mention my name.
Success,
Jos Geerdink, MD
Sorry Marc-Antoine, in the ‘Ad New Item Screen’ I forgot a column headed by ‘Quantity’. Allow for American and SD-units, including ‘portions’. PS Sorting occurs by touching the headers in the storage list. Touching each item should result in a screen showing all details in full, incl. the picture.
The sorting button shows the next type of sort…not the current sort. Otherwise, people wouldn’t know which sort is coming next and would have to blindly push the sort button. I may change this eventually if I add more than the 3 sorts that exist right now.
Color-coded expiry times:
Color-coded expiry times, unfortunately, do not give immediate insight to how much time is left before the expiry date. Afterall, unless the color ranges are under the user’s control, how would the user know how much time he has left to eat an item that is tagged yellow? 1 day? 2 days? 1 week? How does the user know how long an item has been expired? Something that is 1 day past the expiry date might still be worth eating but something that is 1 week past the expiry date might not. Color tags may give someone a fast way to see what items are past the expiry date and which items are about to expire but simply do not give enough info. The solution already exists.
That’s what Best Before’s chronological sort is for. The chronological sort, in my opinion, is the best solution since it provides a much greater depth of info. If I were to add color-coded expiry times, I would have to remove the chronological sort since it would be a redundant feature. Items at the top would be red, some items in the middle would be yellow, and items at the bottom would be green. Very redundant, IMO.
Storage headers:
It’s true that removing color-coded expiry times would remove the need for expiry time headers and make way for storage headers. However:
1. As I’ve explained, color-coded expiry times do not offer enough info to the user
2. Replacing the expiry headers with headers to represent storage would not solve the scrolling problem since all lists would be combined into one giant list.
People usually have an idea of what’s on their list but may or may not know that it’s in the middle or the bottom of the list. To remedy the annoyances of scrolling through large lists, the upcoming update will sport a search field and an index bar for the alphabetical sort view.
More food item details:
I’m very reluctant to add new details such as quantity/portions and pictures. Best Before was designed to be a light-weight, free of clutter, rapid-input app. Adding other superfluous options into the mix (even if optional as the name implies) would create, what I consider, unneeded clutter. Best Before isn’t competing with other apps on number of features. It’s competing on design, ease-of-use, and rapidity of item-input using, amongst other techniques, the suggestions database.
If I were to make a guess, most people will not spend the time to take a picture of a food item before putting it in the fridge. The handful that do can look elsewhere for that I’m afraid. And showing quantity/portions details is a relatively pointless detail considering the app is designed to keep tabs on item expiry dates — food items that have expired or that are about to expire are expired or about to expire regardless of the quantity/portions. Adding quantities/portions to the mix would just create another tedious step that most people would rather no bother with.
For example, I saw someone talking about how much he liked Best Before on a forum, and some of the replies it garnered were unsurprising. Someone had replied saying something to the effect that “data input would be the last thing I want to do after grocery shopping.” Of course, the person that made such a comment probably never used Best Before and didn’t know how easy it was to input food items into it. However, that reply confirmed what I was thinking all along when I designed Best Before: people want to spend as little time as possible to input data.
Here’s another anecdote, I bought GroceryIQ when it was released when it was a relatively simple but powerful grocery list app. It had a few superfluous features at the time but didn’t mind because it was fairly simple and easy-to-use. GroceryIQ was bought out by some other company and it went downhill from there. It’s now a slow, bloated app with obscure item details that, I fathom, nobody would spend time filling out.
For example, I type in ‘cookies’ in GroceryIQ. Its extensive database (which is quite amazing actually) knows that cookies have different flavors. So I can tap on ‘flavor’ and choose the flavor. Then I can choose which ‘store’ list this item should be in. Then I can choose which aisle. Choose the quantity. The weight. The package. The unit price. A description. Additional notes. And on and on and on. All of this is optional but question is: who has time to put in any of these little details? I find the store and aisle info to be important because they are pertinent to a grocery list but spending time looking through the list of cookie flavors when one could simply type in the cookie flavor on data entry is just beyond my comprehension. Package? Unit price? Even quantity seems odd since one would generally have an idea of the quantity to buy unless one was doing someone else’s groceries.
More options to meet everyone’s needs:
I understand that adding all these options would undoubtedly make more people happy. But I’m not going down GroceryIQ’s or Fridge Buddy’s path. I’m not going start adding features that 10% of the market will use. Like Apple, I’m designing my products to fit the needs of 90% of the users — ones that do want to spend more time than is required to create a list.
If you’re disappointed by this answer, I’m sorry but you’ll just have to settle with Fridge Buddy or Savealator Professional.
Dear Marc-Antoine,
Since I changed to OS 4.0 your app doesn’t work any more.
Jos
I just purchased you app but cannot get it to load.
There’s a problem with Best Before and the new iOS 4…I’ve submitted an update to Apple that fixes the problem. Once it gets approved, it will start working.
I just downloaded the Best Before app. I agree with the other users that the app does not work with the new operating system. I think that you should let people know it does not work with the new operating system AND let us know the date that it WILL work. Very Disappointed.
It will work next week. I know the “blame game” is getting old but I have to blame this on Apple…again…Apple is constantly sitting on updates I submit for days. The average time between the time I submit an update and the time it shows up in the iTunes Store is a whopping 9 days.
Apple continuously claims about a week to approve new apps and less than a week to approve app updates but this is pure and utter lies.
Frankly, I’m sick of Apple’s control over everything.
Rest assured that the update is coming and will also sport new features.
Since the latest update this does not work on my iPad. Just purchased this week, prior to the update, so this is rather frustrating. I liked what I saw prior to the update and would like for it to be useable again. Any idea when it will be fixed?
Hi, I just purchased Best Before and I am really loving it. However, I seem to have run across a little bug. I can add items with no problem to the Fridge and Freezer, but the Pantry won’t let me add. (I am running iPhone 3Gs iOS 4.0.1). When I try to add, I select an item, tag it with a color, and hit save. This takes me back to the pantry, but the item isn’t there.
Just thought I would let you know.
Thanks!
@Sara, yes, this bug has been fixed in the next update.
@Rachel, the next update should solve the iPad crash. I’m going to be buying an iPad in the coming weeks so I can actually test my apps on the iPad.
Things have become much more difficult in the past couple months in terms of iOS development. The iPad, the iPhone 4, and iOS 4 are out. I only currently have an iPod touch (now running iOS 4) to test my apps. So for the iPad, the iPhone 4, and iOS 3, I’m flying blind. Apple provides an iPad and iPhone simulator (with iOS 3 and iOS 4) to test the apps on the computer but seeing the apps working well on the simulator isn’t a 100% guarantee that my apps will work well on a real iPad or any iDevice running iOS 3 or iOS 4.
It’s tough…but anyway, instead of relying on app development as a main source of income, I actually now have a day job and will have enough money coming in to buy new iDevices to test Best Before. This will hopefully prevent embarassing bugs like the one Rachel has experienced from cropping up.
I just bought the app, with the July 28th update, hoping that the app would work on my iPad. No luck. I added a single item(an artichoke expiring in 2 days) and now it crashes every time I launch the app. Very sad, this looked like a great idea matching exactly what I was looking for.
FWIW, I would pay significantly more for a native iPad version.
Can anyone else reproduce the issue John is talking about? I can’t reproduce this and, of course, I don’t have an iPad to test Best Before on.
I just don’t understand how some bugs can occur on the real device and not on the simulator Apple provides for development testing.
Hi~ I downloaded the application update today (July 29). It crashes and jumped out to the main screen. Please help!!
Further, I’ve first downloaded this program in April, I inputted a lot of pantry items and freezer items in the program. However, as soon as it got on to ios4, only fridge items remained.. all other data got washed away…
I sent a new update to Apple that hopefully fixes the crashes. The last update was approved quickly so I’m hoping this one will be too…hopefully early next week.
When/where does it crash? When you open the app? When you’re in the app and adding an item? I can’t reproduce the crash you’re talking about on my iPod touch but I’ve done quite a few changes to the code and hopefully that will solve the problem.
Unfortunately, everything always seems to work perfectly during my testing. So I’m befuddled everytime I hear people report crashes.
I’ll look into the freezer and pantry item issue.
Welcome to the wonderful world of software development!! I’ve worked in software for 15 years, and crashes happen. Simulators are not devices, and everyone has their computer/device setup in some special, unique way.
I uninstalled and reinstalled the app, I’m not seeing the crash now. I do occasionally see some kind of error where the app thinks we are a few hundred thousand years in the future… I’ll try and get you details next time I see it. It was right after seeing that when the crashes started the last time. I’ll look for any more patterns or details that might help. I’m guessing apple doesn’t give you any diagnostic information on crashes?
Ok, here are some repro steps.
Open the app, slide open the “Delete” button on an existing item.
Don’t dismiss the delete button, but click on the item.
You get the edit item screen with a blank item name.
click save.
now the app is in a weird mode where it thinks items expiring tomorrow expired 1651322 weeks ago.
There are other ways to get into that state, but I didn’t see them repeating. This works all the time.
Also: on the iPad, the colored circles show up on the left, not the right, and only partially.
Items expiring today are showing up as expiring indefinitely.
I would suggest taking a close look at your date/time code for edge cases (entering an item at midnight, for instance) and possible time zone mixups.
This is all I can do for you, but I suggest finding a smart family member and saying “here, break this!” and letting them have at it for a while, testing your own code is very difficult to do.
Choosing today’s date as the expiring date sets an indefinite expiry date. This one is intentional. I made this design decision with two things in mind:
1. Almost nobody is going to add an item that expires today (it will be used right away)
2. The expiry date on items that aren’t in the database defaults to today’s date…if a user decides to never touch the date picker, Best Before assumes that the user simply wants to add an item without specifying an expiry date…hence ‘indefinite’.
For people that truly want to add an item that expire today, putting tomorrow’s date is one solution.
Adding another button on the screen to specify ‘no date’ or ‘indefinite expiry’ felt like adding extra taps. I could reverse this decision if a lot of people feel annoyed by not being able to add items with today’s date as the expiry date though.
The colored half-circles on the left are also intentional and new in version 2 (I really should be updating the screenshots in the App Store to prevent confusion). This decision was made to reduce screen waste (on iPhone and iPod touch devices) and to make room for the index bar on the right (to easily and rapidly scroll through the list).
Of course, an iPad has no such screen estate problem. I’ll try to spend some time in the near future (perhaps as soon as I get an iPad) to make an iPad specific UI.
That said, I simply can’t reproduce your bug. Sliding open the “Delete” button is a standard iOS API. When I do this and click on the item, the “Delete” button disappears. I then need to click on the item a send time to bring up the “Edit Item” screen. In other words, the only two options when a “Delete” button is shown is clicking the “Delete” button or clicking anywhere else on the tableview to dismiss the “Delete” button. This is something I can’t reproduce on the simulator or my iPod touch (I am going to be purchasing an iPad soon so I can test the app on more than a single device, I promise) and because this is a standard API (and not something I programmed from scratch) there’s very little I can do about this at the present time.
But the bug has been noted. I’m just glad it seems easy to avoid.
Apple does give diagnostic info on crashes…but only, apparently, when many crash reports have been submitted. So far, Apple’s iTunesConnect developer site tells me not enough crash reports have been submitted. 😦
Have you tried in os3, since that is the os all us iPad users are stuCk on until “fall”. Or can you run a simulator of the iPad iPhone simulator? That makes my head hurt…
Yes, the simulator has an iPad simulator (which by extension simulate iOS 3.)
Sadly, Best Before works on the iPad simulator. This is why I really, really need to get myself an iPad (even though I have no use for one) so that I may test it on a real iPad and not a simulator.
Don’t be too glum about getting an iPad, they are pretty good devices. I don’t a single other Apple product, but the iPad I have found to be amazingly useful. And my toddler son loves it to death…
Thanks Tenoyar.
In the latest update, it jumped me out from best before as soon as I clicked it open.
I will wait and see.. I wanted to delete it and reinstall it to see if it works better. However, since I’ve spent hours to input the items (with actual expiry date and my husband thought I was crazy)… if I uninstall and reinstall, will the data be washed away as well?
Many thanks!
Yes, unfortunately, deleting and reinstalling an app will wipe all data.
I’m hoping the next update will magically fix many problems.
I am going to try to get an iPad to have another device to test my apps before releasing updates. That way iPad users won’t be left in the dark. Once I get an iPad, I will make an iPad-native version of Best Before (with a user interface that is tailored for the iPad and not for the iPhone/iPod).
So, I know it’s annoying to wait for an update to an app that crashes before you can even do anything with it, but hang tight…the update is coming…it was submitted to Apple yesterday.
Best case scenario is a release on Monday or Tuesday next week.
Realistically it will probably be released on Wednesday or Thursday next week.
Worst case scenario is a release after that or Apple ‘rejects’ it (very rare).
Many thanks Tenoyar.
I’ll look forward to it.
Candice, let me know if version 2.2 displays your freezer and pantry items. I’m pretty sure the problem is fixed but I need confirmation.
John, let me know if version 2.2 works on the iPad. And let me know if the bug you mentioned is still around.
2.2 has been pretty good. The bug with the mysterious delete/edit is gone, and I haven’t had any other problems. Much better, I’m starting to use it on a regular basis.
That’s excellent news. I’m glad it’s finally resolved and I apologize to everyone that had problems with the upgrade to 2.0.
Hi Tenoyar.. I just downloaded the upadate today and it’s even worse. The program just freezed at the opening page forever without actually getting into the program. To solve this, I delete it and reinstall it. It works fine now and I’m slowly inputting new items in it..(and slowly throwing away expired items)
Thanks!
Candice, I’m sorry it wasn’t resolved. 😦
Anyway, let me know if there are other problems.
Can this app handle servings/portions?
I’d really like to be able to check off these as they’re eaten.
Thanks
I opted not to do this as it adds complexities to the data entry.
The way I see it is that it doesn’t matter how many portions are in the fridge or freezer if they all have the same expiry date.
I’m considering making a separate version with all these options however…one that allows you to take/see a photo of the item, keep track of portions, and notes.
If enough people are interested I’ll start working on this.
Have just added fridge contents successfully but app will only let me add 67 items for my larder. Is there a data limit?
Hmm…that’s the first time I hear of this. There is no data limit. I regularly have 90+ items in my lists.
Anyone else have this problem? I’ll investigate in the meantime but unless I get many people reporting this problem, it may be tough to get to the bottom of this.
Hi there,
I am very disappointed with the Best Before app which I purchased several days ago.
At first glance, I thought it was a great app and would be a great use to me. Data entry is simple, and the user interface is clean and easy to read. I was just about to give it a rave review on the app store but realised that the app had a major flaw.
The date does not automatically change on my iphone 4 (OS4.1), I have to turn the iphone on and off for the date to change, so food that was supposed to be expiring in a days time was already expired a day ago as i hadn’t switched the phone off for 3 days.
An update would be great to solve the issue as I do like the app, but with the current flaw it’s just not usable.
(also it would be nice for the bottom icons and app icon to be high resolution for the iphone screen, but unlike the problem above this does not affect the usability of the app)
Hmm…interesting. I think adding multitasking support has added a level of complexity to the application that I hadn’t thought about.
This type of issue would, I believe, only happen to people that haven’t turned off their iPhone, haven’t switch between the ‘Fridge’, ‘Freezer’, or ‘Pantry’ tab, and haven’t added anything to their list (edit: for a time span greater than a day).
The problem is simple and simple to fix. The list (and expiry dates on items) only gets updated if you change tabs or add new items. But I can simply put in some code to refresh the list every minute or so.
Look for an update sometime late next week or the week after.
Thanks for the quick reply.
I’ve waited a day so I could test the above methods of changing the date. Clicking in between the Fridge, Freezer and Pantry tabs does not refresh the date. I also added an item to see if that worked but it didn’t refresh the date either. I added the item to expire today but once added it said it was expiring tomorrow as the app still thinks it is the 23rd not the 24th. I restarted the iphone and the date has corrected itself.
I’m looking forward to the update, will let you know if it works.
Thanks again.
I found the other bug that would prevent the expiry date from changing.* After fixing both that bug and adding a code to refresh the list every minute, I can say that it works well.
The update was submitted to Apple yesterday night. My fingers are crossed…optimistically, the update should show up sometime next week.
Let me know if it fixes the issue you were having. In the meantime, I think you have no choice but to restart the app (by pushing the home button twice to see the list of apps that are open and then closing Best Before from that list).
* Details about the bug for those who are interested: When I first released the app, iOS 4 had not been released yet, and so, multitasking on iOS devices did not exist either. At launch, Best Before would create a date (today’s date) to be used in calculations for expiry date. So Best Before simply takes the expiry date for each item and subtracts today’s date to come up with the difference of days (or days left before expiry…and when the difference is negative, days expired). The problem is that this was a global variable that never got changed unless the app was restarted. In other words, a day could go by and the application would still think today was yesterday if the application wasn’t restarted.
Now that multitasking exists, apps can remain on stand-by when you switch to another app.
In my defense, I didn’t catch this bug because I’m still on an iPod 2G which does not support the multitasking feature in iOS 4. 🙂
Anyway, thanks again, Laura, for bringing this bug to my attention.
Hi there,
I was excited to start using this app but was disappointed that I could not add the amount or quantity of food items that I had purchased. This information would be very helpful so I would know how much I had on hand. Having the ability to add quantity would make this a much more useful app. Please add this in future updates of this app.
Yes, I’ll be looking into this. Enough people have asked for this feature…I will try to add this to the next update.
Hi there, it’s me again. I believe there is a recent update and the program jumped out to the home screen once the program starts after I have updated it. Please help.
Thank you.
Hi again,
Thanks again for the update, it fixed the date problem. I thought i would test drive the app for the week to see if the new update runs smoothly, but I’m sorry to say that the app crashed on me and once crashed there was no other way to restore the app except for deleting it which meant all the food I had inputted was gone.
In detail what happened is that i was going in-between the categories (fridge, freezer, pantry) and the app closed. When i tried to open the app again, it loaded and for about 2 seconds looked like it was fine but closed again. This happened every time i opened the app. I restarted the iphone about 3 times to see if that would work but no luck. So I had to face the music and delte all my entries – not great.
Any clue if you could fix the bug?
Thanks again
Laura44, does it still crash after having deleted and reinstalled the app?
No, once deleted and reinstalled the app does work again. If this was say a calculator app it wouldn’t be such a major problem but after a week of inputted food and dates it really is a major issue. I’m vary wary every time I open the app if it will crash again.
Update – crashed once again, 2 days after inputting a weekly shop! I have to say I can’t use it anymore as it’s too frustrating to use – delete reinstall and then input everything back in again time after time- no thanks! It’s a shame as it’s a great idea just not implemented well – i gave it a good go though. I wouldn’t expect these crashes from a free app never mind a paid app.
Laura, I don’t know what to tell you.
Apple’s system makes it impossible for app developers to see crash logs unless a lot of people are experiencing crashes. When an app crashes, the crash log from your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad is normally sent to Apple and made available to the developers if a number of people are experiencing the same crash.
Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten a single crash log from Apple. This is either because:
a) this problem is unique to you and no one else has this crash,
b) very few people buy Best Before compared to my other apps and so very few people could experience crashes,
c) or both
Apple’s App Store has been the most frustrating experience as a developer for the following reasons:
I’m sorry about your frustrating experience. I wish I could reproduce your crash on my end. My fridge, freezer, and pantry list all have over 80 items and I haven’t had a crash yet.
My only question to everyone else is this: Is anyone experiencing crashes like Laura? Candice? Have you experienced any crash after deleting and reinstalling Best Before?
Tangent comment:
I thinking of canning Best Before… when I first developed it, it was for personal use. Then I figured others might be interested in keeping track of their fridges and freezers so I decided to sell it.
Turns out very little people are interested in this type of thing. I’ve spent way too much time adding other people’s requests and getting very little revenue in return. Frankly, it’s almost not worth finding and fixing obscure bugs if very little people actually uses this app.
To give you an idea, I released Best Before 8 months ago… and I’ve sold under 150 copies. We’re talking pocket change money here.
If this app was selling 150 copies a month, I would have a huge incentive to update it and fix the obscure bugs. But the current situation prohibits me from spending a lot of time on updates.