How to choose an expiry reminder app for your home: free options and what to look for

Why use an expiry reminder app at home

Things rarely go off in front of you. They quietly pass their date. You open the fridge and find the milk expired yesterday, the cold medicine in the cabinet should have gone last year, and nobody can remember when the sunscreen in the bathroom was bought.

And it is not only the fridge:

• Fridge: milk, tofu, yoghurt
• Cupboards: dried goods, tins, instant noodles
• Medicine cabinet: over-the-counter medicine, supplements, contact lens solution
• Bathroom and dressing table: sunscreen, skincare

Each has its own date, and most of them sit where you cannot see them. A tool built only around fridge ingredients or recipes may not reach the medicine cabinet or the bathroom. If you are unsure what the dates on a package mean, start with expiry date, shelf life and best before explained.

A checklist: six questions are enough

Question	Why it matters	How Fraidy handles it
How much is free?	A free download does not always mean free core features	Fully free, a few ads, no paid subscription
What can it track?	Food-only apps miss the medicine cabinet	Starts with Food, Drinks, Household and Medicine; add your own categories
Does it warn you?	If you have to open the app to check, you will forget to	Checks every morning; notifies before expiry, on the day and after
Can the family share it?	One person keeps the list, everyone uses the food, and the list drifts	Households share one inventory and shopping list
Is adding things quick?	If it is a chore, you will stop	Quick Add, or take a photo to fill in the name and expiry date
Do you have to sign up?	Filling in forms before trying the app puts people off	Start as a guest and link an account later

Here is what Fraidy actually does for each one.

How much is free

Fraidy is free and every feature is available. A few ads keep it running. There is no paid subscription and currently no paid option to remove the ads.

What it can track

New accounts start with four categories: Food, Drinks, Household and Medicine. You can add, rename and reorder your own and give each an icon — a category for skincare or pet supplies, for example.

If you buy the same thing twice with different expiry dates, record them as separate batches. Each batch gets its own reminder, so the later one is not forgotten.

Whether it warns you before things expire

With Expiry Reminders on, Fraidy checks your inventory once each morning, at around 9:00 a.m. in your own time zone, and notifies you once for each batch at three points:

1. When it enters your advance-warning window: 7 days before expiry by default, adjustable to 3, 7, 14, 20 or 30 days.
2. On the day it expires.
3. After it has expired.

Everything due that day is combined into one push notification, which is also kept on the in-app notifications page. The Expiring Soon list on the Inventory tab uses the same number of days. Changing the number of days needs app version 1.1.0 or later, and reminders in your own time zone need 1.1.2 or later (older versions use Taiwan time). For settings and what to check when notifications do not arrive, see how expiry reminders work.

Whether the family can share one list

Create a household under Settings → Household. Its owner or an admin taps Invite Members to generate a 6-character invite code, valid for 7 days and for one person (create one for each family member). Family members enter the code to join, and everyone in the household shares the inventory and shopping list.

When someone adds, ticks off or moves an item to inventory, you see it when you open the app, switch tabs or pull to refresh. Reminders are personal: each member gets them based on their own advance-warning setting and in their own app language.

Whether adding things is quick

At minimum you enter a name and an expiry date. To go faster, take a photo of the packaging:

• On-device recognition is the default: no internet needed, the photo is processed only on your phone, and it fills in the name and expiry date.
• Turn on Cloud AI Recognition: more accurate, and it also fills in quantity and unit, but it needs internet. A downscaled copy of the photo is uploaded for recognition and is not kept afterwards. If the cloud service is unavailable, the app falls back to on-device recognition.

Recognition only fills in the fields; nothing is added until you check it and tap Save. For tips on taking a photo that reads well, see how to use photo recognition.

Whether you have to sign up

Tap Browse first, sign up later on the sign-in screen to use every feature as a guest. Link an email, Google or Apple account later and your data is kept and starts syncing across devices. Note that guest data lives on that device and is lost if you uninstall the app. See sign-in options.

Who Fraidy suits, and who it may not

A good fit if you:

• want one app for food, medicine and household goods
• write a shopping list first and record expiry dates once you are home
• want to share one inventory with your family
• want to try it for free without meeting a subscription first

Possibly not a fit if you:

• need shop- or warehouse-grade stock control, barcode scanning or reports — Fraidy has no barcode scanning
• cannot accept any ads
• need to add and view items with no connection — data is stored in the cloud so the household stays in sync, and only on-device photo recognition itself works offline

How it differs from fridge-only apps

Many apps focus on fridge ingredients or recipes. If you also want to cover the medicine cabinet and household goods, add “can I create my own categories?” to your list.

Fraidy organises your inventory by category and keeps a separate shopping list. Tick an item as Purchased when you buy it, then tap Add to Inventory at home and enter the expiry date; only then does it join your inventory and reminders. Things you have not bought yet stay out of your inventory. See how to use the shopping list.

Getting started

1. Install Fraidy from the App Store or Google Play.
2. Add the few things that will expire soonest — the milk and tofu in the fridge, say — with their expiry dates.
3. In Settings → Preferences, check that Expiry Reminders is on and choose how many days ahead to be warned.
4. If you like, create a household and send the invite code to your family.

For the details of adding items, see how to add items. To make the fridge itself easier to keep track of, see how to organise your fridge.