Top 3 essential iDevice app

One of the top 3 essential apps in the store. Not only the best grocery list app in the store, but the best overall shopping list app in the store. Its so good that you may even find, depending on your needs, that its that best any-kind of list app, period.

Of course it does what all the grocery apps do: comes with a catalog of typical grocery store items and an intelligent list of categories that reasonably approximates most supermarket aisles. Its easy to make a grocery list, and AnyList will sort it for you. You can also create custom categories and organize your categories however you want--say, in the order that the aisles are organized at your neighborhood supermarket. Check stuff off and its just hidden, so anything youve already added to your list, you can just unhide instead of retyping.

But you can make any kind of list (hence the name). AnyList recognizes four kinds of lists: Grocery (categorized with autocomplete for items in the apps grocery catalog), Categorized (items organized--and thus sortable--within categories), Basic (no categories, but still sortable), and Custom. This makes it easy to use the app for shopping lists that are like a grocery list, but with different cateogries, like the drug store, hardware store, etc. Other kinds of categorized lists--like packing lists--are also easy. And basic lists--simple to-dos, and birthday lists for the kids--are even easier.

Naturally, every list can be printed or shared via email or SMS. But each list can also be shared in _real time_ among a circle of participants, so that changes made by one person are immediately synced across all participants devices. I cross off "Bananas," and it gets hidden on my wifes list. True, reliable, real-time sharing, among any number of participants. And each list has its own sync circle, so that while my wife and I share a grocery list, my wife, my mother, and I share birthday wish lists for our sons (each son has his own list).

Unlike any of its major competitors, AnyList also allows you to add a small note for each item, which is displayed beneath the item in smaller, fainter type. So although the basic list says "canned beans," you can add a note for your spouse to remind him that such-and-such brand is on sale, and he doesnt have to swipe or anything extra to see that note. This is an app that _expects_ lists to be shared.

Everything is drop dead simple. If you think back, youll remember that this kind of functionality is one of the reasons that you bought an iDevice to begin with.

Powersjq about AnyList: Grocery Shopping List, v5.5.5