TapTap Grocery: One Tap List

Thirty everyday groceries are visible at once, even on an iPhone SE, as coloured pills that resize as the list grows so you never scroll to find the milk. Tap a pill and it rises into the list; tap it again in the aisle and it drops back. That is the entire app.

The widget is the catalogue rather than a checklist. Other grocery widgets only tick off what you already added; this one shows the pills, so tapping one on the Home Screen or Lock Screen adds it without opening the app. There is a Control Center button and an Action button shortcut too, plus Siri and Spotlight.

Sharing needs no account: send a link and your partner is on the list, with no sign-up, no password and no email address, running on Apple’s own iCloud sharing with no server in between. The app also learns, so things you buy often start to jiggle when they are missing, and it can tell a mistap from a habit.

• The whole catalogue as tappable pills on one screen, with no keyboard
• A widget that is the catalogue, so items are added without opening the app
• A standalone Apple Watch app, so the phone stays in your pocket
• Share by link with no account, password or email, over iCloud sharing
• Country catalogues for France, the United Kingdom and China, named in your language

Typing “milk” into a phone is four seconds of work repeated fifteen times, and on a 45mm Watch screen it is worse. Once you accept that a household buys the same thirty things, the keyboard becomes unnecessary and the whole catalogue fits on one screen. The rest of the app follows from that single decision, including the widget, the Watch app and the account-free sharing, since a list you have to log in to is a list your partner will not use.

The developer has been writing native Apple software since the first public iPhone SDK in 2008. He works from Rennes, France, under SAS Corvaisier, and has published 24 apps across 7 platforms, from iPhone and iPad through to Apple Watch, Mac, Apple TV, Android, Fire TV and Roku. Everything is built natively, one platform at a time, with no cross-platform wrapper in between.