FridgeUp!
Scan, track, and never waste food again.
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FridgeUp! - Scan, track, and never waste food again.

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FridgeUp! helps you stop wasting food by tracking expiration dates automatically. Scan barcodes or snap a photo of the expiry date — OCR reads it instantly. Get notified before food goes bad, browse in 6 languages, and enjoy widgets + iCloud sync for free. Pro unlocks multiple lists and extra themes, free for early adopters

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Maker
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Hey Product Hunt! 👋 I’m Carmelo, a solo indie iOS developer, and I built FridgeUp! after one too many expired milk cartons. The idea was simple: most food waste happens because we just forget what’s in the fridge. So I built an app that scans barcodes or photos of expiry dates, and reminds you before things go bad. This is my first solo iOS app — no prior Swift experience — so it’s been quite a journey. Would love your feedback! 🙏

Tried it for a week and the expiration notifications actually worked, even caught a yogurt I totally would have missed. The OCR scans dates pretty reliably too, which I was skeptical about.

Maker
Really happy to hear that — catching that yogurt is exactly the kind of moment I built this for. And yeah, I was skeptical about OCR reliability too during development, glad it’s holding up in real use!

The barcode and OCR combo is honestly clever, exactly the kind of thing I wish I'd had years ago. One thing I'd love: let me snap a photo of a whole fridge shelf and have the app auto-detect items without scanning each one. Would save so much time when unloading groceries.

Maker
Thanks, that means a lot coming from someone who’s felt that pain for years! Multi-item shelf detection is a great idea — right now it’s one item at a time (barcode or OCR), though I do have batch-adding for identical items coming in the next update, which helps a bit with groceries. Full shelf auto-detect would be a bigger leap but it’s exactly the kind of thing worth exploring long-term. Really appreciate the suggestion!

I tried scanning a few barcodes and the OCR caught everything on the first try, even on a crumpled yogurt lid. The expiration reminders actually feel like they'd cut my usual food waste.

Maker
Thank you so much! That crumpled-lid test made my day 😄 Getting OCR to work reliably on real-world packaging (not just perfect lab conditions) was actually one of the hardest parts to get right, so I’m really glad it held up for you.

honestly the OCR idea is great, but one thing that would really push this further is letting me log leftovers and homemade stuff, you know, like when I cook something and toss it in a container. barcodes only cover half the battle since most waste is actually stuff I made myself.

Maker
That’s a great point, and you’re right that homemade/leftover food is a huge chunk of waste that barcodes can’t touch. I’ve actually got manual entry for exactly this case (you can add any item by hand with your own expiry date, no barcode needed) — but I hear you that it could be more front-and-center for leftovers specifically. Noting this for the roadmap, thanks!

The OCR scan worked surprisingly fast on my messy fridge haul, and the widget actually reminded me to use up yogurt before it expired. Simple and does what it says.

Maker
Really glad the widget caught that yogurt in time — that’s the exact use case I built it for. Thanks for giving it a real try with a messy fridge haul, that’s the best kind of test