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Building a grocery list
How to build a shopping list from recipes or a meal plan, why it skips what is already in your pantry, and how checking items off restocks it.
Adding grocery items
Tap the search bar at the top of the Groceries tab, or Plus → Update Groceries → 'Add manually'. Search the catalog, set quantity and unit, and tap 'Add to Groceries'.
By default items group by aisle (Produce, Dairy, Meat, …) so the list is laid out the way the store is. You can switch that to group by recipe instead — see 'Grouping your list'.
Grouping your list by aisle or by recipe
The Groceries tab can group your list two ways, and you choose which in Profile → My Kitchen → Groceries → 'Group list by':
- Aisle (the default) — grouped the way a store is laid out, Produce, Dairy, Meat and so on. Best while you're actually shopping.
- Recipe — grouped by the recipes each item came from, so you can see what's still missing for one meal. Each recipe's section uses that recipe's photo as its header. Items you added by hand, and older items with no recipe recorded, collect in a 'Not from a recipe' section at the bottom.
The setting sticks until you change it, and it changes only how the list is displayed — nothing about the items themselves.
An ingredient two recipes both need shows under BOTH of their sections, because your list keeps one line per ingredient with the amounts already combined. That one line is what you buy and what you tick off, so checking it off under one recipe shows it checked under the other too. For the same reason, deleting it takes it off every recipe that needs it — the app warns you and names the other recipes before it does.
Building a list from recipes
Plus → Update Groceries → 'Add from recipe' opens a picker where you check the recipes you want to shop for. The picker is your Cookbook: the same search, the same tag filter, the same sort options, and the same Collections and All Recipes views. Open a collection to browse inside it — anything you have already checked stays checked, so you can gather recipes from several collections in one pass.
The list scales ingredients to the chosen servings, subtracts what's already in your pantry, and adds only the shortfall. Items your pantry already covers are shown as covered, so you can still add them if you want a backup. Expired pantry items don't count as covered.
Amounts are written the way you'd buy them, not the way the recipe measures them. A recipe needing 15 g of shallot puts '1 Shallot' on the list; 2 tablespoons of cilantro becomes '1 bunch'; 3 cups of milk becomes '1 quart'. Things sold by weight — ground beef, deli meat — keep their exact weight in pounds or ounces. When the smallest thing you can buy is far more than the recipe needs, the row notes what the recipe actually called for.
Tap any row to see which recipes contributed to it.
When the list is built, Capy places each new item straight into its row: a sticker lands at the row's edge and a honey highlight gathers into a New tag (Topped up for something already on your list), which fades a few seconds after you've seen it. If something in your pantry had expired, or an ingredient couldn't be matched, a small note at the top of the list says so; tap it to see which items, or close it with its X.
Adding a week's worth from your meal plan
On the Meal Plan tab, tap 'Add to Groceries' to open a picker of every day with meals on it. Days whose recipes you've already added are hidden, so you only see what's new since last time. Clearing your grocery list resets that tracking and every day is offered again.
Ingredients are merged across the days you pick, scaled to the servings you planned, and checked against your pantry.
Checking off items and restocking the pantry
Tap the circle next to an item to check it off; it grays out and stays in its place.
Once you have checked items, an 'Add to Pantry' pill appears. Tapping it moves everything checked into your pantry at once: the items leave your list and the Pantry tab opens, where Capy places each one into its row with a New or Restocked tag that fades a few seconds after you've seen it. If you leave Groceries before the move finishes, a card beside Capy says 'Pantry updated' until you open the Pantry, where Capy places them. If the move doesn't go through, you stay on Groceries and your items stay checked so you can try again.
To start over, the trash at the top of the Groceries tab clears your whole list after a confirmation, checked items included. The trash on an aisle's header clears just that aisle, and the trash on a row removes just that row. None of these can be undone.