Small update pushed out this week.

  • Documentation now opens in a new browser window and not inside the app. Once user got confused and didn't know how to close the documentation when it opened within the app
  • Cleaned up the 'Edit Default Categories' page in settings. It was looking ugly and needed a makeover. Instead of big ugly buttons that say "Remove" on each item, there are now trash can icons that you can tap to remove categories.

Update out on Android and iOS.

p.s Continued to work on the documentation as well. Find Gear and Find Packs sections now complete.

12 days later

Another update live in both Android and iOS app stores!

  • Added R-Value option for sleeping pads
  • Fixed an issue when swiping an item to mark it as packed when filtered by 'not packed' would mark multiple items as packed.
  • Now provide user feedback with a loading bar while unpacking entire pack or deleting an entire pack.
a month later

Huge new update live on Android and iOS app stores today!

Here is a quick rundown of what's new:

  • Sub Packs (Pro only): You can now create sub-packs for an easier way to add items to your packs. Enjoy!

  • Auto-consumable items: All items marked as 'Water', 'Snack', or 'Meal' will now be automatically marked as consumable when added to a pack.

  • Direct email link: A link has been added to the settings menu to allow you to send us direct emails.

Sub-packs have been a highly requested feature. With sub-packs, you can create groupings of items so that you can add them all to a pack at once. This eliminates the need to add each item individually. Some examples of sub-packs you might create include a medical kit or a sleep system.

When adding gear to a pack, you will now see two tabs: "Gear Locker Items" and "Sub Packs". The "Gear Locker Items" tab is the same as before, listing all of your individual gear locker items. The "Sub Packs" tab will only show packs that you have created and designated as sub-packs. To add a sub-pack to your pack, simply tap on it. All of the gear in that sub-pack will be added to your pack with a single tap.

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Right now I have one Sub Pack, for my Photography Gear. When I tap the Photography Sub Pack it will add all my Photography gear to my pack. See my Sub Pack Below:

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I made it so you have to designate a Sub Pack so that the sub pack list didn't get over crowded with every pack that you have ever created and only shows ones that you would use as a Sub Pack.

To designate a Sub Pack you can just select the Sub Pack Option when creating or editing a pack. Since I added another option I also cleaned up the pack creation and pack editing view and replaced the ugly toggles with boxes. Its not quite where I want it but its better then it was before. Expect some more tweaks in the weeks and months ahead.

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19 days later

This week has been the 1 year anniversary since I launched Don't Forget The Spoon to the public! With that, on the apps actual public launch Birthday I pushed out an update last night with one of the most requested features!

CSV Import is now available for pro users! Have a bunch of gear you want to add but don't want to type it in on your phone, upload it from one CSV file!

For more info check out the documentation here.

Enjoy and please provide feedback. I did a lot of testing but there may be one or two bugs. If you run into anything let me know and I will get it fixed ASAP :-)

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6 days later

One of the worst parts of DFTS was the search in the "Find Gear" tab. It worked but was not forgiving at all. Basically needed exact work matches to find anything. Well today thats all changed! Search is improved a ton with the last update!

You can now have bad spelling, put words out of order etc. and if its in the public approved database then you should not have any issues with it showing up in your search results!

With that, I just wanted to thank everyone over the last year who has subscribed or purchased a pro account. These funds were re-invested back into the app and as a result I was able to implement a much improved public gear search feature :-)

Now that I have improved search, I will also continue deliberately building the public gear database in addition to the crowd source data you all help build every day!

5 days later

Across all my avenues of support I recently received the request for some improvements to how worn weight is calculated in the app.

Previously if you marked an item as "Worn Weight" and you had the quantity for that item as anything more then one, it counted all those items as worn. Now if you have an item marked worn weight and you have multiple of that item, it will only count the first item as worn and the rest will be counted as in your pack.
Use case here is if you have multiple pairs of socks in your pack, so you set the quantity of your Darn Tough socks to 3. Realistically you have one pair on your feel and the other two pairs in your pack. DFTS will now take this into account when you mark an items as work and quantity is greater then 1.

Additionally you can now export all your gear locker items to a CSV from the settings.

11 days later

This is one of my bigger releases to come out recently. Added a new feature that checks out what is in your pack and makes recommendations.

The recommendations start out simple, following the basic ten essentials. As you add items the pack checker will check on some more advanced rules to make sure you are not missing anything essential. For example:

  • If you pack a tent or tarp, but you do not have tent stakes you will get a warning to suggest adding tent stakes.

  • Staying out over night and dont have a sleeping pad, you will get a suggestion to pack one.

  • Going backpacking but dont have a potty trowel or wag bag? We will make sure you don't forget to pack one!

These are just a couple checks that we will do with over 20+ rules built out right now. If you think of any others that you think would be helpful, feel free to comment and I would love to discuss new ideas to help people prepare for their trips!

I hope this feature will help beginner hikers and backpackers and experts alike. I was surprised by some of the items I forgot in some of my bigger packs while I was testing this feature out!

Here are some screenshots:

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Additionally in this release I added the ability to export an individual pack as a CSV file as well. Release is live now for both Android and iOS!

2 months later

Late blog post here but I did get an update out right before Christmas that added better tablet support and limited web support, so you can log in and build you packs on the big screen ;-)

Check out the web app by visiting https://dfts.app/ and clicking the login button in the top right corner.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! I heard from a lot of you over the holidays, seems like you were all dreaming of your next big trip in the new year! Keep packing, and I have some exciting updates coming now that I am back to coding!

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a month later

Back in October 2023, I released a fairly major update that allowed users to create sub packs for easily adding groups of items to a pack.

I have received a lot of great feedback on how users have loved that update, and how it has made creating packs easier and more efficient, but........ each user who loved it also wished they could mark all the items in a sub pack as "Packed" with one tap, instead of swiping each item individually.

Today, I am releasing some helpful updates to help make Sub packs even more useful! And one of those features is one tap packing all items in a particular sub pack!

This released was just pushed to both Android and iOS App stores and should be live in both stores in the next coming days.

When viewing a pack, there is now a new summary card added entitled, "Sub Pack Summary / Management"

This card will show you a list of each sub pack that has been added to your current pack along with that sub packs weights and a bar chart that shows what percentage of the total pack weight is from each sub pack:

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If you want to only view items in your list from a particular sub pack, you can tap the sub pack, and it will auto filter your list so that you only see that sub packs items:

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Lastly if you tap the "+" Icon next to the sub pack, it will mark all the items as packed with one tap! You no longer have to pack each item individually in sub packs if you do not want to. Once the items are marked packed, the "+" icon turns to a "-" and you can tap the "-" to un-pack all the items from that particular sub pack!

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a month later

I seem to have a saving issue. If I edit a piece of gear like the weight or if it's consumed or not, it will not be saved. It goes back to what it was before the edit.

    Both. Example. I change weight from lb to oz in gear locker and it will not save it. I change item to consumable in pack and it will not save.

      MLWRIGHT > MLWRIGHT I change weight from lb to oz in gear locker and it will not save it.

      I see this bug. I just fixed it and am uploading to the app stores now. Are you on iPhone of Android? Android should be live in a few hours. iOS usually takes 24-48 hours for approval in their app store.

      MLWRIGHT I change item to consumable in pack and it will not save.

      This is a bug that was identified the other day an actually an update went out last night/this morning that fixes this issue. Please go to your app store and make sur eyou are on the latest version. If interested you can read about that fix here:

      OK I did the update. Now have blank screen when I click on my pack. Screen shot attached of what shows. Image description

        MLWRIGHT Just had this one reported by a user on reddit a few hours ago as well. Update pending review. Sorry for the hectic start. Should be fixed shortly. I can reply here so yo get notified once I see them live.

        MLWRIGHT Update is now live on android. Just pending iOS. After updating idf still seeign this issue. Go to where you add gear in this pack and toggle on and off the worn weight items.

        Still had the problem. I deleted the last item I entered in the gear locker which is when I started having the problem. All is fixed and working now.

          15 days later

          MLWRIGHT I think this should finally be solved now. Hopefully you wont see it again :-)

          New update pushed out today! Live now on Android, and should be live on iOS in the next 24-48 hours. This has been an update I have personally been wanting for awhile now. I have a lot of packs and sub packs now, and wanted to clean up up my pack list..... So now you can archive packs!

          Archiving a pack removes it from your Pack List, but still keeps it available for other to view if its a public pack. You can also archive sub packs if you do not want them cluttering your main view, and you will still be able to add them to packs.

          To archive a pack just click the 3 dots in the upper right while viewing a pack, and select "Archive Pack"

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          Once a pack is archived, you can go to settings and there is an option to view all archived packs. You can edit packs straight from that list or you can tap the un-archive button to bring it back to your main list.

          Archiving packs is only available to pro subscribers since free users can only have 5 packs at this time.

          a month later

          Pushing to the app stores right now is our latest update! Should be live in Android App Store today and maybe even the apple app store (Apple has been getting quicker at reviews).

          Latest update adds summary cards to your Gear locker. This allows you to see basic stats about the items you own. It also allows you to filter your gear locker easily by Category, Item Type or Manufacturer by taping the bar graphs like you can already do with the pack summary cards.

          Hope you enjoy the update!

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