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My wife and I have been pretty quiet on here recently and haven't gone on many trips since this past winter. I have been hard at work learning a new programming language to build a new Android and iPhone app that all hikers, backpackers, kayakers, or any other type of adventurer can use to plan their next trip!

Our app is called "Don't Forget The Spoon" and is mobile application that lets you keep track of all the gear you own in your own private "Gear Locker" on your phone. You can then build different "Packs" for different adventures to analyze pack stats like weight.

We decided to build this app because.... you guessed it we often forget to pack our spoons when we go on backpacking adventures. With our app, you can mark items as packed to easily keep track of all your gear while packing for a big trip!

Download App

Download Don't Forget the Spoon in your phone's app store now!

If you try the app out please make a thread in this forum and let me know what you think! I got a lot of awesome stuff planned!

Additionally since I have not coded out the onboarding experience yet here are some pictures and tips below!

Pack List

The packlist is where you will create and access your different 'packs' for your adventures. Before creating a pack I recommend you first go to your "Gear Locker" and add gear. Items in your "Gear Locker" will be available to add into your packs.

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Gear Locker

The Gear locker is a list of all the items you own. You can click the + button in the bottom right to add gear.

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While adding gear you can input:

  • Item Name
  • Manufacturer
  • Item Type
  • Pack Category
  • Item Weight
  • Temperature rating (only used for items like sleeping bags etc. )
  • Volume (Only Used for packs, water bottle etc. )
  • Calories (Only used for meals and snacks)

If share with community is marked as "yes" then the item will be reviewed and added to the community database to help users find gear to add. More on this in the next section. If you do not want to share gear info you can mark that to "no"

There are drop downs for some of these fields that filter as you type. You can type free form and type anything if it is not found in the drop down. If you feel something should be added to any of the drop down, let us know! This is the beta and we are adding things daily!

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Find Gear

The find gear section is the community database of gear. This is another way to add gear to your Gear Locker if you do not want to manually type the details in. Since this is community built its not super full right now, but I am adding items weekly. Feel free to give it a spin!

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Packs

Once you have some items in your Gear Locker you can start adding items to your pack! Just like adding gear to your Gear Locker you can add items from your gear locker to your pack by clicking the + icon in the bottom right inside of a pack.

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When you click the + button you will be presented with a list of all the items in your Gear Locker. Tap each items you want to add to your pack and a check box will appear.

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If you are like me and have a lot of items in your Gear Locker, you can quickly filter this list by tapping the search icon at the top and typing an item name or manufacturer name.

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By tapping on an item in your pack you can edit its details such as quantity, Worn Weight, Consumable, or if the item is packed or not. Just make sure to click the "Save Edits" once done.

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Once you have some items in your pack you can explore the pack detail cards by swiping to the left on the top half.

The first initial card shows total Pack Weight. summary and shows weights broken down by Item Pack category. Any of the bar graphs can be tapped, and this will filter the list of items. So for example if I want to just see my "Clothing" items, I can tap the clothing bar graph and it auto filters to just those items:

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The next card shows a break down of your weight by base weight, consumable weight and work weight. Again just like the previous card you can tap any of the bar graph bars and it will filter your list to only show the Base Weight Items, Consumable Weight Items or Worn Weight items.

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The next card will show you the percent packed. As you are packing items for your trip you can mark them as packed. Previously I mentioned you could tap and item to edit it and mark it as packed. The shortcut to packing items, is you can swipe right on an item in your list and it will mark it as packed. Or Swipe left to unpack an item quickly. As you pack items the percent pack will automatically update.

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The last card is just a summary of items by manufacturer in your pack. Again you can tap any of the bar graphs to then filter your list to just see all the items from that one manufacturer.

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Overall this is the initial beta of the app. There are a lot more features to come that are on my current roadmap! Please try out the app and share your honest feedback with me! Excited to see what you all think!

10 days later

New update now live on Android and iPhone. Now you can share a link of the packs you put together with your friends!

Here is a photography winter day hiking pack I used this passed weekend up in Big Bear (Trip report coming soon): https://dfts.app/#?id=lVeSBUHoLX52zPqAiB9A

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4 days later

Is there a way to integrate with lighterpack? I already have my gearlists built out on there but otherwise would be super interested in using the app.

    rysybel thanks for the interest! Right now there is not, but once I tweak some of my apps basic features I will be looking into export lighterpack lists into my app. With the holidays I can't say what that timeline looks like at this point though.

    With Thanksgiving this week in the United States, a lot of us have calories on our minds with all the turkey and food we are about to eat 😃

    Un-related to turkey day but related to calorie counting and tracking I just pushed another beta release to both Android and iPhone yesterday that is all about Calorie tracking! This is the initial feature release for calorie tracking and will be tweaked and improved over the next few weeks. For now it tracks total calories in your packs based on the food added, and estimates hours or days worth of food based on the estimated calories per day slider.

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    17 days later

    Pushed out a new update yesterday for both Android and iPhone. The new update adds more options to user settings for selecting what weight format you see your pack data in. These are all the options now:

    • lbs and oz: This shows all gear 1 pound and over in pounds and all gear under 1 pound in ounces
    • lbs: all gear shown in pounds
    • oz: all hear shown in ounces
    • Kg and g: This shows all gear 1 kilogram and over in kilograms and all gear under 1 kilogram in grams
    • Kg: shows all gear in kilograms
    • g: shows all gear in grams

    In this release I also added 9 new default gear types to the built in list and 3 new brands.

    New update officially live for both Android and iPhone:

    • Sort pack items by weight desc or asc instead of alphabetical order is now an option in the user settings
    • Fixed a small bug when viewing lbs were not being converted to ounces in pack view
    • Added 4 more brands to auto-complete list
    • Added 3 more item types to auto complete list

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    a month later

    There have been an entire list of bug fixes over the holidays! App should be pretty smooth and be working as expected, but of course if you find any issues let me know! Had a lot of users join over the holidays so there was some great bug hunting 😉

    Along with lots of bug fixes I cleaned up the setting page a whole lot, it now looks somewhat profesional. I also just pushed a new release last night, which is live for Android and should be live for iOS by the end of the week which adds quick remove item from pack from the edit item view. You can now click an item and click the X in the top right to quickly remove that item from your pack:

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    Enjoy!

    5 days later

    Wanted to add some onboarding help for new users. I would say 95% of the app is pretty obvious how to use it but there are a couple of things like swiping right to pack an item that are not visually obvious to users. Now new users will see options to view video tutorials in two different locations in the app.

    1st area is when you first open the app. If you have no packs great or no gear added to your gear locker you will now see an option to watch a "Quick Start Tutorial Video" which will show you how to add gear and create your first pack.

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    A second tutorial video viewing option will show on any empty pack. This video will show you tips for managing your pack on Don't Forget the Spoon:

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    If interested you can watch the full tutorial which is both of the above videos combined into one here on YouTube:

    17 days later

    Another big update pushed out for both iPhone and Android this week! Pro subscribers can now upload images of all their gear as well! As a visual person, this makes it a lot easier for myself when planning out a pack. For example instead of remember the exact name of each of the 4 or 5 different types of tent stakes that I have, I can now just add them real quick based on what they look like.

    I also upgraded the app to Material 3, which is the new design standard from Google:

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    23 days later

    New update live in the Android App store, and the iPhone iOS store!

    Updates include:

    • Added the ability to un-pack all gear in a pack with one click
    • Can now search for 'is-packed' and 'not-packed' in pack search bar to see all packed or all not packed items
    • Tapping the packed percentage circle now toggles 'not-packed' search
    • Cleaned up setting page

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    13 days later

    Small update pushed out to both Android and iPhone last week.

    • Added a link to a new Discord Chat Community as another avenue to share feedback.
    • A few extra default brands and item types added.
    10 days later
    MikeJones stickied the discussion .

    Small update now live on Android and iOS that fixes a bug that would crash the app when you delete a pack or delete an item from your Gear Locker. Now that I cleared that up, next update should have a new small but useful feature!

    Also created a subreddit if reddit is more your thing for leaving feedback. I will post updates there as well, along with respond to app feedback etc.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/DontForgetTheSpoon/

    Pushed out another new update tonight! ALready live for Android, should be approved for iPhone sometime next week. iPhone app reviews have been going a bit quicker lately so maybe it will be live this weekend if we are lucky 🤞

    Updates:

    • Added the ability to duplicate a pack. This makes it easy if you have 80-90% of the same items in one pack vs another. This will especially help through hikers who have slight changes in equipment for different section of the PCT or AT.
    • Added a link to a new DFTS subreddit as another way to share feedback and get updates.

    To access the duplicate pack button, click the 3 dots in the top right for more options when viewing a pack and you will see "Duplicate Pack" as an option:

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    Once you click "Duplicate Pack" a dialog will pop up where you can name the pack and type a description:

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    Once you click "Duplicate Pack" after naming it, an entire new pack will be created with the same gear as the pack you picked to duplicate. To open the new pack just go back to your Pack List!

    16 days later

    Happy Easter for those that celebrate!

    New update went live both for Android and iOS last night. Similar to the last update I pushed out that added the ability to duplicate packs, someone made a request for the ability to duplicate items. Keep the feedback coming!

    Small update, added the ability to duplicate items in your gear locker. This helps if you have items where 90% of the fields are the same. You can duplicate it and then edit the new item.

    Enjoy and happy packing!

    5 days later

    Been working hard the last couple of weeks on a decent sized update. Through conversation I have noticed a handful of users like using Don't Forget The Spoon on tablets. Unfortunately I had only optimized the app for small mobile screens. The app has worked on tablets and larger screens functionally, but basically looks like crap on anything bigger than a mobile phone.

    I have not released the tablet update just yet.... but for testing purposes, if you share a link to a pack with friends they can now view your pack on their desktop or tablet in the webview and it will now look a whole lot better! I wanted to get a few users testing the new view before pushing out the update for tablets. Expect that Update Sometime next week.

    Until then you can check out some of my packs here:

    Here is a screenshot from my desktop web browser on my Macbook Pro:

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    4 days later

    1st Phase of Tablet optimizations are now live in both the Android App Store and iOS app store!

    There are still a few views that I think need some refining. Overall the app now has much better optimization on larger Android and iOS devices and is no longer a complete eye sore.

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    If you own an tablet please give it a try and let me know what you think! Additionally some other exciting news, is that if you own an Apple Computer with an M1 chip you can actually install Don't Forget the Spoon on your desktop now!

    Apple allows users with M1 or great to install iPhone apps onto the desktop, so you can find us in the Mac OS App Store and run us on your desktop computer!

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    I know this only supports recent Mac computers and does not support older hardware or PC at this time. The foundation is now laid for the GUI and I can look into more desktop options in the future.

    12 days later

    Another fun little update for those of you who like to share with others! For awhile now you could always share a link to your packs. Now you can share an image of your Pack Weight summary Widget!

    Just tap the "Pack Weight Summary" text at the top to begin!

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    After clicking the "Pack Weight Summary" text you will see a quick preview of the image you will be able to share. Then click the share button, to share your pack weight summary image to your favorite social network, email, or friend via text message!

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    The image you share will look something like this:

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    As always this is kind of a fun proof of concept for me, let me know what you think and I can evolve this feature further!

    6 days later

    A few small updates pushed out and now live for both Android and iOS:

    • Editing Gear in gear locker now auto updates that specific item in all packs that the item is in.
    • Made summary cards in pack slightly larger.
    • Reduced white space in between items in pack.
    • Added item type to search results when searching community gear.

    Here is a quick look at the slight visual changes in the pack view. Most probably won't notice much, but I think it looks slightly better:

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    And here is a quick look at the community search results now that item type is added as well:

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    13 days later

    Small update pushed yesterday. Its live in the Android app store right now and will be live in the iPhone app store by the end of the week.

    I worked a lot of small stuff on the backend but the one new feature users will be able to use was a customer requested feature! If you have images of gear in your pack, you can now choose to make the images for a specific pack public. This allows individuals that you share your public pack link with to see the images as well and not just text. To see an example you can check out my El Cajon Pack here: https://dfts.app/#?id=8XbFH9JA2qgjf9gGaR35

    If you have images in your pack and want to enable public images just click the 3 dots in the top right while viewing a pack and click edit:

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    Now when you are editing the pack there is a new toggle that you can enable to allow images to be public when you share a link:

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    If you enable that toggle, then click save images will be viewable when you share links with your friends!

    17 days later

    Continuing to make small steps to the next bigger update. Last night I pushed an update for both iPhone and Android which are both live now. Latest updates allow you to mark a pack as public or private. You can choose whether to make a pack public or private when creating a pack or after creating a pack.

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    If you have shared links to your pack in the past make sure you update the app and mark those packs as public if you want the links to continue working. If packs are private and you have shared links, visitors will see the pack marked as private and will not be able to view the contents.

    This is the next step in adding the ability to have a database of packs shared by other users in the app. I plan to add a way to find other users public packs shortly.

    The next step before that big release though is to add tags to packs. This will help users find your packs and sort through list of packs in the future.

    7 days later

    Small update went live yesterday for both Android and iOS. A user reported a bug over on our reddit, which you can read here.

    That bug is no more! Back to coding new features 😃

    18 days later

    New update uploading to the Android and iOS app stores now! This update adds the ability to add tags to packs. These tags will be used for the next big release which will add a a new tab to the main navigation that will allow you to browse pre-made packs from other users!

    The tags will allow you to filter all the user created packs to find ones you may be interested in checking out. If you have a cool pack you want to share with the Dont Forget The Spoon Community, start marking them as public and adding tags now in preparation for the next big release!

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    These are just a few default tags I through together please let me know if you have any other suggestions for tags to be added as options.

    5 days later

    Pushed out a small update last night with a bug fix. Non-pro users would run into an issue when clicking the add photo button. This issue is now fixed and doesn't fail in an ugly way. Bug was reported on our Discord channel by a user.

    6 days later

    Big update pushed out yesterday night for both Android and iPhone! A New tab as introduced to our bottom navigation, which allows you to find packs marked public by other users to the app!

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    When you navigate to the new tab to search for public packs, you will see a tag cloud at the top. To begin looking for other individuals packs, select a tag to start your search.

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    While searching you can select multiple tags to refine your search as well!

    As with most features in my app this is the first iteration of this feature and expect it to morph and shape overtime. I have a few near term features planned that should be in the next release or two that will add some additional functionality to browsing public packs!

    One thing to note, marking packs and public is fairly new feature as well so expect the number of packs to show up here to grow over time ;-)

    Appreciate the patience as the community grows!

    19 days later

    New update pushed out yesterday for Android an iOS. Adds the ability to thumbs up a public pack to show your love and appreciation!

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    Go explore the public packs, and vote for your favorites! Also create some awesome packs if you think you have what it takes to be the best pack in the app!

    17 days later

    Small update pushed out last week. Added a few extra default item types but also added links to formal documentation on how to use the app! New users will now see buttons to check out the documentation before they start building packs and adding items to their gear locker. Anyone can find links to the documentation in the settings!

    Check out the documentation here: https://dontforgetthespoon.com/docs/intro

    Please provide feedback as well! The documentation is not complete yet, but there is enough right now to make it useful to new and expert users.

    9 days later

    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.