Help
Short answers to what parents ask. Anything else: hello@lunchsorted.app.
Lunch Sorted is a school-lunch planner for parents: answer three questions and it plans a week of packed lunches from foods your kid will eat, a main, a side, a fruit and a sweet for every school day, matched so each box goes together. It keeps your school’s rules, writes one shopping list for the week, and asks after school what came home, so the next week leans toward what gets eaten. It runs in your phone’s browser and installs to the home screen. Planning is free for one lunchbox; the question about what came home is part of the Household plan. See what it does.
No. Lunch Sorted plans the lunch you pack at home. It does not show your school’s menu, take orders or hold a lunch account. The rules it keeps are the ones in the school’s letter: nuts, seeds and sesame kept out, cold lunches only, no ice pack, a short eating time, no chocolate or candy. A food that breaks one is flagged and the week is planned without it.
From the foods on your list, leaning toward what comes back eaten, then matched so each box goes together: something crunchy against a soft main, protein when the main is light, something tangy to cut the salt. Tap a compartment and the sheet says which foods go well with the main, and it never rewrites a day that has already gone.
Yes: it plans from the foods on your list and nothing else, so a handful of foods your kid will eat — at least one for each part of the box — make a week. Tap them in on Foods from Ideas. Each box is matched from what is there, and a short list repeats its foods to fill the week. Add one new food at a time beside the ones they already eat; the question about what came home (part of the Household plan) tells the next week what came back eaten.
There is a whole week worked through on A week of school lunches for a kid who eats five things.
Not unless the list is short. Plan the week draws from your list and does not use a main twice until every main has had its turn, so five mains make five different days and three mains repeat; sides, fruits and sweets work the same way. A food that came home twice in a row sits out for three weeks while the list can spare it. Shuffle beside a day redraws that one day; tap a compartment to change one thing. And if the same lunch every day is what gets eaten, lock it: a locked compartment stays put when the week is planned again.
Two: this week and the one after. From the weekend, when every box of the week has gone by, Week shows the coming week as this week, ready to plan; once it is planned, the › is the one after it. On Week, the › beside the date shows the week after and ‹ brings you back. There, Plan next week plans it — or plans it again — and Shuffle beside a day works exactly as it does this week. Shop lists what to buy for it under Next week, with the same checks. When this week has gone, the week after becomes this week on its own. Pack, the kid’s pick and the question about what came home only ever look at this week.
Yes. In the lunchbox settings — the sliders at the top, or Account → Lunchboxes — tap the days under Pack days. A day you switch on is added straight to the weeks already planned, and one you switch off comes out of them; the message says which. A box that has already gone stays exactly as it was packed, so switching Wednesday off on a Thursday leaves Wednesday’s box where it was. Each lunchbox keeps its own days. For one day only — a field trip, a sick day — see What if there is no lunch one day?
On Week, tap the compartment (the small swap arrows). Pick another food, or shuffle just that one. A food you pick is locked where you put it: Plan the week and a day’s Shuffle leave it alone, and the lock closes on the tin to say so. The lock on that sheet does the same for whatever is already in the compartment; shuffling that one compartment on purpose unlocks it. The lock on a day’s header locks every compartment in that day at once, so on Sunday you can lock the days that worked and plan the rest again. The arrows beside it Shuffle that one day; Plan the week at the top plans the whole week again. With more than one lunchbox either one first asks whose boxes, and every one of them offers Undo for a few seconds.
A snowflake: keep it cold. A lidded box: a sealed container. A pencil: something you wrote in. A lock: a shuffle leaves it alone. Two arrows in a circle: tap to change it. A !: a rule you overruled. Tap the compartment on Week for the rest.
Once a day has gone — from three o’clock, whatever time you have said the box comes home — Week folds it to one line: the main and how many more parts, with what you said came home beside it. Tap the line to see the box exactly as it was packed, and to say how it went, or change what you said — the same answers as on Pack, part of the Household plan. Nothing changes a day that has gone: not Plan the week, not Shuffle, not the kid’s pick. Once every day of the week has gone, the week itself makes way: from the weekend Week shows the coming week in its place, and Pack still asks about the last box home.
On Foods, tap Ideas and tap anything your kid will eat — that is the built-in idea bank, and it is free for good. The list stays exactly where you are as you tap, so you can work down it and add as many as you like in one sitting. Each heading carries Add all with the number it would put on — Add all 34 — which adds that whole compartment in one go, skipping what you already have and anything your school rules keep out, with one Undo for the lot. Once a section is all on the list the button goes, because there is nothing left for it to add. A green checkmark on a row means every box that can take that food already has it — with more than one lunchbox that includes a box whose own rules keep it out, and tapping the row says which one. Add your own, at the bottom of the list, writes a food in your own words with what to buy for it; that one is part of the Household plan. With more than one lunchbox, whatever you add goes into every box unless you tap a name under “Add it to” to leave one out.
On Foods, tap the trash can beside it. There is an Undo for a few seconds. With more than one lunchbox the trash can takes the food off the box you are looking at, so a food both of them have comes off each list in turn.
Inside Ideas you can do it from the list itself. A food you added a moment ago, in that same sitting, comes off on one tap. A food that was already on the list takes two: the first turns the row, which then reads Tap again to take it off and tells you whose lists it leaves and whether it is one of your own — because it may be a food you wrote yourself, with your photo and your amounts. The second tap takes it off every box named under “Add it to”. Tap anything else, scroll on, or just leave it a few seconds, and the row goes quiet again — you would start the two taps over.
Nothing, until you plan it again. The boxes that already hold the food keep it, marked off the list, so a lunch you were going to pack tomorrow does not quietly turn into an empty compartment you cannot explain a week later. Taking a food off is a decision about the weeks after this one: it never comes up again, and the next Plan the week or Shuffle puts something else in its place. A compartment you have locked is the exception, because nothing changes a locked compartment on its own — tap it on Week and change it yourself. Until it changes it stays on the shopping list, because you still have that box to pack. Days that have already gone keep exactly what was packed, always.
Yes. Scroll to the foot of Foods: anything you wrote yourself waits under Taken off with its picture and the day it came off, and Put back returns it to the list exactly as it was — your photo, your shopping line, your recipe, all of it. A food straight out of the idea bank is not kept there, because it is always one tap away in Ideas — but one you had given a photo, a recipe or your own amounts to is your work too, so that one waits with the rest.
On the Recipes tab, along the bottom. Food lists belong to each lunchbox; recipes belong to the household, so they are one list however many kids you pack for — the ones you have kept first, then the two the app comes with, which are free along with the rest of the bank. Those two — Mediterranean quinoa salad and Bean & avocado wrap — were written and taste-tested by school teams for the USDA, which is why they are the only two we ship: a recipe nobody has cooked is worse than no recipe. For any other dish in the bank, Import a recipe brings in the one you already trust. Once there are eight or so recipes on the tab, a search box appears above the list; it matches a name or an ingredient, so typing “oats” shows you what you could make with what is in the cupboard. You can also reach a recipe from the food it belongs to: tap the food on Foods, then Open the recipe; a food that has one carries a small Recipe tag beside its name. Cook it step by step sits at the top of the recipe, above the ingredients. The same recipe is on the compartment when you tap it on Week, and named under the box on Pack, which is where you are standing the night before.
Because we only ship recipes somebody has actually cooked. The app comes with two — Mediterranean quinoa salad and Bean & avocado wrap, both developed and taste-tested by school teams of cooks, chefs, parents and students for the USDA. Everything else in the idea bank is a dish rather than a recipe: it is still planned, still goes on the shopping list with what to buy for it, and is still packed, exactly as before. If you want a recipe for one, tap the food on Foods and then Add a recipe — paste the address of the one you already trust, or paste the words in — and it is yours from then on, in every lunchbox that has that dish. We used to write our own and stopped: a recipe nobody has cooked is worse than no recipe, because you would have trusted it.
Open the recipe and tap Cook it step by step, at the top, above the ingredients. One step fills the screen with how far through you are, and What you need under it is cut down to just what that step calls for, with a box against each amount to check off as it goes in — so the olive oil is checked off at the counter rather than back on the full list. A step that calls for nothing, like leaving something to chill, simply has no list under it. The whole recipe at the top right shows everything again, and coming back the button remembers which step you were on. Nothing you check off is saved, so a half-made recipe never turns up on the other parent’s phone.
Open the recipe and tap Metric — or US, for a recipe that came in written in grams; it converts both ways, the whole system at once: a cup of flour is weighed in grams, water, oil and broth are poured in milliliters, an oven set in Fahrenheit carries its Celsius in a recipe you brought in, and a spoonful of salt is left as a spoonful, because six grams of salt is not a measurement anyone uses. A cup of cherry tomatoes stays a cup: we only convert what can honestly be converted. The phone remembers which measures your kitchen works in. The + and − beside the number make more or less — lunches, for the app’s own mains; whatever the recipe counted in, for anything else — and scale every amount with them.
Yes, two ways, both under Recipes → Import a recipe. Paste the address of a recipe page and the app reads the ingredients, the steps, the time and the yield straight off it — that works on most recipe blogs, whether they publish the recipe for search engines or just write it out under an Ingredients heading. Some pages still will not give it up, and a few sites refuse us outright; when that happens the app says so and the paste box below is the way through. That reading happens on our server, so it needs you signed in: the address goes to us, we send back the recipe and nothing else, and we keep neither the address nor the page. A video does not: there is nothing under a reel or a pin but the words its maker typed, so copy those and paste them into the box instead, and the app reads them on your phone, signed in or not, without sending anything anywhere. Either way what comes back is yours to name and keep, and it is kept for its own sake: putting it on a lunchbox’s food list is offered afterwards rather than done for you, so you can keep a recipe you have no plans to pack this week. If you do add it, the shopping line and what it contains are filled in for you to correct — check that part before you save it, because the school rules and the allergens go by it. Keeping a recipe of your own is part of the Household plan; the idea bank and the two recipes that come with it stay free to cook from.
Yes. Tap the food on Foods. If it has no recipe yet it says so, with Add a recipe underneath — paste the address of a recipe page, or paste the recipe itself, exactly as above. It is kept on the Recipes tab like any other, and the food points at it — as does the same dish in your other lunchboxes, because one recipe serves them all. To get rid of one, open it from the Recipes tab and remove it there; there is an Undo, the foods that used it stay on their lists, and a dish named after one of the two the app comes with falls back to that built-in recipe. Like importing, this is part of the Household plan, because it writes to your household.
Yes. Open the lunchbox settings, the sliders at the top of the screen, and under Keep out of their box tap Nuts: no food with nuts goes into the week. Seeds & sesame, dairy, gluten, egg, soy and fish work the same way, and so do the School rules above them: cold lunches only, no ice pack, a short eating time, no chocolate or candy. A food that breaks a rule is not deleted: it stays on Foods, marked skipped with the reason. With two kids at two schools, each lunchbox keeps its own rules. Foods you add go by what you tap under Contains. A food written straight into a box has only its name, and Nuts cannot see inside a name: to catch those too, put peanut, almond and the rest under Anything else, which is checked against every name a whole word at a time: “ham” keeps ham out and lets graham crackers in, “pea” means peas and not peaches, and kiwi catches kiwis too. So write out walnut and hazelnut rather than nut. Still read the label.
Either a school rule or an allergen you set in the lunchbox settings — the sliders at the top beside the ?, or Account → Lunchboxes — is keeping it out, or it came home twice in a row and is on hold. The Foods tab marks each food it skips and says which rule, and says when a food on hold comes back: three weeks, unless the list is too short to fill the week without it. Change the rule, or remove the food. Rules never delete a food, and they never rewrite a day that has already gone.
Yes. On Week, tap the compartment, then tap the food — it reads “has gluten — tap to use it anyway”. It goes in, the message names the rule with an Undo, and it stays flagged: a ! on that compartment and an Against the rules mark on the day, on Week and on Pack. That is the whole of it. The flag lasts as long as that food is in that compartment; shuffle it or pick something else and it is gone. The rule still applies whenever the week is planned, and if the kid’s pick trades that box to another day, the flag travels with it.
Yes. On Week, tap the compartment and Write something in, then type what is going in — “leftover spaghetti”. It goes into that one box on that one day and nowhere else: locked, so Shuffle and Plan the week leave it alone — only Shuffle on that compartment’s own sheet replaces it, with an Undo that puts your words back; off the food list, so it never comes up in another week; and off the shopping list, because it is already in your fridge. The compartment carries a pencil and the day says Written in. We have only the name to go on, so a write-in asks for the name and nothing else — at six in the morning that is all there is time for. If the name itself trips a rule — “leftover brownies” in a box with no chocolate — it goes in flagged, with a ! on the compartment and an Against the rules mark on the day, exactly like any other food you used anyway. But a name that says nothing about what is in it tells us nothing, so nuts, dairy and the rest are yours to check — and for the same reason the day stops telling you whether that box has protein or needs an ice pack. Change it and Clear it are in the same place; clearing it fills the compartment again. A compartment you wrote in is never traded away by the kid’s pick, because Monday’s leftovers would not keep till Thursday. Writing your own foods in is part of the Household plan.
No. Add a lunchbox per kid, each with its own school rules, food list and week, and, with the boxes matched (they are, unless you say otherwise), Plan the week plans them together: the fullest food list leads, every other box starts from the same foods, and a box swaps only where its own rules or its own list say otherwise, so four lunches are the same four lunches, bar the kid who can’t have wheat.
One plan, matched. Plan the week on Week is that matched plan whenever matching is on; with more than one lunchbox it first asks whose boxes, all checked, and the boxes you leave out keep what they have. Every plan and shuffle offers Undo for a few seconds. Boxes can only match on foods both lists have; add a food to every box from Foods to match more. Turn it off under Account → Lunchboxes → Match the boxes and each box is planned on its own.
One food, every box. When you add a food, from the idea bank or your own, it goes into every lunchbox unless you say otherwise. Tap a name under “Add it to” to leave a box out; that is where the one weird food only one of them eats goes. A box whose rules keep the food out is skipped, and the app says which.
Two boxes, one screen. With two lunchboxes Pack shows both: the first box open, the second as one line that says whether it is packed — tap it to open the box, and Packed folds it away again. Week, Foods and the lunchbox settings show one lunchbox at a time, with the names as tabs along the top; one tap each. From three lunchboxes Pack uses the tabs too, each carrying a check once that box is packed, or a small ring while an answer about that box is still owed, and one line says who is still to pack. Shop is one list for the household and never splits.
No. Shuffling one lunchbox, or swapping one compartment, changes that lunchbox only. Once you have changed a box on purpose, nothing drags the others along. To match them all up again, tap Plan the week on Week and leave every box checked.
Yes: every planned box goes on one list as what to buy, so a turkey and cheese pinwheel becomes deli turkey, cheese slices and tortillas, grouped by aisle, one line a thing. A line says how many boxes it is for when that is more than one, and names the dish it goes into only when the dish is more than one thing — grapes are a line with nothing under them, and a dish that has a recipe says so. Tap the check to say the pantry already has it. Tap the line itself and a sheet says which boxes it is for, each a way into that compartment, with the recipe when the dish has one and Already at home at the foot. Copy puts the list on the clipboard; on a phone, Send opens the share sheet, so it can go to Notes, Reminders or a text — the same list, word for word. Once every box of the week has gone, Shop shows next week’s list, or offers to plan it.
A field trip, a sick day, a half day: tap No lunch today beside the box on Pack — it says tomorrow, or the day, when that is the box on screen — or No lunch under that day’s box on Week. The day comes off: nothing to pack, nothing on the shopping list, no question about it, and the kid’s pick skips it. Put it back is right there if plans change, and the same box comes back. A box already marked Packed comes off with the day, and Undo marks it Packed again. A day that has already gone is left as it was.
Yes: Pack shows the next school day’s box, with a flag when it needs an ice pack, a sealed container, or is missing protein, and one check marks it packed. With two kids both boxes are on the screen, the second folded to one line until you tap it; from three, one box at a time with a tab for each along the top, and a line underneath says how many are ready and names who is still to pack. Under the boxes, Coming up lists the rest of the week, one line a day — the first box’s first two foods and how many more, or no lunch for a day you have taken off, with either kid’s pick on the day it lands. Tap a day to go to Week, which is where a box gets changed. If you pack the night before, say so under Account → Lunchboxes and from three o’clock Pack shows tomorrow’s box, the one you are packing. From three, today’s box is done: nothing changes it, and the shopping list drops it. Once the box is home it asks what came home; that is the next question.
Yes: once the box is home on a school day, Pack asks what came home, part by part, and a food that comes home twice in a row goes on hold for three weeks, so the next week leans toward what gets eaten. It is part of the Household plan. When the box is home comes from the lunchbox settings (When does the box come home?, three o’clock unless you say otherwise), and Ask what came home on the same page turns the question off for that lunchbox.
All eaten is one tap for the day it all went; otherwise tap Ate it, Some, Came home or Didn’t get to it under each food; the last one counts for nothing. Skip: nothing counted at the foot records nothing for that day and stops the asking; Answer later folds the question to one line that waits until you answer it — for a week, then it lets that day go. A dot on the Pack tab means an answer is owed for the newest box home; Pack asks about that box only, and the boxes behind it from the last week are under Earlier boxes, a line that opens a list of them, each with the same answers, so a day you missed is answered or changed from there, or from its line on Week. With two boxes home, one question is open at a time and the other is a line you tap; from three, the question sits in that box’s tab, with a ring on any tab still owed. For the rest of that day a line says what you answered, with Change beside it. In the iPhone app, Remind us when the box is home sends a reminder once a box is home and you haven’t said how it went — one for each home time, so two boxes home at different times each get their own.
Yes, from the week you have already planned and shopped for, so nothing new to buy: they choose between two of the week’s boxes, part by part or the whole box, and you hand them the phone. Switch it on in the lunchbox settings (the sliders at the top, or Account → Lunchboxes) with "They pick their box each day". The kid’s pick is part of the Household plan. The button then sits on Pack, on the box it would change: today’s box while nothing is in the bag yet, and the next day under Coming up once today’s is packed. It reads Let Emma pick — or Pick again if they have already had a go — and afterwards that day carries an Emma picked mark. The night before: two pictures at a time, or the whole box against the next one. Add a photo of the real thing beside a food for a child who cannot read yet. The iPhone app can remind you at the time you choose.
One box, or the whole week. Pack has the next box, for the night before. On Week, Let them pick the week hands the phone over once and works through the days: the next box, then the one after, until there is nothing left to hold up against anything — the last box is simply what is left. A small bar along the top for each box, filling as they go, so they can see how far is left. Every choice is saved the moment it is made, so you can stop halfway and keep what they picked, and a day already in the bag is never offered or traded. Anything you wrote in by hand stays where you put it: on Each part that one compartment is simply skipped and the rest of the box is still offered, and on Whole box the whole day is, because the box trades as one.
No. Your lunches stay on your phone until you sign in. Sign in with your email, no password, to share the week with the other parent, give a caretaker the week and the pack list, or keep a backup. In the iPhone app you can buy the Household plan without one, too: it is on for that iPhone until you sign in. If someone invited you in, Leave this household under Account → Account takes you back to a phone of your own and leaves the lunches with the household — it asks first, like Sign out. Delete my account and data is on that same page for everyone: it ends your sign-in and this email address, and if you are the one who set the household up it takes the household off our servers and off this phone and ends everyone else’s sign-in to it. It asks you to type DELETE first, because it cannot be undone. If your plan was bought in the iPhone app, cancel it in Manage in the App Store first: deleting the account cannot stop Apple charging for it. What is already on someone else’s phone stays on their phone, so copy your lunches out first if you want a record.
Yes. Sign in on your phone, then under Account → Household tap Invite the other parent and send them the link; it works once, for a week. They sign in on their own phone and the week, the foods, the shopping list and Pack are theirs too, and a change either of you makes shows on both phones. A grandparent or sitter who packs some days gets Invite a caretaker instead: they see the week, the pack list, the shopping list and the recipes and can check a box off as Packed, and changing a lunch stays with the parents. Sharing is part of the Household plan, which every new household has for its first three weeks.
See the week, the pack list, the shopping list and the recipes, and check a box off as Packed — that check stays on your phone. Changing a lunch is for the parents, so Plan the week, Shuffle, the locks, No lunch today and the lunchbox settings are not on your screens at all. If a box needs changing, ask a parent; it shows on your phone once they have changed it.
You give your email and we send two things: a link and a short code. Tap the link and a page opens with one button that signs you in. If you keep the planner on your home screen, the link opens in Safari rather than in it — so sign that one in with the code instead: open the planner from your home screen, go to the Account tab, and type the code in. Either one works once, on its own, for fifteen minutes. If you signed in on the way to something — a second lunchbox, the pantry check, the kid’s pick, the plan — you land back there, whichever of the two you use. Ask for a new one any time from the Account tab. On a phone that has not built a week yet there is no Account tab: tap Already signed up? Sign in on the very first screen, give your email, and that same screen turns into “Check your email” with the code box on it.
Sign in on it and they come back on their own. Open the planner and tap Already signed up? Sign in, under the welcome on the first screen — before you answer the questions — then give the same email as last time and either tap the link we send or type the short code into the box on that same screen. Your lunchboxes, your foods, your rules and this week’s plan arrive from the household. Sign in before you answer the questions if you can: a week you build first comes with you into the household rather than being thrown away, so you can end up with a lunchbox you did not mean to add. If you never signed in on the old phone, nothing ever left it — copy the lunches across from Account → Account while you still have it. A plan bought in the iPhone app without signing in comes across with Restore purchases, under the prices, on the same Apple Account.
If you have never signed in, Erase everything under Account → This phone wipes the lot — two taps, and no copy left. Once you are signed in it disappears, because the lunches are the household’s rather than that one phone’s, and wiping them there would empty the other parent’s phone too. Instead Sign out leaves them behind and takes nothing with you — it asks first, since it clears this phone — and Delete my account and data ends the account itself. Clear the plans is the gentle one: it empties the weeks and keeps your foods, rules and lunchboxes. None of these cancels a plan bought in the iPhone app: Apple bills it, and Manage in the App Store cancels it.
It marks what the Household plan keeps on after your three weeks — the kid’s pick, the question about what came home, your own foods and recipes, the pantry check on Shop, another lunchbox, the invites. Tap it to see the plan. Once the three weeks are up the star sits on the button itself, and that button opens the plan; everything you added stays.
Planning the week, the shopping list and the pack list are free for good, for one lunchbox, and the built-in idea bank is free to build that list from, with its two recipes free to cook from. Foods written in your own words, recipes of your own — pasted in or read off a page — kid’s pick, the question about what came home, a pantry that remembers, more lunchboxes and sharing are the Household plan. Every new household gets the whole plan for three weeks, no card. Prices are on the front page, for buying here on the website; in the iPhone app the App Store shows its own. Bought here during the three weeks, it is first charged when they end — or the day you buy, in their last two days — and renews a year or a month from then. Cancel before that first charge and nothing is charged. In the iPhone app it starts, and is charged, the day you buy. Bought here, it is refunded within 14 days of the first charge, no questions; bought in the iPhone app, refunds are Apple’s.
Your three weeks are up, or the Household plan has ended. Nothing was removed: every food you added is still on the list, still gets planned, and still goes on the shopping list — recipes and all. Adding another one in your own words, writing something straight into a box, or keeping a recipe of your own is part of the Household plan. Anything you already wrote into a box stays where you put it. The idea bank stays free, so the list can still grow, and the recipes that come with it stay free to cook from.
In the iPhone app the plan is bought through the App Store, charged to your Apple Account: Account tab → Subscription → Get the Household plan (Keep the Household plan while your three weeks run), at the App Store’s price. Signed in, it switches on for the whole household at once, on every phone and in the browser. To change or cancel it, tap Manage in the App Store on the same screen, or go to Settings → your name → Subscriptions on an iPhone signed in to the Apple Account that paid. Refunds are Apple’s to give: ask at reportaproblem.apple.com. You do not have to sign in to buy it: bought signed out, it is on for that iPhone, and signing in later, whenever you like, to a household you set up makes it the household’s. Paid, but the plan is not on? Tap Get the Household plan (Keep the Household plan during the three weeks), then Restore purchases, under the prices. Anywhere else — a computer, an Android phone, or the planner in Safari — the plan is bought here on the website, through Stripe. A plan bought either way works everywhere, and is changed where it was bought.
Not in the iPhone app. Bought signed out, the plan is on for that iPhone, charged to your Apple Account like any other. Sign in whenever you like to a household you set up and it becomes the household’s, on the other parent’s phone and in the browser too. Join someone else’s household instead and it stays with you, on your iPhone: to add it to theirs, tap Get the Household plan (or Keep the Household plan) under Account → Subscription, then Restore purchases. If the household you sign in to already has the plan, the app says so, it keeps the plan it has, and the one on your iPhone is not needed: cancel it in Settings → your name → Subscriptions. On a new iPhone, Restore purchases, under the prices, brings it back. On the website you sign in first, because the plan there is bought for the household.
Account tab → Subscription. It shows the plan you are on and the date it renews or ends (Paid through a date, for a plan bought in the iPhone app without signing in: only the App Store knows whether that one renews) — or, if you bought it once back when that was offered, that it never renews — and, for a yearly or monthly plan bought here on the website, what it costs. If the plan came to you free for good, as a beta tester, it reads Household, free forever: there is nothing to pay and nothing renews. Bought on the website: Manage billing opens Stripe for the card, the receipts and canceling, for whoever owns the household and whoever paid, here on the website; the iPhone app does not open it, so from an iPhone sign in at lunchsorted.app in the browser. Bought in the iPhone app: Manage in the App Store, on the same screen, changes or cancels it. Cancel and the plan keeps working until the date shown, then one lunchbox, the week, the shopping list, the pack list and the idea bank stay free. Every lunchbox, food, check and answer you added stays where it is. A household has one plan: if the other parent is buying it at the same moment, the app says so, and it switches on for everyone when they finish.
The plan stays on while the card is tried again — by Stripe for a plan bought here, by Apple for one bought in the iPhone app — and the banner carries the one button that fixes it: Manage billing to update the card, on the website, or Manage in the App Store on an iPhone (or Settings → your name → Subscriptions). The Subscription row reads Payment failed until it goes through. If it keeps failing, the plan ends on the date shown there and the household drops to the free planner with everything you added still in place; the Subscription page then says Ended. The first charge, at the end of your three weeks, is the exception: if it fails the plan ends at once, and comes back on the moment a later try goes through.
Yes. Once opened, the planner works without a network. Changes sync when you are back online if you are signed in.
No Android app to download. The planner runs in Chrome and installs to the home screen: open it, tap the ⋮ menu at the top right, then Install app (or Add to Home screen). On an iPhone, open it in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. Installed, it opens full-screen with its own icon and works offline.
The later change, thing by thing: a food, one day of the plan, a checkmark on the pack list. Every phone in the household keeps the whole plan, and when two of them meet, the newer change to each thing is the one that stays: change Monday on your phone while the other parent changes Tuesday on theirs and both keep; change the same day and the later change wins that day — except that a day which has already gone is never rewritten, whatever the other phone says. Undo respects that too. Tap it after the other phone has changed the same compartment and the app leaves their change alone and tells you — “Monday’s main has changed since” — rather than putting back something they have moved on from. A recipe either of you removes stays removed on both phones, and its Undo brings it back on both.
Tap the ? at the top of any tab, or the Contact support row on the Account tab — both open the same answers. Something is wrong and Ask a question open an email with the build and the phone already filled in, and Send feedback is a short form. Or write to hello@lunchsorted.app. If the planner itself breaks — a screen that will not draw, a button that does nothing — it tells us on its own: what went wrong and where in the app, never your lunches or your name. What it cannot tell us is what you were doing, so a line from you still helps.
Sorted, as in handled: the week’s lunches planned, shopped for and ready to pack before Monday, with nothing left to think about at the counter. That is all the planner sets out to do.
hello@lunchsorted.app. Made by a parent, in Maryland; replies come from one.
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