A grocery list that explains itself, a week of dinners in a few taps, and upcoming birthdays in Gifts for everyone

Every family has the same Thursday evening conversation. What are we eating this week? Do we have milk? Didn't we just buy coffee? Someone opens the fridge, someone else opens the shopping list, and the person who usually remembers ends up remembering again.

This update is about taking that conversation off one person's shoulders. Famn now learns from what your household actually buys, tells you why it suggests something, and can turn your own recipes into a week of dinners and a ready grocery list. Every household can now also open Gifts and see the birthdays coming up, just in time for the Christmas lists.

A grocery list that tells you why

Famn has suggested items while you type for a long time. Until now it never said why, and a suggestion you don't understand is easy to ignore.

Suggestions now come with a short reason:

• From a recipe. Add minced meat and Famn can suggest the rest of the taco night you usually make.
• Regular purchases. "You usually buy this every 7 days" means it's probably time again.
• Often bought together. Products that many households buy alongside what's already on your list.

You decide what the suggestions are based on. In the new Grocery suggestions settings you can use all recipes in your cookbooks, only your favourite recipes, or no recipes at all, and switch regular purchases and bought-together suggestions on or off.

Bought-together suggestions rely on shopping patterns across households, so we have been careful with them. Your shopping only counts anonymously, only patterns seen in several households are used, and you can opt out with Help improve suggestions. It's your choice, not ours.

Smarter suggestions are free for every household. If grocery planning is a sore point at your house, our comparison of the best apps for grocery planning explains what to look for in a shared list.

Know what's running low

With Premium, the grocery list also shows the things your household usually buys that are running low, based on your own buying rhythm. "Bought 9 days ago, every 8 days" is a better reminder than an empty milk carton. Add one item, or all of them in one tap.

Households on the free plan see how many of their regular items are running low, so you can decide whether it's worth it. Buying on rhythm instead of on impulse is also one of the simplest ways to waste less food and spend less.

Plan my week: from recipes to grocery list

The meal planner has a new button: Plan my week. With Premium, tell Famn which days and meals you want to plan, and it suggests a week of dinners from your own recipes:

• Quick meals on weekdays, so Tuesday doesn't become a three-hour project.
• Avoid recent repeats, skipping what you cooked in the last three weeks.
• Lean on my favourites, because some dinners are favourites for a reason.
• Choose when the week starts, and plan through Sunday.

When the week looks right, add every ingredient for the planned meals to your grocery list in one go. The cookbook also has a new Favourites only filter, so the recipes your family actually likes are one tap away.

If you're new to planning meals as a family, start with our guide to a weekly meal plan for busy families or the more thorough guide to smarter meal planning at home. The Meal Planner help article shows the details.

Gifts opens for every household

When we launched People, wish lists and gift coordination were Premium. That meant many families never got to try the part that's simply about remembering.

From this update, every household can open Gifts. Upcoming birthdays and other occasions for the people you've added show up there for free, and wishes stay free in People. Planning a gift, reserving a wish so two relatives don't buy the same thing, and the record of what you gave stay part of Premium.

People also connects better with the rest of Famn:

• Upcoming birthdays show up on the dashboard.
• From a contact, open that person's gifts, wishes and sizes, or add them to People in one tap.
• Members of your household who don't have their own account, like younger children, can now get a photo too, straight from their contact card.

If Christmas lists are about to take over your house, read Better gifts, less guesswork for a calmer approach, and see the Gifts help article.

Easier to bring everyone in

A family app only works when the whole family is in it, so we removed some friction:

• Join by QR code. Show the household invitation on one phone and scan it with the other. No more copying links between apps.
• Sign in with Apple or Google directly in the app, without a detour through the browser.

Tasks and calendar to the minute

• Tasks and chores can now be scheduled to the exact minute, not just the hour.
• Week numbers are now correct in the calendar, and recurring entries stay on track when the clocks change between summer and winter time.

If your family week still lives in five different places, our article on how to plan the family week smartly is a good place to start.

What else got better

• Faster, steadier start-up. The dashboard loads more reliably right after you sign in, and recovers by itself if the first load comes back incomplete.
• Shake to undo on the shopping list now reacts only to a deliberate shake, not to a phone bouncing in your pocket in the shop.
• Clearer account deletion. Famn tells you where the confirmation code was sent.
• Plenty of smaller fixes across sign-in, the shopping list widget and household settings.

Try it this week

Update Famn from the App Store or Google Play, open your grocery list and see what it suggests, and why. Then press Plan my week and let the weekly dinner debate be a little shorter this time.

New to Famn? Download Famn, the family app that brings chores, shopping lists, meal plans, calendars and gifts into one shared space.

As always, Famn is built by a very small team, and your feedback decides what we build next. Tell us what your household's grocery list still gets wrong.