The new Open Food Facts app to better decipher labels and participate in the common good
What’s new ?
- Continuous barcode scanning provides instant Nutri-Score and the NOVA group of ultra-processed products. You can now scan several products in a shopping aisle without having to click a button. The time saved is very appreciable when you shop!
- If a product does not exist yet in the database, it can be added in less than a minute to get Nutri-Score and NOVA. It’s useful for you, and it’s also useful for the millions of other people who use Open Food Facts or one of over 150 other applications that use our database. Many thanks to all of you who add or help complete products!
- The offline mode allows to scan products and get their Nutri-Score and NOVA group without an Internet connection . This is very convenient when you are in a store without network, and for all people who have a mobile plan without data (many among high school students). The offline mode is currently only available on iPhone.
- The app can scan several products and compare them side by side , to be able to choose when hesitating between a few products in a store.
- The app allows you to create lists and add products. This can be a shopping list, a list of what you eat, or lists to manage your stocked products (freezer, cellar, pantry etc.) and avoid waste. For now only on Android.
The iPhone and Android apps have been completely rewritten and are also more stable and faster.
Collaborative and open source development
Many volunteer developers from all over the world participated in the development of all these novelties (a big thank you in particular to Aurélien, Prajwal, Fred, Divyansh, Subhanjan, Shubham, Ross, Karl, Branden, Prashant, Roger, Arnaud, Rudrank, Andrès, Manogna, Saumia, Nasia, Qian, Raphael, Naofumi, Lizzy, Dionysis, Pierre … and all the others!). Many features have been added to the Android app by Huzaifa who was able to work for 2 months developing the application, during the Google Summer of Code 2018. And thanks to a grant from Santé publique France (Public Health France) and your donations on HelloAsso and Lilo , we were also able to hire for a few weeks Philippe, a freelance developer who helped us a lot in particular to develop and finalize the iPhone app.
Help us imagine and create an even more useful app!
The new Open Food Facts apps are available on the App Store and Google Play and are a big step forward from the previous version, but there’s still a lot to do to make the app even more convenient and useful. .
It’s in progress:
- Improve ergonomy so that the app is more intuitive.
- Make collecting photos and information on new products easier and faster.
- Fixing the bugs.
It’s planned :
- Detection of products that are suitable for vegetarians or vegans.
- Offline mode on Android.
- Comparison of products on iPhone.
- Product lists on iPhone.
And we have many other ideas, for example:
- Allow synchronization and multi-device backup that respects privacy.
- Integrate Open Beauty Facts into Open Food Facts to simplify the scan and contribution of cosmetics.
- Take the opportunity to merge also Open Pet Food Facts and Open Products Facts to really have a UNIVERSAL scanner 🙂
- Post scientific recommendations on certain food categories. Did you know, for example, that sea salt does not contain iodine, and that it is recommended to consume iodized salt?
- View personalized tips or alerts on products, based on diet or dietary restrictions, as we already do for allergies.
- View health alerts and product recalls issued by your local authorities and their counterparts abroad.
- Add a system of recommendations of alternative products that is based on scientific criteria, which takes into account allergies, food prohibitions, availability in stores and offers alternatives that meet your criteria.
- To be able to have a summary of the products consumed during a period in visual form.
- A Dark Mode, because it will soon become the latest MUST-HAVE to scan at night in the fridge 😉 😉
Do you have other ideas?
Could you tell us what you find most important and what features would be most useful to you?
Participate in the development or its financing!
The code of the Open Food Facts app is open source and is on Github : iPhone (Swift) , Android (Java) Any goodwill to correct bugs and/or add new features is of course welcome! Join us on our Slack chat room (#ios and #android channels) to discuss the app. The vast majority of the Open Food Facts code is developed by volunteers, but their availability can not of course be guaranteed. Being able to hire a dedicated developer, if only for a few weeks, can accelerate development much. This is particularly the case when it is necessary to tackle a redesign of a part of the code, or the development of a consequent functionality, and when it is necessary to solve the bugs which block the deployment of a new version . The hiring of Philippe in March and April thanks to the grant from Santé publique France (Public Health France) and your donations was really very useful. So today we are launching a campaign to fund future mobile app enhancements: A Better nutrition for a better health: let’s mobilize!
Support the development of the app
Many thanks in advance for your support!
