You buy the yoghurt, you mean to eat the yoghurt, and three weeks later you find the yoghurt. The information you needed was on the lid the whole time, just not anywhere you would see it in time.
Timely moves that date off the packaging and into something that can actually reach you: a reminder, a few days before, while the food is still worth eating. Point your camera at the label and the date is captured. You do not type anything.
Where food actually gets wasted
In most kitchens it is not spread evenly. It concentrates in a few predictable places, and those are the ones worth putting into an app first.
- The back of the fridge. Anything behind something else is effectively invisible. Jars, sauces, deli items.
- Bulk and multi-buys. Three for the price of two only saves money if you eat the third one.
- Opened packets. The printed date stops being relevant the moment the seal breaks, and nothing replaces it.
- The freezer. Less a safety problem than a quality one; things go in and are never seen again.
- Fresh food bought with good intentions. The herbs, the salad, the thing you were going to cook on Thursday.
A small habit that works: add the item while you are putting the shopping away. It is the only moment you are already holding the packet and looking at the label.
Use by, best before, and which one matters
These are not the same thing, and treating them the same is how people both waste food and take risks with it.
Use by is a safety date. It appears on things like fresh meat, fish and ready meals. Food should not be eaten after it, even if it seems fine, because the risk is not something you can see or smell.
Best before is a quality date. It appears on dry goods, tins and frozen food. After it, the food is usually still safe but may not be at its best. A great deal of perfectly good food gets binned on a best before date that did not require it.
If you are deciding where to spend your attention: set tight reminders on use by dates, and loose ones on best before dates.
What is worth recording
You do not need to inventory the whole kitchen. That is the mistake that makes people abandon food apps in the first week. Track what is expensive, short-lived, or easy to forget.
- Fresh protein — meat, fish, tofu
- Dairy, especially anything already opened
- Leftovers and batch cooking, with the date you cooked them
- Anything bought in bulk
- Baby food and formula
- Pet food, which often has a shorter life than people expect once opened
- Spices and oils, where the loss is quality rather than safety
How Timely handles it
Point the camera at the printed date and the AI reads it, works out what the item is, and files it. You can also speak it — "the milk expires Friday" — or upload a photo you already took, or type it. Reminders arrive a few days before and again on the day, on a schedule you set per category, so food can nag harder than warranties do.
It also works with no signal at all, which matters more in a kitchen than you would expect: plenty of homes have a dead spot exactly where the fridge is.
Common questions
What is the difference between a use by date and a best before date?
They answer different questions. A use by date is about safety: the point after which food should not be eaten, even if it looks and smells fine. A best before date is about quality: the food is usually still safe afterwards, but the taste or texture may have dropped off. If you only track one kind closely, track use by dates.
Does Timely scan barcodes?
No, and that is a deliberate difference. Barcode apps look a product up in a database to estimate a shelf life. Timely reads the actual printed date off the packaging with your camera, so it knows the date on the item in your hand rather than an average for that product.
How do I handle something after it has been opened?
Add it with the date it should be used by rather than the date printed on the pack. Many things change the moment they are opened, and the printed date stops being the useful number. A jar of sauce opened on Sunday is a different item from the same jar unopened.
Track it before it catches you out
Timely is free on the App Store. Scan a label, a receipt or a document and it remembers the date for you.
Download on theApp Store