Everything you need, nothing you don't.
Hardtack brings inventory, self-sufficiency tracking and alerts together in one focused tool. The core features work with no connection, and no inventory data ever leaves your device. Your inventory stays with you.
Inventory and capture
Ten categories cover a household's food storage, from water to documents, spread over as many locations as you care to create. An item takes about thirty seconds to enter by hand, or two taps when its barcode is recognized by one of the three databases Hardtack queries. Once a product has been identified it stays on the device and comes back with no network afterwards, which makes the second scan of the same pantry item instant and free of data.
Inventory
- Quantity, unit, unit cost and notes
- A minimum threshold per item, feeding the shopping list
- One expiration date per item, driving its own reminders
- Nutrition facts, net weight, Nutri-Score and product image filled in by the scan
Scan & lookup
- UPC and EAN barcodes supported
- Cascading online lookup Open Food Facts → USDA → UPCitemdb → manual entry
- Once identified, a product can be reused with no network
- Only the barcode is sent out, never the contents of your inventory
Organization
- Pantry, garage, cellar, vehicle, evacuation bag, cabin, or locations of your own
- 10 categories, from water to documents
- Fast search and filters, by category, by location or by urgency
- Sort by name, soonest expiry, quantity or recently added, remembered between sessions
- List view or grid view, and an actions sheet on long press
Expiry, rotation and days of supply
This is the heart of the app, and what sets it apart from a plain list. Every item carries its own expiration date, two reminders go out 7 days then 1 day before it falls due, and the rotation view keeps whatever should be eaten first at the top. In parallel, the engine divides your food storage and your water by what your household actually needs and tells you how many days you would hold out in an emergency, naming the axis that limits you. None of this asks for a connection.
Expiry & rotation
- Local notifications 7 days then 1 day ahead, grouped by due date
- Delivery time adjustable, set to 9 am by default
- “Use first” view, sorted by nearest expiration date (FIFO rotation)
- Restocking list generated as soon as an item drops below its threshold
Days of supply engine
- Days of water, calories and medication
- Overall score equal to the smallest axis, with the limiting factor named
- Three further axes, carbohydrates, fats and protein, once the inventory is detailed enough
- Adjustable target, from a few days to a year
Household profiles
- Adults, children and pets, as many as you need
- Water and calorie needs adjustable person by person
- Starting values: 2.5 L and 2000 kcal per adult, 1.5 L and 1500 kcal per child
Ready-made kits
- Eight starter kits: 72-hour bag, vehicle, earthquake, blackout, EDC, infant, pets, first-aid
- Visual progress line by line, with the 72-hour bag open in the free version
- Hideable, reorderable, renameable and editable line by line. Duplicating and creating in the full version
- Kept apart from the inventory: ticking a line consumes nothing
Privacy and data
An app that knows what you store, where, and in what quantity is a sensitive database. Hardtack therefore starts from the opposite of the usual assumption: no account, no server, no sync, and encryption at rest. Three things ever leave the phone, and none of them describes what you store: the barcode of a product lookup, anonymous crash reports, and the purchase receipt handled by the store. The rest, lock, obfuscation, decoy inventory and encrypted sharing, exists for the day the device itself ends up in someone else's hands.
Privacy
- Passcode or biometric lock, name obfuscation, decoy inventory
- Local sharing with relatives via encrypted QR, no cloud and no connection
- AES-GCM encryption, key derived from a passphrase that is never stored
Data and backup
- CSV export, to read your stock back in a spreadsheet
- JSON export and file backup, both carrying locations and expiry dates
- Additive restore: it adds without overwriting what is already there
Spending
- Total value of your stock, in real time
- Breakdown by category, to see where the grocery budget goes
- Optional monthly budget, as a reading benchmark
Day to day
- Three themes, light, dark and red light, the last two with the full version
- Three unit systems, six units of measure
- French, English, German and Spanish
The core features work offline, with no account and no usage telemetry. The free tier covers the essentials, and the full version lifts every limit as a single one-time purchase: both are detailed on the Download page. The most common questions are grouped in the FAQ, and you can estimate your days of supply without installing anything with the online calculator.