Free (IAP, £21.99 a year or £3.49 a month) FROM binaryformations.com NEEDS macOS 11.1 or later, iOS/iPadOS 14 or later
Under My Roof is nothing if not comprehensivex
VERDICT
A solid, attractive app that might be too much like hard work to justify a subscription.
Excellent interface
Comprehensive and detailed
Very Apple-like
Subscription model
Under My Roof is a household property database that’s free to U download, but limited to indexing 10 items. You can remove this limitation with a yearly or monthly subscription (if you cancel, you can still access inventory you’ve already added). It’s available for Mac, iPad and iPhone, with your details syncing over iCloud and a single subscription covering the app on all platforms.
As you’d expect, you can index your household possessions, recording information such as make, model, price, condition, quantity, location and more. You can add a photograph of the item in question, and usefully, you can also include pictures of the purchase receipt and/or warranty information, and attach documents such as electronic instruction manuals. As well as your household contents, you can also index your house itself, including details such as its purchase date and price, square footage, the year it was built and more. You can even record routine maintenance and have the app notify you when regular checks or repairs are due. Under My Roof is nothing if not comprehensive.
It’s attractive too. Individual cards are clear and well laid-out, and can be sorted into rooms if you wish. The interface is attractive, clear and Mac-like, and when you buy new items (or if you still have the box) you can bypass much of the typing by simply scanning the barcode with your iPhone. You can also use your mobile device’s camera to scan paper documents such as contracts and rental agreements. As a functioning app, we’ve little here to criticise at all. Maybe the search function could be a little better tuned, but that should improve over time.
Making the most of it
We do have a couple of reservations though. Firstly, did it really have to be sold using a subscription model? As a straight purchase it would be worth £15-20 of anyone’s money, but do we want to pay a monthly or yearly fee for a database that we come back to far less often after initial population?
Also, are you going to have the discipline to make the best use of it? We all have good intentions, especially after moving house, but building and maintaining an inventory takes time. Are you going to keep it up to date, adding new products and purchases as you make them? Or is your enthusiasm likely to whither before you’ve even finished indexing your house, with the app falling into disuse but still costing you a subscription fee as you forget to cancel?
If Under My Roof sounds useful and you’re confident you can update it often enough to make it worthwhile, you won’t be disappointed. But if you’re not sure you can go the distance, maybe subscribe for a month or two and set a Calendar alert to remind you to unsubscribe if it’s no longer used.
Ian Osborne
You can add a comprehensive amount of detail about your belongings.