Tech World: Planners

You’ve got a growing family, and it’s hard to juggle everything. Your kids have after-school activities. You’ve started yoga. And your partner keeps forgetting to do their share of the housework. It’s all a bit much. Happily, there’s an app for that. A mountain of apps, in fact, everywhere you look. This week we focus on one of the best family organizer apps: Cozi. It’s been around a long time, and combines ease of use with a strong feature set. Getting started with Cozi is easy: Install it on your device, create an account and enter your family members. Then, start adding chores and events. Cozi includes a nice grocery list. You can create categories like “fruits and veggies” or “Friday night lasagna” and then add grocery items under each category. With the paid version, you can use shopping mode to speed up your trips to the supermarket: Take an item off the shelf, check it off in Cozi and it drops to the bottom of the screen and out of the way. One of Cozi’s greatest strengths is how it handles recipes. Add your own or download one of the many “Cozi picks.” Add ingredients to your grocery list with one tap. My favorite feature is the shared calendar. Entering events is a cinch because Cozi understands natural language. “Robbie does the laundry on Saturday at 9 a.m.” will schedule an event (“Does the laundry”) at the right time and day, color-coded to Robbie. It’s about time he pulled his weight. Upgrade to Cozi Gold for $29.99 (¥3,400) per year for shopping mode, to remove ads and to track your family members’ birthdays. Or keep the free version — it’s good enough for most families and might just organize your life. (T) This article was provided by The Japan Times Alpha.