Help
Everything Tiroko does, in the order you use it. Features marked Premium need the paid tier; everything else is included with no time limit.
1 · Getting started
What Tiroko is for
Knowing what you have left. A freezer, a cellar, a medicine cabinet, a store cupboard: wherever you keep things, you end up losing track. Tiroko holds the list, and above all keeps it true, because a wrong inventory is worth nothing.
Everything works offline, with no account. Your data lives on your smartphone and does not leave it.
The first launch
On first opening, three screens explain the idea, then the app asks you to choose your first base from seventeen templates.
On the free tier, that choice commits you. The first base you enter an item into becomes your free base, and it is the only one you will be able to add to and take from. The other sixteen are there — you can open them, read them, change them — you just don't write in them. And you don't create new ones: creating a base goes through the wizard, which is premium. The details are in chapter 2.
On premium the question disappears: every base accepts additions and removals, and you create as many as you like.
The three tabs
- Stock — the list of the base you have open. This is the screen you spend the most time on: you take things out and put them back without opening anything.
- Add — the entry form, built from the fields of the base you have open.
- Bases — the list of your bases, and the way into settings.
The app remembers which base was open: next time you launch it, you land where you left off.
2 · Your bases
A base is a piece of furniture: a freezer, a bookcase, a drawer full of screws. Each has its own fields, categories and locations.
The seventeen templates
Freezer, fridge, pantry, wine cellar, coffee and tea, library, tools, hardware, medicine cabinet, valuables, 3D filaments, batteries and bulbs, paint, electronic components, sewing, games, camping. Each template arrives with fields made for its use: a vintage and a region for the cellar, a diameter and a material for filaments, an expiry date for the medicine cabinet — with, for that one, a reminder thirty days ahead.
An eighteenth choice exists, the blank base, which presumes nothing. Premium
Rename, recolour, reorder
From the Bases tab, the settings button on each row opens its options: name, colour, icon. The ↑ ↓ arrows change the order — put the one you open every day at the top.
Hide or delete
Hiding takes a base out of the list without touching its contents: it comes back exactly as it was, entries included, through the Restore button at the bottom of the Bases tab. Deleting erases the base and its entries, for good.
The app won't let you delete just anything, by the way: on one of the seventeen supplied bases, as long as you haven't renamed it, only Hide is offered. Rename it and it becomes yours — the Delete button appears.
Adapting the fields
Categories, locations and option lists are edited in the base's settings: rename "Drawer 1" to "Vegetable bin", add a filament colour, remove a category you never use. The template is a starting point, not a straitjacket.
Adding or removing a field Premium
Beyond the options, the structure itself opens up: add a "Lent to", "Serial number" or "Supplier" field, or take out one you never use. The entry form rebuilds itself.
The creation wizard Premium
It is the only way to add a base to the seventeen supplied, hence the Create a base button at the bottom of the Bases tab. The wizard asks you a few questions — what are you storing, are you counting units or weights, are there dates to watch — and builds the matching base, with a live preview while you answer.
Several bases Premium
On premium, all your bases accept additions and removals. On the free tier, only yours does; the others show a banner reminding you which one it is, with a shortcut to go there.
How your free base is chosen
You don't pick it in a setting: your first item picks it. The day you enter something into the freezer, the freezer becomes your free base.
From then on, you add and remove in the freezer, with an unlimited number of entries. You open, read, filter and export the other sixteen, but you don't write in them — a banner reminds you, with a shortcut to yours. And there is no button to change your mind.
"And if I hide the freezer, can I take another one?"
No. As long as the freezer exists, hidden or not, it is the only base you can write in. The app will ask you to restore it rather than let you write elsewhere.
"And if I restore it, do I get my entries back?" Yes, all of them. Hiding touches nothing but the display.
The only move that frees the slot is deleting the freezer — and it takes its entries with it. Your next entry, in the filaments say, then makes that base the new free one. A deleted base does not come back: neither it nor its contents. Only a backup file or restoring to an earlier date can bring them back, and even then, the free base stays the one your entry chose in the meantime.
3 · Adding an item
The form
Only one field is required: the name. Everything else — quantity, category, location, dates — has a sensible default, and today's date is already filled in. Under the name field, a row of "Already used" chips offers the names you have entered before: one tap is enough to start again.
Dates have shortcuts: Today, +1 wk, +1 mo, +3 mo, +1 yr, +2 yr. For a warranty or a distant expiry date, it beats the calendar.
Scanning a barcode
The scan button, at the top of the Stock screen, opens the camera. A recognised code pre-fills the entry: name, brand, sometimes the category. The data comes from open databases kept by their communities — Open Food Facts for food and general goods, Open Library for books. Each Tiroko base picks its source, or none: there is no point querying a food database for a filament spool.
An unknown product is typed in by hand, and the app remembers it: next time you scan the same code, the entry fills itself in.
Scanning is also available inside an entry, on the barcode field, to attach a code to an existing item without leaving what you are typing.
The camera won't open
If you refused camera access the first time, the app cannot ask again: the system blocks the second request. An Open settings button then appears in the scan screen and takes you straight to the right place — turn Camera on for Tiroko, then come back.
A field for typing the code by hand stays available in every case.
Burst scanning Premium
For putting the shopping away: the camera stays open, each code read stacks an item, and you confirm the lot at the end. No going back through the form between two products.
What scanning cannot do instantly
Open Food Facts is a public database kept by a non-profit, and free for everyone. It limits each app to fifteen lookups per minute, across all of its users. In burst scanning, names therefore arrive one after another, about one every four seconds.
This never makes you wait: the entry opens straight away with the code, the name joins it when it arrives, and a counter shows "3 codes to process" as long as some are left. You can keep scanning in the meantime.
A product already scanned once never goes back to the network: it is kept on your smartphone and comes back instantly.
Dictation Premium
"Four beef patties, two salmon fillets, a bag of green peas": Tiroko cuts the sentence up, pulls out rows with their quantities, and shows them to you for confirmation before writing anything. Units are understood — "a kilo of flour" becomes a row reading "Flour, 1 kg".
Photos Premium
One photo per entry is included. Premium allows several, useful for valuables: the object, its serial number, its receipt.
4 · Taking one out
The − and + buttons
They are right there on the list, not buried in an entry. Standing in front of an open freezer, one hand is enough. It is the app's most frequent gesture, and it takes one tap.
Down to zero
When the quantity reaches zero, the item is archived: it leaves the list without disappearing. A banner gives you five seconds to undo — long enough to notice you tapped the wrong row.
An archived entry stays readable and can come back into stock: nothing is erased until you ask for it.
Container mode
Some things aren't counted one by one: a filament spool, a sack of pet food, a drum of oil. In container mode, an entry shows a total — 2.35 kg, say — and underneath the detail: 350 g open · 2 sealed.
The − button takes from the open container. When it is empty, Tiroko opens the next one by itself and decreases the sealed count. The big number is never stored: it is recomputed every time, so it cannot drift out of step with the detail.
Quick take-out Premium
A screen full of big buttons, holding your twelve most frequently removed items. No search, no scrolling: you tap, it is counted down. Made for walking past the cupboard with your hands full.
Scan to remove Premium
Scan the barcode of a product already in stock and the app offers to take it out rather than add it. The same gesture works both ways.
The movement log
Every addition and every removal is recorded with its date, at the bottom of the item's entry. That is what lets you understand afterwards what happened — and what feeds waste avoided and restoring to an earlier date.
5 · Finding things
Search and filters
The search field searches the names. Below it, a row of filters: All, Use soon (what is nearing its date), the location, then the base's categories. Filters combine with the search.
The counter at the head of the list always says how many items are showing, and how many are coming due.
QR code labels Premium
A QR label stuck on an object opens its entry when scanned. It earns its keep where the contents can't be seen: an opaque bin, a closed box, a carton in the loft.
Two forms:
- One at a time, from an item's entry — the QR code label button. It goes to a Bluetooth thermal label printer.
- As an A4 sheet, to label many at once: the page prints on any printer, with dotted cutting lines.
The Bluetooth label printer Premium
Tiroko talks straight to NIIMBOT label printers (B1, B21, D11 and close models), without going through their app. The reference format is the 40 × 30 mm roll.
- Turn the printer on and check it isn't connected to another app, nor paired in the smartphone's Bluetooth settings.
- In Tiroko: Bases → Settings → Label printer.
- Start the search, pick your device from the list, set the roll format.
- The Print a test button prints a QR code to tiroko.app: if it fits on a single label and scans, everything is in place.
Once the printer is registered, the print button appears in item entries.
The printer doesn't show up in the list
Three causes, in order of frequency: it is already paired in the smartphone's Bluetooth settings — remove it from there, Tiroko needs to connect to it itself; the official NIIMBOT app is open and holding it — close it completely; the smartphone's Bluetooth is off, or, on Android 11 and earlier, location is disabled — the system requires it to scan nearby devices, even though Tiroko never uses it to locate you.
A printer in deep sleep won't answer either: press its button to wake it before searching again.
The label comes out blank, or the paper feeds with nothing on it
The roll is the wrong way round: the thermal side must face the print head. Turn it over and print another test.
NFC tags Premium
An NFC tag does not point at an item: it points at a base. You stick it on the furniture — the freezer door, the side of the cellar rack — and resting the smartphone on it opens the matching base.
The rule is simple: one tag per cupboard, one QR per item. Resting the smartphone beats aiming at a code, but a tag costs a few tens of cents and would leave with the object once used up; a printed label costs almost nothing.
On metal, you need a tag made for it. An ordinary tag stuck on a freezer door, a fridge or a metal cabinet will not respond: the metal absorbs the field. Get an NTAG213 in its "on-metal" version, which carries a ferrite layer and costs a few cents more. On wood, glass, plastic or cardboard, an ordinary NTAG213 is fine.
Writing is done from the base's settings. On iPhone as on Android, bring the tag close when the app asks.
NFC doesn't react
If the tag is stuck on metal without being made for it, it will never respond, wherever you rest the phone: you need an on-metal NTAG213.
On Android, check that NFC is switched on in the system settings. On iPhone it always is, but the aerial sits at the top of the back of the device: present that area to the tag, not the middle. A tag already locked by another use can no longer be rewritten.
6 · Staying accurate
Nobody gives up on an inventory because a feature is missing. They give up the day it says three steaks and there are none. This chapter gathers everything built to prevent that day.
Expiry reminders
One notification a day, at the hour you choose: "3 products are nearing their date this week". Not one per item, not one per base — one, read in a second.
The warning window and the sending time are set in Bases → Settings → Notifications. Bases without an expiry date send none, naturally.
The items concerned carry a badge in the list — D−9, for instance — and the Use soon filter gathers them.
I get no notifications
First check that you have allowed them for Tiroko in the smartphone's settings. Then, on many Android phones — Xiaomi, Huawei and Samsung in particular — the battery saver stops apps running in the background: find Tiroko in the battery settings and set it to "unrestricted".
Stocktake mode Premium
Twice a year, ten minutes: the screen shows the list in large type, you tick what you find, you fix what doesn't match as you go. At the end, the app tells you what went unticked and offers to archive it.
It is the only way to catch up with the drift — the item somebody else took out, the one nobody remembered to count down.
The confidence score Premium
It measures one simple thing: how long each entry has gone untouched. An entry unchecked for eight months is probably wrong; the app flags it by itself rather than waiting for you to find out in front of the cupboard.
Waste avoided Premium
From the movement log, Tiroko counts what left before its date rather than after. It is the encouraging side of the reminders: you see what the discipline earned.
7 · Your data
Where it is
On your smartphone, nowhere else. Tiroko has no account and no server. The app's only network exchanges are barcode lookups with Open Food Facts and Open Library, which carry nothing but the scanned code.
Backups
The app backs up locally, on its own. You can also export a backup file from Bases → Settings → Backups: a single file holding everything, to keep wherever you like — cloud, computer, USB stick. The same screen knows how to read it back.
Changing smartphone
Restore your old device's general backup (Apple or Google) onto the new one: Tiroko and its data follow. Otherwise, export the backup file on one side and import it on the other. Direct syncing between devices is planned for a later version.
Going back to an earlier date Premium
The app keeps dated snapshots. If something went badly wrong — a failed import, an unfortunate deletion — you pick a date and get the state it was in then.
CSV export Premium
A spreadsheet file, one row per item, every field in columns. To do your own sums, or to leave for somewhere else: your data isn't held hostage.
Stock value and PDF inventory Premium
When a base carries a price field, Tiroko adds it up. The PDF inventory lays out the entries with their photos and their values — the document you send to your insurer after a flood, and are very glad to have prepared beforehand.
8 · Settings
They open from the Bases tab, button at the top right.
Language and theme
The app exists in French, English, Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese. It follows the smartphone's language on first launch, and you can pick another at any time. The light or dark theme also follows the system, unless you force it.
Notifications
Sending time of the daily reminder, and how far ahead to warn.
Label printer
Search, pairing, roll format, test print. See chapter 5.
Backups
Export and import of the backup file, and — on premium — restoring to an earlier date.
9 · Premium
What is free, forever
One base of your choice among the seventeen templates, with an unlimited number of entries, its fields and categories adaptable, barcode scanning, expiry reminders, the movement log and backups. We never charge for having entered a lot.
The other sixteen bases stay openable and readable on the free tier; you just don't add to or take from them. Creating another base needs the wizard, so premium.
What premium adds
Unlimited bases and free structure, blank base, creation wizard, voice dictation, burst scanning, scan to remove, quick take-out, NFC tags, QR code labels, stocktake mode, confidence score, waste avoided, multiple photos, CSV export, restoring to an earlier date, stock value and PDF inventory.
The three plans
- Yearly — with a seven-day free trial.
- Monthly — no commitment.
- Lifetime — one payment, no renewal.
Prices appear in your own currency, inside the app.
Restoring a purchase
New smartphone, reinstall, promo code redeemed on the store: the Restore my purchases button, on the plans screen, forces the check with Apple or Google. No account to create.
Cancelling
From your smartphone's subscription settings: App Store (Settings → your name → Subscriptions) or Google Play (Profile → Payments and subscriptions). Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period, and your data doesn't move: bases become readable again, and CSV export stays available for thirty days so you can get everything out.
10 · When it doesn't work
Each remedy is written in the chapter where the problem comes up. Here is the list to go straight to the point.
- The camera won't open
- The printer doesn't show up in the list
- The label comes out blank
- NFC doesn't react
- I get no notifications
Something else? Write to us: contact@assodio.fr. Give your smartphone model and what you did just before — that is what makes it reproducible, therefore fixable. See also the Support page.