Shelf Control

Shelf Control is a calorie tracker for people who just want to scan the food and move on. I built it after signing up for one of those fitness bootcamp things, which is apparently a socially acceptable way to pay someone to make your muscles hurt for three days, three times a week. The routine was simple enough: high-intensity workouts, a couple of 5k runs, cycling to the office, and --because joy must be rationed-- trying to do all of that while staying in a calorie deficit. Which led to one very practical lunchtime question: How many calories are in this packet of crisps? Or sandwich. Or yoghurt. Or suspiciously tiny “healthy” snack that somehow contains the energy density of a small moon. There are plenty of apps for calorie tracking. Many of them are powerful, polished, and full of features. Some will build you a nutrition plan. Some will ask about your goals. Some will encourage you. Some will congratulate you. Some will send notifications at times of day when no one should be using the phrase “you’ve got this.” Shelf Control is not that app. Shelf Control does not ask for your name. It does not ask for your email address. It does not ask for your height, your weight, your target weight, your lifestyle goals, your social graph, or your permission to send motivational push notifications at 7:03 in the morning. Because it does not send any. It just scans barcodes, looks up food products, shows you the calories, and adds them to your day. That is the point. Open the app, scan a barcode, check the calories, and decide whether the item is worth it. Eat it, put it back, or stare at it for a few seconds while recalculating your life choices. Shelf Control will not judge you out loud. It will simply print the receipt. The app uses a playful receipt-style interface to show what you have eaten today. Each scanned item appears as a line on your daily calorie receipt, with a running total at the top. You can also check your recent log to see previous days and keep an eye on your average. It is deliberately small. Deliberately simple. Deliberately uninterested in becoming your lifestyle coach. What Shelf Control does: Scan food barcodes in seconds. Show calorie information for scanned products. Add items to your daily total. Display today’s intake as a receipt. Let you browse recent days. Show your daily average. Keep the interface focused, quick, and oddly satisfying. What Shelf Control does not do: It does not create a profile. It does not ask for an account. It does not ask for your name. It does not ask for your email address. It does not ask for your height or weight. It does not ask for your target weight. It does not ask about your lifestyle goals. It does not ask to connect to friends. It does not build a social graph. It does not send motivational push notifications. It does not pretend a barcode scanner is a personality. Shelf Control is for quick, practical calorie awareness. It is for the moment when you are standing in a shop, holding a packet of something, and want to know whether it fits into the day. The barcode lookup is powered by Open Food Facts. Product availability and accuracy depend on the information available for each barcode, so some products may be missing or imperfect. But when a product is found, Shelf Control makes the decision fast: scan, read, add, move on. Your daily food log is stored on your device. The app is designed around not needing personal details in the first place. No account setup, no onboarding questionnaire, no “tell us about your journey.” Just the barcode. Just the calories. Just the receipt. Shelf Control is not here to transform your life. It is here to answer one small question quickly: How many calories is this? And then let you get on with your day.