The Giftwhale app is out. iPhone and iPad, free, no premium tier hiding behind a feature you actually need.
If you already have a Giftwhale account, sign in and everything is there. Your lists, your friends, your reservations, the ideas you saved in March and forgot about. Nothing to set up twice.
The share button was the whole point
Here is the problem the app was built to solve.
You are on your phone. You spot something perfect for your sister in an app you were only half paying attention to. You think "I must remember that." You do not remember it. It goes into the pile of 47 open tabs where good ideas go to die.
Now you tap Share, pick Giftwhale, choose who it is for and where it goes, and carry on with your evening. It pulls the title, the image and the price off the page so you are not typing anything out. It remembers where you saved the last thing, so the second time is faster than the first.
It works from Safari and from most apps with a share button. That is the feature I use most, and it is the one that made the app worth building rather than just making the website a bit nicer on mobile.
Lists that behave like lists
You can make as many wish lists as you like. Birthday, Christmas, wedding, new baby, or the ongoing one that is just things you would quite like.
Add photos, prices, quantities and notes. Reorder items by dragging. Archive the ones you have gone off, which keeps them out of the way without deleting them, because we all change our minds and then change them back. Choose who can see each list, invite specific friends, and share it by link or QR code when someone asks in person.
If you have an Amazon wish list gathering dust, you can bring it across in one go rather than copying items over by hand.
Recently viewed lists are cached on the device, so if you are standing in a shop with one bar of signal, the important bits are still there.
Reserving without spoiling anything
Open a friend's list, reserve the gift you are buying, and everyone else can see it is covered. Your friend cannot. They carry on being pleasantly ignorant, which is the entire point of a present.
Quantities are tracked, so several people can chip in on the same item without anyone ending up with twelve identical mugs. Unless twelve mugs were the plan, in which case, good luck to you.
The unglamorous feature I like most
There is a Shopping tab. Everything you have reserved, plus the private ideas you have decided to actually buy, lands in one place, grouped by the person you are buying for. Still to buy on one side, purchased on the other. Tap through to the shop, buy the thing, tick it off.
It is not a feature anyone puts on a poster. It is the one that stops the second week of December from being a mess.
Ideas you are not ready to commit to
Sometimes you find the right present in July. You do not want to put it on a list, you just want it written down somewhere that is not a note to yourself titled "ideas2 FINAL".
Gift Ideas are private. Attach one to a friend, a family member or a contact, mark it as getting or purchased when you commit, or move it onto a wish list later. Nobody sees them but you.
The people part
Find friends, handle requests, browse the lists they have shared. Each friend has a profile that is about the two of you, with a timeline of gifts given and received, and some quiet hints from their lists and history so you are not starting from nothing.
Memorable Dates holds birthdays, anniversaries and the other days you would rather not miss, with reminders that turn up before panic does.
And if someone's list is looking suspiciously empty a fortnight before their birthday, you can send them a nudge. Polite, but pointed.
After the day itself
When an occasion is done, wrap it up. Mark what actually arrived, send thank-you messages to the people who sent things, move anything unused somewhere useful and close the list without losing it.
Thank yous are the bit everyone means to do and half of us don't. This takes about a minute, which removes the excuse. Mine included.
Families
You can create and manage child accounts from your own profile. Their lists and ideas stay organised under you, and they do not need their own email address or password to have a wish list.
What is not in the app
Being straight about this. Business and charity accounts, and Gift Exchanges, are still web only. They both have a lot of admin behind them and I would rather ship them properly than half-fit them onto a phone screen. They work exactly as they did on giftwhale.com in the meantime.
There is no Android app yet. If that is you, install Giftwhale from your browser and you get a home screen icon and an app-like window, which is genuinely fine, just not the same thing. The Chrome extension and the bookmarklet are still there for saving from a desktop.
It is free
No trial, no pro tier, no feature you hit a wall on halfway through December. Finding the right present is difficult enough without your wish list app asking for money as well.
Download it, sign in, and save the next good idea before it disappears.
Download Giftwhale for iPhone and iPad
Or take the tour first on the app page.
