Editing aisles

Ingredients are grouped by aisle on the grocery list and in the Pantry’s By aisle view. Each item has one kitchen-wide aisle, and two places change it — both set the same thing:

An item’s ⋮ menu on Groceries, with no stores or on All stores — see Move one item to a different aisle
A row’s ⋮ menu on the Pantry — see Move an item to a different aisle

A built-in ingredient starts in the aisle the ingredient catalog gives it, until you move it.

Once you’ve set up stores, each store can also keep its own aisle for an item — see Set an aisle for the store you’re shopping.

Move one item to a different aisle

If you haven’t set up any stores, you can move a single item without leaving the Groceries page. Open its ⋮ menu on a row. Under Aisle, pick an aisle from the menu, then tap Move. The row jumps to that aisle right away, on every device showing the list.

The menu holds the aisles your kitchen already uses, with the item’s current one selected.

A Pantry row’s ⋮ menu has the same aisle menu, with or without stores, and it changes the same aisle; there, picking an aisle moves the item at once, with no Move to tap — see Move an item to a different aisle.

You need to be online to move an item. Unlike checking something off, an aisle move isn’t held for later when you have no connection — see Shopping without a signal.

Once you’ve set up stores, this menu changes rather than disappearing — see the next two sections.

Make a new aisle

Choosing an aisle and making one are separate acts, so you never create an aisle by accident.

Pick New aisle…, the last entry in the menu.
Type the name in the New aisle name box that appears.
Tap Move.

Press Escape while you’re in that box to back out. The box closes, the menu goes back to the aisle the item was in, and the ⋮ menu stays open.

Capitalization and spacing don’t make duplicates. If you already have a Dairy aisle and you type dairy, the item lands in Dairy — there’s no second aisle. That holds wherever you type an aisle name for an item, on Groceries or on the Pantry. Type a name that’s genuinely different and you do get a new aisle, which is the point: a new aisle is now always something you meant.

Two aisles you already have that differ only by capitalization or spacing collapse into one — whichever spelling you listed first — the next time you save the aisle editor. Nothing merges them before that save, and nothing respells the one that survives. To choose which spelling wins, or to combine two aisles that differ by more than that, remove the one you don’t want in the aisle editor (see Adding and removing aisles). That doesn’t work for a built-in aisle, which can’t be removed.

Set an aisle for the store you’re shopping

Once you’ve set up a store and chosen it in the store picker, the same ⋮ menu sets the aisle for that store. The menu reads Aisle at <store> — pick the aisle and tap Save. The same item can sit in a different aisle at each store, so it lands where you’ll find it on each shop. See Grouping by store for choosing which store you’re shopping.

At a store the menu offers that store’s own aisles as well as your kitchen-wide ones, so a bay or counter you named for this store alone is there to pick again. New aisle… works the same way here — it reveals the New aisle name box, and Save commits it.

The first entry is (no aisle), for an item you buy here with no fixed spot. It clears this store’s placement only — the item falls back to its default aisle, or to Miscellaneous if it has none.

To move a whole aisle at once instead — everything in Pasta, Rice & Grains to the store’s 18A — tap the <store> aisle? beside the aisle’s heading. See Say where a whole aisle is at a store. An aisle you set for one item still wins over the whole aisle’s.

Setting up stores adds an Available at checklist to the same menu, for marking which stores carry the item — it sits alongside the aisle menu, not in place of it. See Mark which stores carry an item.

Set a default aisle on the All view

On the All stores view, the same ⋮ menu shows a Default aisle menu. Pick an aisle — or New aisle… to make one — then tap Move. This is the aisle the item falls into wherever a store has no aisle set for it. A Pantry row’s ⋮ sets this same Default aisle.

Setting a Default aisle doesn’t change any store’s own Aisle at <store> placement — a per-store aisle still wins at that store. The default only fills in where a store has none.

Open the aisle editor

On the Groceries page, open the ⋮ at the right end of the toolbar and tap Edit aisles to open the editor. It edits whichever store you’re currently shopping — the editor follows your store picker, and a line at the top says which one it’s working on.

On All stores, you’re editing your default aisle order — the order every store starts from when it has none of its own.
On a store, you’re setting the order you walk that store, and editing the aisles that belong to it.

To edit a different store, switch to it on the Groceries page first, then open the editor. There’s no separate picker inside the editor: one store choice on the page means you can’t be shopping one store while quietly reordering another.

With no stores set up, there’s just the one default list.

On a store, the editor lists every aisle your kitchen knows about — not just the ones with something in them right now. An aisle with nothing here today is dimmed and labeled empty today, but you can still move it: put it exactly where it belongs in the walk before you ever buy anything from it.

Reordering aisles

Use the arrow buttons to move an aisle up or down. On All stores, that’s the order aisles appear across your list. On a store, it’s the order you walk that store — arrange it to match the store’s layout.

Aisle order is which aisle comes first; store order is which store comes first. They’re set separately — see Grouping by store.

Renaming aisles

Tap an aisle name to edit it.

On All stores, renaming an aisle you made updates every ingredient assigned to it. The ingredient catalog’s own aisles — Produce, Dairy & Eggs and the rest — show a built-in aisle label: you can move them, but not rename or remove them. To shop under a name of your own, make a new aisle and move items into it.

On a store, you can rename the aisles that belong to that store. A kitchen-wide aisle you made shows a kitchen aisle label there — you can move it in the walk order, but its name is set on All stores. Renaming it on All stores keeps it consistent everywhere. A built-in aisle shows its built-in aisle label on a store too.

An aisle can’t take a new name that differs from another aisle only by capitalization or spacing, on All stores or a store — the editor says so and saves nothing. To combine the two, type the other aisle’s name exactly as it’s spelled.

Adding and removing aisles

Type a new name in the input at the bottom of the editor and press Enter to add it.

Tap the × on an aisle to remove it. On All stores, a built-in ingredient in that aisle goes back to the aisle the catalog gives it; anything else moves to Miscellaneous. On a store, removing one of that store’s own aisles sends its items back to their usual kitchen aisle — the items stay on your list. An aisle showing the kitchen aisle label has no × on a store; remove it on All stores. An aisle showing the built-in aisle label has no × anywhere.

If you change your mind, an Undo button appears in place of the × while the editor is open; removals aren’t final until you save.

Miscellaneous

Items without an aisle assignment land in Miscellaneous, which always appears last. That includes custom items Mirepoix couldn’t place in an aisle when you first added them — see Place an item in an aisle.

In the per-store editor, Miscellaneous can show up dimmed and labeled empty today too, when nothing’s currently uncategorized there — it’s still fully orderable, exactly like any other aisle.