Over the years, Food Expiration Dates has grown a lot compared to its first version. The app was created with a simple goal: to help you remember the expiration dates of the food products you have at home, reducing waste in everyday life.
After more than three years of development, updates, fixes, and improvements, I can say that the free version already fulfills the main purpose the app was created for: allowing you to add food items, set their expiration date, and receive a reminder before they are forgotten.
At the same time, however, an app can always grow. There are new features that can make it more complete, more flexible, and more useful for those who want to manage expiration dates more precisely. This is why the Pro version was created.
The First Pro Feature: Early Reminders
The first feature available in the Pro version is early reminders.
In the free version, Food Expiration Dates reminds you one day before a product expires. With the Pro version, you can choose more freely how many days in advance you want to be notified, up to 14 days before the expiration date.
This can be useful when one day’s notice is not enough. For example, if you bought products for the whole week, food stored in the freezer, large packages, or ingredients you want to plan into your meals over the following days, receiving a reminder earlier can help you plan better and avoid realizing too late.
In this way, the app does not simply remind you that something is about to expire: it gives you more time to decide how to use it.
Why New Features Will Be Part of the Pro Version
There are many possibilities to enrich Food Expiration Dates with more advanced features, designed for those who use the app more regularly or want more precise control.
The point is that every new feature takes time. It is not enough to add it once. It has to be designed, developed, tested, fixed, maintained, and adapted over time, including when Android changes, when new issues appear, or when user feedback arrives.
It would have been nice to keep everything completely free and rely only on voluntary donations. Unfortunately, after three years, I have understood that this model is not enough to make the app’s development sustainable in the long term.
The donations received have been greatly appreciated, and I sincerely thank those who chose to support the project in that way. However, voluntary donations cannot be considered a stable foundation on which to build new features, updates, and continuous improvements.
For this reason, new advanced features will be included only in the Pro version. Food Expiration Dates Pro was therefore created as a way to allow the app to keep growing, without taking value away from what is already available for free.
The MIT License, the Pro Version, and Contributions
The possibility of building a Pro version also comes from the initial choice to distribute the project under the MIT License. The MIT License is a permissive open source license: it allows the software to be used, modified, distributed, and even sold, as long as the copyright notice and the license text are preserved.
This means that it is correct to build proprietary features on top of an open source base released under this license. This is not an unusual model in the software world: there are projects that keep an open source base while also offering commercial versions, advanced features, or paid services.
The same applies to contributions to the project: as stated in the contribution terms, every contribution submitted and accepted into the repository is released under the MIT License. This allows the open source version to keep growing in a clear and transparent way, while also preserving the possibility of developing advanced features in the Pro version.
For this reason, the Pro version is not in conflict with the open source nature of the project. The open source part will remain available under the terms of the MIT License, while the new advanced features may be distributed in the Pro version.
The Free Version Remains Useful
The free version will continue to allow you to use Food Expiration Dates for its main purpose:
- adding the food items you have at home;
- setting the expiration date;
- receiving a reminder before expiration;
- editing or deleting added food items;
- using the app to reduce food waste.
No data, no already-added food items, and no core feature will be lost with the arrival of the Pro version. The free version will also continue to receive fixes, important updates, and the improvements needed to keep the app stable, working, and useful.
What About the Open Source Version?
Food Expiration Dates also has an open source side, and this remains an important part of the project.
The Pro version mainly concerns the direct development of new advanced features for the app. At the same time, the open source side will remain open to community contributions. This means that the free version can continue to grow thanks to the work of those who decide to contribute to the project, report issues, suggest improvements, or take part in development.
The Pro version does not erase the spirit of the project: it helps make it more sustainable.
Pro Lifetime: An Initial Launch Offer
In this initial phase, the Pro version is available with a Pro Lifetime formula. This means you can unlock the advanced features, including those that will be added in the future, with a one-time purchase, without a monthly or annual subscription.
Pro Lifetime is intended as an initial launch offer, allowing the most interested users to support the app’s development right away and access Pro features as they become available.
In the future, other options may also be introduced, such as monthly or annual subscriptions. For now, however, Pro Lifetime represents the simplest way to support the project from the beginning.
An Independent App That Wants to Keep Growing
Food Expiration Dates is not the product of a large company. It is an independent app, developed and improved over time while also listening to user feedback. Every report, every suggestion, and every real use of the app has helped make it more useful.
The introduction of the Pro version is an important step because it makes it possible to give the project more continuity. My goal remains to build a simple, practical, and reliable app that truly helps people manage the food they have at home more effectively.
The free version will continue to solve the main problem the app was created for; the Pro version will instead make it possible to go further, adding more advanced features and supporting the app’s future development.
Thank You
To conclude, I would like to thank everyone who uses Food Expiration Dates, everyone who has recommended it, sent feedback, reported issues, or supported the project over the years.
This is a new evolutionary step for the app.
If you find Food Expiration Dates useful and want to support its development, you can upgrade to Food Expiration Dates Pro directly from the app.
