Scanning & barcodes

Typing in product names is the fastest way to abandon an inventory system. Scanning is the fastest way to keep using one — a code you point a camera at takes a second, while a name you have to think up and type takes long enough that "I'll add it later" quietly becomes "I never added it."

Scanning a barcode or QR code

Open the Scan tab and point your camera at a code. Packle reads the common retail and catalog barcode formats — UPC-A, EAN-13, EAN-8, ISBN, Code 128, and Code 39 — along with its own QR codes from printed labels. If the camera can't get a clean read (bad lighting, a damaged label, a curved surface), you don't have to keep fighting it — see Manual entry below.

When the code is already linked

If the code you scan — a product barcode or a printed label's QR code — is already attached to one of your items, scanning it jumps straight there. This is the whole point of labeling boxes and shelves in the first place: scan the label on a bin instead of hunting for it by name, and you're looking at its contents.

When it's a new product

Scan a barcode Packle hasn't seen on one of your items yet, and it looks the product up for you instead of handing you a blank "new item" form. Lookups check Packle's own local barcode database first — built from bulk open data (Open Food Facts, OpenLibrary, Discogs, MusicBrainz, USDA) — and if that comes up empty, it falls through to live external APIs (Open Food Facts, OpenLibrary, UPCItemDB, Go-UPC, and OMDB for movies) depending on what kind of product the code looks like. Whatever a lookup finds pre-fills a name and, where available, an image, so you're correcting a draft instead of starting from nothing. Nothing's ever guaranteed to be right — external databases have gaps and errors like any database — so double-check what gets filled in before you save.

Manual entry

Cameras don't always get a clean read, and not everything worth cataloging has a barcode in reach when you're standing in front of it — maybe it's printed on a curved can under bad light, or you're entering something from a receipt instead of the object itself. Manual entry lets you type a code by hand and runs it through the exact same lookup pipeline as a camera scan — same local database, same external fallback, same pre-fill. There's no degraded "manual mode" with worse results; it's the identical pipeline with a keyboard standing in for the camera.

Linking multiple barcodes to one item

A single item can carry more than one barcode. That matters more often than it sounds like it would: a product re-released with new packaging and a new UPC, a multi-pack with its own code alongside the individual unit's code, or just a case where two different codes both legitimately point at the same thing you own. Link as many as apply to an item, and scanning any of them finds it.

Once an item's linked to its barcode, it's ready for Labels & printing — printing it a label means the QR code on the label and the product barcode both resolve to the same item.