Everything in the app, a step at a time.
A collection is a separate inventory, such as Home, Cabin or Shop. On the home screen tap Collection to create one. Open it and use the menu (the three dots) > Add location to add rooms, shelves or boxes; open a location and add another inside it to nest them. Tap Add item to add things. An item can sit in any location, or in none yet. To rename, recolour, lock, move or delete a location or collection, press and hold it in the list (or use the menu's Edit this place…).
Want to look around first? On an empty home screen tap Add example data to get a sample home and cabin (Example Home and Example Cabin) with items, pictures, boxes and history. Nothing in them can send you a reminder. Tap Remove on the banner at the top of an example collection to delete them both, or delete them like any other collection. You can bring them back any time from a collection's menu > Advanced… > Add example data.
The item editor has four tabs. Basics: photos, name, location, category, status, quantity, description and tags. Details: brand, model, serial numbers (as many as you like, each with a label such as Body or Lens), year or age, condition and registry or licence. Value: purchase price and date, current value, appraised value and date, and the warranty date. Notes: free text.
Amounts are for one item; totals multiply by the quantity. Under the price and the value you can mark how sure you are: Documented (a receipt, invoice or appraisal), Estimate, or Rough guess. Tap the chosen one again to clear it. Reports show this beside the amount.
Photos can come from the camera, your gallery or Google Drive. The first is the cover. Sold, gifted and lost items are kept, but hidden from lists unless you choose Show sold, gifted, lost.
Could use more details. A collection or location says how many items are missing a photo, a category or a value (and, for valuable things with a brand or model, a serial number or purchase details). Tap Show to see just those. When there really is nothing more to add (a roll of tape), tap Nothing more to add on the item, or select several and tap the double tick. Nothing here is a warning; it is only a short list for when you have a spare minute.
In a collection's menu choose Advanced… > Custom fields to add your own fields to every item: text, number (with a unit), date, yes or no, a choice list, or a link. When you create a collection you can start from a template with fields already set up.
Open an item to see its tabs. Log keeps dated entries for maintenance, repairs, loss or damage, claims, appraisals and loans, each with notes, photos, files and an optional reminder date. Contacts links people and businesses to the item with a role such as Purchased from or Serviced by; contacts are shared across all your collections. Files holds receipts, manuals and other documents.
The search icon searches items, locations, log entries and contacts at once, including serial numbers (ignoring spaces and dashes). Use the filter button to narrow by collection, status, category, tags, location or a custom field. In a collection's menu, Totals shows value and price paid overall and by category and location.
Open the home menu > Reminders to turn reminders on and choose a time. Warranty dates and the reminder date on a log entry become notifications on your phone. Notifications for items in locked places never show the item's name.
Your data and photos are always encrypted on the phone. In Settings you can set an optional PIN that is required to open the app, and a location password. Use Lock in the place's edit sheet (long-press a location or collection, or the menu's Edit this place…) to hide it until you choose Show locked locations and enter the location password. Locked locations hide again when you leave the app for the time you choose, from 2 to 30 minutes. A forgotten location password can only be reset, and resetting deletes the locked locations, so choose something you will remember. Settings also has an activity log of security events and an option to block screenshots.
Open the home menu > Backup and restore. Make a backup creates one file with everything, including photos and files, protected by a password you choose (or deliberately none). Keep it somewhere safe, such as your cloud storage. The password is never stored, so it cannot be recovered. Backups do not include your PIN, location password, activity log or settings.
Restore from a file opens a backup and shows what is in it. Then you can Compare it with what is on your phone, bring back items you deleted or set back ones you changed, restore one collection as a separate copy, or replace everything. Replacing first saves a verified safety copy of what is on the phone; open it under Undo a restore to put everything back. If anything goes wrong nothing is changed.
With Pro, Automatic backups save an encrypted backup to a folder you choose when something has changed. See Support for restoring on a new phone.
In a collection's menu choose Advanced… > Export and import. Export makes a CSV file (one row per item) for Excel or Google Sheets. Import reads a CSV file, matches its columns to Stowed's fields (you can change any match), shows what will happen, and adds the items in one step. It never changes items you already have, and items that look the same as ones you have are skipped unless you say otherwise.
A box is just a location with a name you choose: Box 1, Tote 3, Container 7, or "Christmas lights". Open the collection's menu > Advanced… > Boxes and labels. With Stowed Pro you can Make boxes in a batch (you pick the word, how many and where to start counting), then Print labels: each label has a QR code, the box's name in large type, where it is, and a short code you can read or type if the QR is ever scuffed. Labels print one per page, 8 per page or 30 per page, on plain paper or a sheet of address labels. Renaming a box never breaks its label, because the code behind it never changes.
Pack a box: choose the box you are filling (the one you used last is always at the top), then tap items to put them in; a quick Undo appears each time. An item remembers the place it came from, so Unpack can put everything back where it lives, or send it to a place you choose. Scan a label (home menu or the Boxes screen) opens the box and shows everything inside. A locked box asks for the location password first. You can also treat any location as a box from Advanced… when it is open.
For one item, open it and choose Move to…. For many, long-press an item in a list to select it, tap more, then Move to… in the top bar. For a whole afternoon of packing or tidying, open the collection's menu > Advanced… > Move items: choose the destination once (your recent ones are one tap, and it can be in any collection), then tap each item to send it there. Every move has an Undo. If you move things to a different collection, Stowed tells you first what will not come along (a custom value with no matching field there) and what it will add (a category the other collection lacks), and Undo puts everything back exactly.
Found something that is not in the app yet? In Move items or Pack a box tap +, or type its name in the search box and tap Add “…”. Give it a name, how many and a photo, and it goes straight into the box or place you are filling. Save and add another keeps you going; More details opens the full editor.
Open a location's menu > Pictures of this place (or long-press the location). With Stowed Pro you can add one or more pictures (a wall of cabinets, a bank of shelves) and write a caption on each, such as “Cabinet A is on the left, Shelf bank 4 on the right”. A small strip of the pictures shows at the top of the location, and tapping one opens it full size with its caption. Pictures you have added can always be viewed, captioned and removed, with or without Pro.
In a collection's menu choose Reports. Each report has its own options, then Make a PDF to share or Print or save as PDF. The item list and the warranty report are included with the app. With Pro you also get the full inventory report, valuation summary, high-value schedule, documentation gaps, contents by location (with a moving checklist) and value charts. Items in locked locations are left out unless locked locations are showing. A PDF is not password protected, so think about where you send it.
Stowed is free to download and use. Stowed Pro is an optional one-time purchase of $3.99 inside the app (Google Play shows the price for your country), and it unlocks the extra reports, box labels and automatic backups. Open the home menu > Stowed Pro to buy it or to restore an earlier purchase on a new phone. Everything you have entered stays yours either way. See what is free and what is Pro.