Posted by Daniel Oropeza

https://lifehacker.com/best-price-tracking-tools?utm_medium=RSS

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If you’ve ever felt like you were duped by overpaying for something that was advertised as a “great deal,” you’re in the right place. It’s easy to get caught up in frenzied online shopping holidays like the upcoming October Prime Day sale— especially when retailers sometimes sneak price hikes before major sales or deceive shoppers with tricks to get you to spend more than you intended to.

Figuring out the best time to buy something requires constantly watching ever-fluctuating online prices and some knowledge of how prices have changed in the past. As a shopping and deals writer, that is what I do for a living, and I know how time-consuming it can be. Luckily, you don’t have to figure it all out yourself: Here are the best websites and extensions I've been using for years to check price history and track prices so that you can be sure you’re getting the best deal possible.

The best Amazon price tracker: Camelcamelcamel

Credit: Camelcamelcamel.com

CamelCamelCamel is among the best ways to track prices on Amazon products. You can install the browser extension (on Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Safari) to get access to the site’s features without leaving Amazon, or you can just copy and paste an Amazon link or product name to the website’s search bar. CamelCamelCamel shows you how the price of the item has gone up or down over time, how prices have changed through Amazon directly, and the fluctuations from third-party Amazon sellers who list new and used items.

If you sign up for a free account, you can set up alerts so the site can notify you by email when the price of an item drops below a certain amount, if you can get it used for a given price, or if it’s at an all-time low and now is a good time to buy. You can even see previous historic highs and lows and try to map out the best time to strike.

The best price tracker for most online retailers and to compare prices: Honey

Credit: Honey.com

You've probably already heard of the "Honey influencer scam" that blew up in December of 2024. Essentially, Honey hijacked affiliate links from influencers who were sponsoring them. Also, in many instances, it deliberately chose not to give the best coupons to users who used the extension (going completely against its business model). Honey is not alone in this behavior. Many coupon aggregator companies hijack affiliate links; Honey just happens to be in the spotlight because it's the biggest one. Use your own judgment if you choose to use any of its services.

The bad news for those looking for a price-tracking tool that can be used for most online retailers is that Honey is the only option. The good news is that Honey's price-tracking tool can't scam you or give you subpar coupons. The Honey browser extension compares prices from a whole bunch of retailers, not just Amazon. You can create a Droplist, which notifies you if the prices drop for an item on your list if you’re willing to wait for a deal. Here is what creating a Droplist can do for you:

First, it’ll keep the items you want to keep tabs on organized and easily accessible. Second, it’ll track the prices of those products and alert you when they go on sale at any major retailer. You can see how much those prices cost leading up to the sale to see if they are, in fact, good deals or a trick from retailers to take advantage of you, and even compare them with other major retailers to see who has the best deal. You can see how to set up your droplist here.

As long as you don't buy the products using a Honey link, you won't be giving money to the service. Until there's a better alternative, Honey is the only option that can instantly pull up price histories and track prices for multiple retailers with a browser extension (for now).

The best tool to compare prices: Capital One Shopping

Credit: Amazon.com

Capital One Shopping, previously known as Wikibuy, compares prices from other sellers when you shop on Amazon. You can simply type any product into the search bar on top and start analyzing it. If you choose to use the browser extension, it will notify you if a product you are looking at is cheaper somewhere else, and offer a summary of pricing history, estimated delivery time, and total price, including tax and shipping. If you can apply a coupon, it’ll add that as well. When the price drops for a product you’ve viewed, Capital One Shopping will notify you. When you shop, you can earn credits for your purchases at some websites, like Walmart and eBay, that Capital One Shopping has partnered with. You can trade that credit for gift cards or put it toward purchases through Capital One Shopping’s site.

The extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari, and an iOS app allows you to scan barcodes and search products to do price comparisons from your phone.

The best price tracker tool for gamers: CheapShark

Credit: CheapShark.com

While most of the others in the roundup focus on products like electronics, apparel, household goods, and appliances, CheapShark is a great option for those looking to save money on video games. CheapShark combines all of the great places to get discounts on games in one place, one easily searchable directory and database of current prices from sites including Steam, GoG, Green Man Gaming, GameStop, Amazon, and more. Of course, it’s limited to video games, but you can search a game name not just to see how much it’ll cost you to buy, but even if you can buy it at all—and which retailer has it available. If you want, you can even filter by games currently on sale at their selected stores.

When you search for a specific game, CheapShark tells you what the cheapest-ever price was, when it hit that price, and gives you the choice to either go ahead and buy it from your choice of retailer or to sign up for a price notification if it drops again.

Honorable mentions

Keepa: Practical price-tracking tool for Amazon and eBay

Credit: Amazon.com using the Keepa browser extension

Keepa works very similarly to Camelcamelcamel, but instead of clicking on the extension to see the price history, it'll be automatically displayed below the image of the product. This helps if clicking on the extension or installing is one click too much for you. Keepa also lets you track specific products and sends you notifications when they go below a specific price that you set. It also works on eBay. You can download the extension for Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Edge, and Safari.

SlickDeals: Great for finding deals and checking prices

SlickDeals is known for bringing you up-to-the-minute discounts, coupons, and other deals from around the web, but its web-based price tracker is also great for watching prices on just about any item on Amazon and on a ton of other popular shopping sites, like Newegg, Gamestop, Chewy, Home Depot, and others.

Credit: SlickDeals

The service doesn’t give you a detailed price history like some of the others in the roundup—it only shows a “deal history” under the “price intelligence” section for a few popular products. However, it will track the price of your item from when you create an alert and send you an email if the price drops below a threshold that you set. You can also return to the price tracker at any time, log in to your account, and see all of your tracked items on the same screen.

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Posted by Lindsey Ellefson

https://lifehacker.com/best-meal-planning-apps?utm_medium=RSS

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For as basic a necessity as it is, feeding yourself is a lot of work. What's more, feeding a household is even worse. There's the planning, then the shopping, the unpacking, the cooking, the storing, and finally, the cleaning, all of which has to be done over and over again forever. We all know what it's like to be faced with this task and just decide to open up Uber Eats and pay a bunch of fees to have someone do (most of) it for us. Apps are the saving grace when meal planning gets too daunting—but you're using the wrong apps. Forget Door Dash and Grub Hub: These apps can help you plan, shop for, and prepare meals on your own while still offloading some of the hard work on tech.

Here are some meal-planning apps that can suggest recipes based on your dietary preferences, put together shopping lists, and even walk you through the cooking. They can't box up leftovers or wash the dishes, but maybe one day in the future, we'll get there, too.

Best app for recipes: BigOven 

Credit: Lindsey Ellefson/BigOven

BigOven is a meal-planning app that grants you access over one million recipes—and new recipes are constantly being added. I like a few different things about it: First, you can input some of the ingredients you already have and get recipes based on those, reducing your grocery shopping and limiting how many of those million-plus recipes you need to scroll through. You can scan handwritten recipes in, too, and let the app turn them into recipes you can store there, preserving family traditions. Finally, I appreciate that it has a browser version, since that makes it easier to type, browse, and scroll. A few of the apps on this list also work on the browser. In general, I like to do a lot of my planning and work on the computer, then call in my phone at crunch time, just when I need to refer to a recipe.

The free version is nice, but limited. You get the ability to put together a grocery list and one free recipe scan. For more detailed meal planning, you’ll need to upgrade to its paid version for $2.99 per month or $24.99 for the year. Think of it like this: You'll save that much by skipping a delivery order or two.

Best app for family meal planning: Cozi 

Credit: Lindsey Ellefson/Cozi

Cozi is a family organizer, so you might not think of food and recipes when you first hear about it—but don't be fooled. In addition to its daily calendar and to-do lists, Cozi provides space for you to keep a grocery list (which any family member can add to in real time) and even offers up recipes. Not only can you plan your meals' content, but you can schedule them for when everyone is available.

The basic version is free, but the premium version, which is $39.99 per year, offers more features, most of which have to do with the family management aspect (like birthday tracking and calendar searching). If you're using it for meal planning, you may not need to upgrade; I was able to build out an entire schedule of recipes without paying.

Best app for fitness and nutrition goals: Eat This Much 

Credit: Lindsey Ellefson/Eat This Much

Eat This Much is really ideal for anyone with specific nutrition and fitness goals. It puts together plans based not only on your budget and personal preferences, but your nutritional plans, as well. You're prompted to enter in how many calories you'd like to eat in a day, as well as how many grams of protein and other nutrients you want to hit. It even doubles as a calorie tracker and comes with a database of nutritional information about restaurant and packaged food. If you're meal planning and prepping for fitness or health goals, this could be the one for you to really focus in on. (Relatedly, if you're in the market for a comprehensive calorie and nutrient tracker, I am a huge fan of Lifesum.)

Money comes into play if you want more features. For $8.99 per month, you can create meal plans for a week, used advanced search features, view your past meals, and generate reports on your eating habits, to name a few. A bump up to $59 per month unlocks bulk meal plans for over a week in advance, macro tracking, and a recipe database, among other things. That's not exactly a small cost, but if you're serious about meal prepping, give it a look.

Best app for when you're busy: Mealime 

Credit: Mealime/Lindsey Ellefson

Mealime is widely recommended in forums for meal planners and caters to busier people because it's full of recipes that can be made in under half an hour. You can filter recipes by dietary restrictions or preferences, generate a grocery list, and get on with your day. It's a little bare-bones beyond that, but as a picky eater, I appreciate the ability to eliminate recipes that include the things I don't care for. If you ever catch me eating a single mushroom, call the authorities because I'm sending a distress signal.

You'll get plenty of recipes in the free version, but you'll notice some are labeled "Pro." To get those, as well as other features like the ability to add notes, you'll have to upgrade to the paid version for $2.99 per month. For its simplicity of use and fairly low cost, this is a favorite of mine.

Best app to relieve decision fatigue: eMeals

Credit: Lindsey Ellefson/eMeals

eMeals emphasizes that it's meal planning "made simple," and they mean that. You get pre-loaded, dietitian-curated menus that come in "themes." Themes can be kid-friendly, keto, quick, etc. The apps on this list with thousands of recipes to scroll through are great, but if you just want someone or something else to pick for you, start here.

eMeals also has partnerships with major grocery retailers, which makes creating your grocery list a little easier and more specific. Another on the list that has a robust browser component, this makes things almost too easy.

Best app for more recipe control: Plan to Eat

Credit: Lindsey Ellefson/Plan to Eat

Plan to Eat is for people who have a general sense of what they like or want to eat, but just need a little push on the organization. You can clip recipes from the internet or browse recipes in the app, add them to the built-in calendar, and create grocery lists that are specified by category, making shopping easier. The app's cooking view even comes with step-by-step instructions that include timers, walking you right through everything you need to do down to the minute.

You get a free two-week trial, then you'll pay $5 a month or $55 a year to access all the features.

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Posted by Beth Skwarecki

https://lifehacker.com/health/fda-warning-against-some-wearable-baby-monitors?utm_medium=RSS

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As a new parent, it’s unfortunately pretty normal to be paranoid about whether your baby is breathing when you put them down for a nap. Gadgets promise peace of mind—like heart rate or movement sensors that attach to your baby or their crib. But the FDA is warning against most of them.

As the FDA writes in a safety communication to parents and pediatricians, no devices are approved to prevent or reduce the chances of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) or sudden unexplained death in childhood (SUID). If a device says it will do this, the FDA advises avoiding that product entirely. 

When it comes to devices that just claim to give you metrics like heart rate or blood oxygen, there are a few approved products on the market, including the Dream Sock by Owlet, but many of the devices in this category aren’t FDA-cleared at all. The FDA doesn’t name names, but when I searched for “wearable baby monitor” on Amazon and on Google Shopping, most of the brands that popped up are ones that aren’t in the FDA’s database. The unapproved ones I saw were often in the $100-150 price range, while the most popular FDA-cleared device, the Owlet Dream Sock, was significantly more, at $239.99. 

What these monitors are, and why they can be risky

Baby monitors that promise to track your baby’s vital signs include sock-style wearables, sensors that clip to the baby’s diaper or clothes, sensors that go under a mattress, and ones that are built into camera systems. 

These monitors may say they can track heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and respiratory rate, among other metrics, and notify caregivers if something is wrong. However, the FDA says that they can cause harm in these ways: 

• If they fail to measure the vital signs accurately

• If they miss serious problems, making caregivers think everything is fine when it’s not

• If they indicate a problem when there is none, leading to unnecessary medical care

• Burns or rashes from the device itself

How to find approved devices

If your baby needs an accurate medical device, the best place to start is asking their pediatrician to point you to something appropriate. But if you want to use an over-the-counter device for peace of mind, there are two databases you can check to see if the device is FDA-cleared. 

The first is the de novo device lookup. This is for devices where the manufacturer has applied for recognition as a new type of medical device. These are known as 513(f)(2) devices. Go to this link and type the company’s name in the blank marked Requester name. If the product is in the database and the classification product code is QYU, it’s been evaluated and authorized by the FDA. For example, here is the entry for the Owlet Dream Sock, with a QYU code.

The other is the 510(k) premarket notification lookup, which you can find here. This is for devices that are “substantially equivalent” to an already-approved device. Put in the company’s name under Applicant name. 

The FDA adds that if you have a problem with a device, including inaccurate measurements or anything that resulted in an injury, to report it to MedWatch here. 

https://lifehacker.com/health/fda-warning-against-some-wearable-baby-monitors?utm_medium=RSS