How to use SmartBox

1The five tabs

SmartBox is an inventory for physical storage. You photograph a box, list what is inside it, print a label for it, and later find any item by searching or by scanning the label. Everything lives on your device and syncs through your own iCloud account, and you can share your whole inventory with the people you live with (section 12). There is no SmartBox account to create.

SmartBox runs on iPhone, iPad and any Mac with Apple silicon. It is one universal app: your boxes sync between all of them through iCloud, and a plan you buy covers every device on the same Apple Account.

You can choose which tab opens at launch in Settings › Default Tab: Boxes, Scan or Dashboard. It takes effect the next time you launch the app.

The Dashboard

The three tiles at the top are shortcuts. Boxes jumps to the Boxes tab, Items opens the list of every item you own (section 3) and Tags opens Manage Tags (section 5). The Items tile counts each item once, whatever its quantity, while a box card adds the quantities up. The Tags tile counts the tags in this device’s tag list.

Under the tiles is the box you changed most recently – tap it to open it – and then the tools:

• Photos – every box and item photo in one grid (section 6).
• Reminders – all your reminders (section 9).
• Print Inventory – a report of everything, as PDF or CSV (section 8).
• Print QR Codes – labels for many boxes at once (section 8).
• Label Designer – build your own label templates (section 8).
• Export Data Unlimited – a backup file of everything (section 11).

2Create your first box

1. Open the Boxes tab.
2. Tap + in the top-right corner.
3. Fill in the form. Only a Box Name and a Box Number are required – the number is filled in for you.
4. Tap the ✓ checkmark in the top-right to save, or × to cancel.

The checkmark stays greyed out until the box has a name and a number above zero. Tapping an existing box card opens the same form to edit it.

Plan limits. The Free plan holds 3 boxes and one photo per box. Limited holds 10 boxes with unlimited photos, and Unlimited has no limits. When you reach the limit, tapping + shows Box Limit Reached with an Upgrade button. Nothing you already have is ever deleted. See section 14.

What is in the box form

• Box Photo – tap to add a cover photo from the camera or your photo library, then crop it. On Limited and Unlimited you can add more photos. To change which one is the cover, tap a photo to open the box’s Photos screen, press and hold a photo and choose Make Cover. Photos of the items in the box appear in their own Item Photos card and are never used as the cover.
• Box Name – free text, for example “Kitchen — pots and pans”.
• Box Number – the highest number you have used plus one, filled in automatically. This is the number printed large on the label. SmartBox does not stop you from reusing a number, so keep them unique if you print labels.
• Items in Box – see section 3.
• Box weight – normally the sum of the items inside. Override Weight replaces that with a fixed total; Empty Box Weight adds the weight of the empty carton on top, unless you have set an override.
• Description – anything else worth noting, up to 1000 characters.
• Tags – tap a chip to attach it, or Add Tag to open the full picker. See section 5.
• Handling Instructions – mark the box Fragile, Heavy, Temperature Sensitive or Expensive. These show as icons on the box card and can be printed on the label.
• Reminders – attach a reminder to this box, for example “Unpack Kitchen”. This section appears once the box has been saved.
• Delete Box – at the bottom of the form. It asks first, and deleting a box also deletes the items, photos and reminders in it.

You can hide the sections you never use and change their order in Settings › Customize Forms (section 13). The four handling instructions and the ten starter tags always show in each device’s own language. Weights follow Settings › Units.

The box list

Each box card shows its photo, name, number, weight, the number of items (quantities added up), its tags and its handling icons. At the top of the Boxes tab there is a sort button and a row of tag chips for filtering. The sort button opens one menu: sort by Name, Number or Date (the date a box was last changed; tap the same option again to reverse it), switch between Cards and List, and Share Home (section 12). Your sort and layout choices are remembered on this device; tag filters reset when you relaunch the app. The filter row starts with All and only lists tags that are on at least one box.

The long-press menu

Press and hold any box card for: Add Item, Add reminder, Duplicate, QR Code, Print contents, Write NFC Tag (on iPhones with NFC) and Delete Box.

Duplicating asks for a new box number and adds “copy” to the name. It copies photos, items (with their photos, serial numbers and warranty dates), tags, handling instructions, weights and the item sort order. It does not copy reminders or an assigned custom code, because that code has to stay unique to one box.

3Items

Items are the individual things inside a box: a name, a quantity, a weight, an optional description, an optional photo, an optional serial number, an optional warranty, and their own tags. Only the name is required.

Adding an item quickly

1. In the box form, find the Items in Box section.
2. Type a name in the Add item… field.
3. Tap the blue + button next to it to add the item.
4. Or press and hold that button for about half a second to open the camera and start the item from a photo instead.

The full item editor

Tap the i button on an item row to open it. It holds the item photo Unlimited, name, description, quantity, weight per unit, tags, a typed serial number, a warranty date, and Move to Another Box, which moves a saved item out of its current box into one you pick. The quantity is a whole number from 1 up; the weight is per unit, and the box adds it all up.

An item has one photo. Item photos are kept apart from the box’s own photos: they never count toward the photo limit of the Free plan and never become the box cover. To remove an item, tap the trash button on its row; SmartBox asks you to confirm first. Warranties are covered in section 9.

Every item across every box

Open the Dashboard tab and tap the Items tile. This lists every item in every box. The search field matches item names and descriptions, the name of the box and tag names. Choose tags to filter (an item must carry all the tags you pick) and sort by Name, Date Added, Box or Quantity. Tap an item to edit it.

Sorting inside one box

The item list inside a box has its own Sort control – Date Added, Name, Quantity or Weight. It is saved with the box, so it syncs and is separate from the sort on the cross-box list.

4Fill a box in from a photo

Smart Photo Analysis looks at the cover photo of a box and suggests a short name, a description, the items it can see and up to three matching tags from your own tag list. It is free on every plan.

1. Add a photo to the box. The first time you add the first photo to a box, SmartBox asks Enable Smart Photo Analysis? Choose Enable, No Thanks or Remind Me Later.
2. With the feature on, the analysis starts by itself when you add a box’s first photo. A glowing outline and Analyzing… show it is working.
3. The fields fill in one by one. Check them, change anything you like, and save with the ✓ checkmark. Nothing is saved until you do.

You can turn the feature on or off at any time in Settings › Smart Photo Analysis. It stays off until you answer the first prompt. On a box that already has a photo, tap the small sparkles button in the corner of the cover photo to run it manually; this works whether or not the automatic setting is on, and it is shown for editable boxes only.

It never overwrites your work. It only fills fields that are empty: a name or description you wrote stays as it is, items already in the box are skipped, and only tags you do not have on the box yet are added. Items it adds start with a quantity of 1 and no weight. It only suggests tags that already exist, and only from the first 15 tags in your list, alphabetically.

Analysis needs an internet connection and an iCloud account on the device. The photo is reduced in size and sent to OpenAI to read it; see the privacy policy. There is a daily fair-use limit per iCloud account. If you reach it, SmartBox says Daily AI analysis limit reached and you can try again the next day.

5Tags, rooms and places

Tags are short coloured labels – “Electronics”, “Kitchen”, “Winter clothes” – that you attach to boxes and items to group and filter them. There is one shared tag list: box tags and item tags come from the same place. Ten tags are ready on first launch: Electronics, Tools, Clothes, Toys, Books, Kitchen, Decor, Garden, Documents and Seasonal.

Creating a tag

1. In any box or item form, tap Add Tag. This opens Manage Tags.
2. Tap the dashed Add Tag bubble.
3. Type a name, pick one of the colours, and tap Create Tag.

The new tag is attached to the box or item you are editing. Tap a tag chip to attach it, tap it again to detach it. Tag names ignore capital letters, so “garage” and “Garage” are the same tag, and creating a name that already exists simply selects the existing tag. The same Manage Tags list opens from the Tags tile on the Dashboard.

To delete a tag, tap the small × on its bubble in Manage Tags.

Deleting a tag is permanent. It is removed from every box and item on your device that carries it. Boxes that were shared with you by someone else keep it.

Organizing by room, garage or storage unit

SmartBox has no separate “rooms” or “locations” feature, because tags already do the job and do it more flexibly – a box can carry several at once. The pattern that works:

• Give every box one tag for where it is: Garage, Attic, Basement, Living Room, Storage Unit A.
• Give it any number of tags for what is in it: Electronics, Gardening, Books, Documents.

A box of garden power tools in the garage carries Garage, Electronics and Gardening. Give the place tags one distinct colour and you can read them at a glance on the box cards.

The tag filter bar at the top of the Boxes tab narrows with every tag you add: tap Garage to see the garage, then also tap Electronics to see only garage boxes with electronics in them. Tap All to clear it. The same bar works on the cross-box item list.

To move a box to another place there is no separate step – open it, detach the old place tag, attach the new one, save. The number and the printed label stay correct.

The list of available tags is stored on each device separately. Tags attached to a box or item do sync, and a device adds them to its own list when you open that box or item, or open Manage Tags. That includes tags from a shared home. Only a tag that is not attached to anything stays on the device where you created it.

6Finding things

Search inside the app

Open the Search tab and start typing. Results are boxes, ranked by how well they match. A box matches on its description, the names of the items inside it, its name, its tags and its number, so searching “drill” finds the box the drill is in. Search forgives typos and matches partial words, and the matching text is highlighted. Open a result and SmartBox scrolls to the field that matched and lights it up for a moment.

Before you type, the screen shows your recent searches, a strip of your newest photos and every tag in use. A search is added to the recent list when you tap the keyboard’s search key; the list shows the last five, with Clear and a delete button on each row. Tapping a tag shows all the boxes carrying it, and See All next to the photos opens the photo browser. To search items on their own, use the Items list on the Dashboard (section 3).

Browsing your photos

Dashboard › Photos shows every box and item photo in one grid. Pinch to switch between 5, 3 and 1 columns, and use Show to include or hide Box Photos and Item Photos. Tap a photo to see it full screen, then swipe up for its details and Open Box.

Spotlight, without opening the app

Swipe down on your Home Screen and type. SmartBox surfaces matching boxes and individual items, shown as “in box: Garage”. Spotlight also finds an item by its serial number, description or tags. Tapping a result opens SmartBox on the box that holds it. This works automatically, there is nothing to switch on.

7QR codes, scanning and NFC

A box’s QR code

Press and hold a box in the Boxes tab and choose QR Code. The screen always opens in Private mode; switch to Public with the control at the top. The … menu in the top-right corner holds Share (saves the code as an image), Print Label and Assign Custom Code, and the i button explains the two modes.

• Private – the code holds only the box’s ID. It opens the box on a device that already has it: your own devices and those of the people in your shared home. Nothing about the contents is inside the code.
• Public – the code also holds a compressed snapshot of the box: number, title, description, items and tags. Anyone who scans it can read the contents, even without SmartBox installed. On the web it shows the box number, title and items.

A QR code can only hold so much data – roughly 900 characters of text. If everything does not fit, you will see Public Code Unavailable and the code stays private. Photos are normally left out. For a long list, share a PDF report instead (section 8). Labels, Print contents and the inventory PDF always carry the private code.

If someone scans a public code with the iPhone Camera and does not have the box, SmartBox opens a new box form filled in from the code, which they can edit and save. If they already have it, the existing box opens.

Using a barcode that is already on the box

If the box already carries a barcode or QR code – a shipping label, a retail barcode, a warehouse code – you do not need to print one. Open the QR code screen, tap … › Assign Custom Code and scan the existing code. From then on, scanning it in the Scan tab opens that box. The screen then shows Custom Code Assigned, with Remove Custom Code to undo it.

A box with a custom code is left out of the QR codes in the inventory PDF. SmartBox does not stop you from giving the same code to two boxes, and a scan opens the first match.

Scanning

Open the Scan tab and point the camera at a code. The first time, iOS asks for camera permission. A green banner “Found box #12” appears and the box opens over the scanner. There is a torch button for dark basements. Scan reads QR, Data Matrix, Aztec, PDF417, Code 128, Code 39, Code 93, EAN-8, EAN-13 (which also covers UPC-A), UPC-E and ITF barcodes. A red banner says Box not found in your storage for a SmartBox code whose box is not on this device, or Code not recognized for a code that matches no box.

NFC tags

On an iPhone with NFC you can stick a tag on a box and tap it instead of scanning.

• To write one: press and hold the box › Write NFC Tag, then hold the top of your iPhone against the tag. The tag stores a link to the box, not its contents, and replaces anything it held before. Read-only tags cannot be written (This NFC tag is read-only.).
• To read one: in the Scan tab, tap the NFC button in the top-left corner and hold your iPhone near the tag.

Devices without NFC do not show these buttons.

8Labels, PDFs and exports

The Dashboard tools build PDFs and CSV files and hand them to the iOS share sheet, where you choose Print (AirPrint), save to Files, or send them on. All of this is free on every plan.

Labels for many boxes at once

1. Dashboard › Print QR Codes.
2. Under Boxes choose which boxes to include.
3. Under Fields to Include choose what appears on each label: QR Code, Box Name, Box Number, Tags, Description, Handling Instructions and Total Weight. The first four are on by default.
4. Pick a design: a couple of favourites are listed, and Select Template… shows all of them.
5. Tap Preview to check the result, or Export PDF, then Print or a destination.

The switches can only hide something the template already contains. If a template has no handling-instruction element, switching that field on prints nothing. The labels always carry each box’s private QR code.

All eight built-in templates are label-stock designs, one label per page at 4×6 or 3×3 inches, so set the same label size in your printer’s dialog. To tile several labels onto an A4 or Letter page, make a template with a paper-sheet format in the Label Designer; the Layout choices – 1×1, 3×2 or 4×2 labels per page – then appear in Print QR Codes.

Stick labels on the side of a box, not the top – they stay readable when boxes are stacked.

Label Designer

Dashboard › Label Designer lists eight ready-made templates: Classic, Indexed, Descriptive, Warehouse, Moving Day, Minimal, Typographic and Archive. Tap one, then Use template to open the canvas. There you drag elements to move them, pinch a corner to resize, and tap an element for its font, size, alignment and text. A label can show a QR code, name, number, tags, description, handling instructions, weight and one text of your own; the elements button switches each of them on or off. The … menu changes the paper format (A4, Letter, 4×6, 3×3, 2×1 and others) and the colour mode (Color or Black & White), and offers Preview. The + button in the picker starts a blank template, and a long press on one of your own templates offers rename and delete.

Changes to a custom template save automatically. The eight built-in templates cannot be edited directly – make your changes and tap Save as New Template to keep them as a copy. The designer itself does not print: use Print QR Codes.

Custom templates are stored on this device only and do not sync through iCloud. They are included in a backup file (section 11), so without a backup they are lost if you delete the app.

One box on one page

Press and hold a box › Print contents. This makes a simple A4 PDF with the QR code, title, number, description and a list of the items, and opens it in a preview with a share button. No options, no template.

A report of everything

1. Dashboard › Print Inventory.
2. Choose PDF Document or CSV Spreadsheet.
3. Switch on what you want: Box Name, Box Number, Description, Items List, Item Count, Tags and Total Weight. The PDF can also include the QR Code and the Box Images.
4. Tap Preview or Export PDF.

The report always covers all your boxes. The PDF has one card per box, sorted by box number, and is the one to give movers or an insurer. The CSV opens in Numbers or Excel with one row per box and the columns Box Number, Box Name, Description, Item Count, Items and Tags; it never has a weight column. A backup file you can restore is a different thing: Export Data on the Dashboard (section 11).

9Reminders and warranties

The Reminders hub

Dashboard › Reminders shows everything split into Upcoming and Past. Tap + to create one and tap a row to edit it. To get rid of one, tap the trash button on its row, swipe left, or open it and tap Remove Reminder. A reminder cannot be switched off, only deleted.

The three kinds

• Moving – created from a box’s form (Reminders › Add reminder) or its long-press menu, and linked to that box. Pre-filled with a title like “Unpack Kitchen”.
• Warranty – created automatically from an item’s warranty date, when you switch its reminder on.
• Custom – created in the Reminders hub with +, linked to nothing in particular.

A reminder needs a title and a date and time; notes are optional, and a new reminder cannot be set in the past. The first time you save one, iOS asks for notification permission. Tapping a reminder’s notification opens the box it belongs to, or the Reminders list for one that is not linked to a box.

Reminders fire once. There are no repeating reminders in this version.

Warranties

1. Open the item’s editor.
2. Scroll to Warranty and tap Add warranty date.
3. Pick the expiry date under Warranty expires.
4. Switch on Remind me before it expires.
5. Choose the lead time: 1 week, 1 month or 3 months.

A caption tells you exactly when you will be reminded. A warranty date on its own creates no reminder; the reminder exists only while that switch is on. To remove a warranty, tap the trash button next to the date. Warranty reminders appear in the Reminders hub alongside everything else – not in the box’s own Reminders section, which only shows reminders attached to the box itself. Warranties are free for everyone.

Across devices and people

Reminder data syncs through iCloud, and each device schedules its own notification, so both your iPhone and your iPad will notify you, as long as notifications are allowed on that device. Reminders are personal: they are not shared with the other people in a shared home, although an item’s warranty date is part of the item and is shared.

10Widgets, controls and Siri

Widgets and controls need iOS 18 or later. Everything here is free.

Home Screen widgets

Press and hold your Home Screen, tap +, and search for SmartBox.

• New Box, Scan, Search – small single-tap tiles.
• Quick Actions – medium; all three in one row.
• Upcoming Reminders – small, medium or large; your soonest reminders and warranties, each row opening its box.
• Recent Box – small or medium; the box you changed last, with its cover photo and item count.

Widgets show a snapshot the app updates when you use it, so after changes made on another device they can lag until you open SmartBox. There are no Lock Screen widgets. A New Box tile follows your plan’s box limit like the + button does.

Control Center, Lock Screen and the Action Button

Two controls are available: Scan a box and New box. Add them as you would any iOS 18 control: in Control Center, press and hold and tap Add a Control, or choose them for your Lock Screen or Action Button in the iOS Settings app.

Siri and Shortcuts

“Scan a box in SmartBox”, “SmartBox scan a box”, “Add a box to SmartBox” or “New box in SmartBox”. The same two actions appear in the Shortcuts app. Siri phrases are currently English only.

App icon quick actions

Press and hold the SmartBox icon on your Home Screen for Create Box, Search Boxes and Scan.

11iCloud sync, backup and restore

Sync

Your boxes, items, tags on boxes and items, photos, handling instructions, warranties and reminders sync automatically across every device signed into the same iCloud account. There is nothing to switch on and no sync button. On iOS 26 a small Syncing… shows under the title while iCloud is busy.

What stays on each device: your list of available tags (tags already attached to boxes and items do sync), custom label templates, your Customize Forms layout, the Dashboard background photo, recent searches and display preferences like units and appearance.

If a box does not appear on another device, check that both are signed into the same iCloud account with iCloud turned on for SmartBox, and that the device has been online recently.

To share your whole inventory with the people you live with, see section 12. To show someone a single box, use a public QR code (section 7) or export a report (section 8).

Backup and restore

This is separate from sync. It writes a single .sbx file that you control, containing every box, item, tag, photo, handling instruction and reminder, plus your tag list and your custom label templates. Preferences are not included. Because photos are embedded it can be large.

• To back up: Settings › Backup Data, or Dashboard › Export Data – both make the same file. Wait for it, then send it to Files, iCloud Drive, AirDrop or Mail.
• To restore: Settings › Restore Data, pick a .sbx file, and confirm Replace All Data.

Restoring replaces everything. It deletes all of your current boxes, items, tags and reminders, on this device and through iCloud on your other devices, then rebuilds them from the file. It does not merge, and it cannot be undone once you confirm. You cannot restore while you are in a shared home: stop sharing or leave the home first.

Backup Data, Restore Data and Export Data need the Unlimited plan; on another plan they open the upgrade screen.

12Sharing your home

Share your whole inventory with family or roommates. Everyone in the home sees the same boxes, and a change made on one iPhone shows up on the others through iCloud. You share everything at once, including boxes you add later: there is no sharing of a single box, and each person can be in one home at a time. Sharing your home and joining one need the Unlimited plan.

Sharing your home

1. Open the Boxes tab, tap the sort button and choose Share Home. The same row is in Settings › Sharing.
2. If you are not on Unlimited, an Organize Together screen explains the feature. Unlock with Unlimited opens the plans; the share sheet continues once you have Unlimited.
3. Send the invite through Messages, Mail or as a link.

Once your home is shared, the menu row reads Manage Home and lists the people. In Settings › Sharing you can open Manage People and use Stop Sharing Home, which ends it for everybody after you confirm. Your boxes stay on your devices.

• Can edit – the person can add, change and delete boxes and items, like you.
• View only – the person can open everything, including photos, but cannot add, change, duplicate or delete. Trying to shows a View Only message, and the editor shows a lock instead of the checkmark.

Joining someone’s home

Open the invite on your iPhone. Joining also needs Unlimited: without it you see the Organize Together screen first, and the invite waits. If you have no boxes of your own, you join straight away. If you do, SmartBox asks what to do with them in a full-screen Join the Home sheet:

• Move My Boxes Into the Home – your boxes join the shared inventory. They get new numbers after the home’s highest number, so labels you already printed for them show the wrong number and need printing again. Their QR codes still work.
• Remove My Boxes – you start with only the home’s boxes, and your own are removed. With a view-only invite this is the only choice.
• Cancel – you do not join and nothing changes.

Before moving or removing anything, SmartBox saves a backup of your own boxes automatically. If the backup cannot be saved, nothing is changed.

You cannot join while you are sharing your own home with someone (You Already Have a Home) or while you are in another one (Already in a Home). Stop sharing or leave first.

Leaving a home

Settings › Sharing › Leave Home, then confirm. The home’s boxes are removed from your devices, and boxes you moved in stay with the home. The same happens if the owner removes you or stops sharing. SmartBox then offers Restore Backup to bring back the boxes you had before you joined. If you choose Not Now, you can do it later with Settings › Sharing › Restore Join Backup, on the device you joined with. Restoring follows your plan’s box limit.

What is shared

• Shared: boxes, items, photos, tags and handling instructions, including serial numbers and warranty dates.
• Personal: reminders, your tag list, label templates, your Customize Forms layout, the Dashboard background and settings.

Good to know

• Deleting a box deletes it for everyone in the home. SmartBox does not add an extra warning.
• If two people edit the same box at the same moment, the change saved last wins, but separate items are merged.
• Changes arrive when the app opens, when you come back to it and when iCloud sends a nudge. A screen that is already open does not always update by itself. Go back and open it again to see someone else’s change.
• A view-only member can still view, print labels and use QR codes and NFC, and can add their own reminders.
• Boxes of the home count toward your plan’s box limit.
• Restore Data is not available while you are in a home.
• Managing a home, leaving it or stopping it do not need Unlimited.

13Settings

The screen is grouped in five blocks, in this order.

Plan

Preferences

Data

Support

About

At the very bottom of Settings there is an Anonymous ID. Tap it to copy it – it is the anonymous ID your purchases are tied to.

14Free, Limited and Unlimited

SmartBox is free to use with limits. Two paid plans remove them.

Everything not in that table is free for everyone – scanning, QR codes, NFC, label printing, the inventory PDF and CSV report, tags, reminders, warranties, Smart Photo Analysis, Customize Forms, widgets, Siri and iCloud sync. If a plan ends, nothing you have is deleted; you just cannot add boxes beyond the limit.

• To subscribe: Settings › Upgrade to Pro, or any upgrade prompt you hit. Pick a billing period and a plan. Where it is offered, Lifetime Access is a one-time purchase that gives Unlimited for good. When you already have a plan, Settings shows the plan row instead, so upgrade from the prompt that appears when you hit a limit.
• Free trial: on first launch the app may offer a 7-day free trial of Unlimited.
• On a new device or after reinstalling: Settings › Restore Purchase.
• To manage or cancel: tap your plan row in Settings, which opens your Apple subscription settings. You can also go to the iOS Settings app › your name › Subscriptions.
• Bought on the web? If you purchased on smartboxorganizer.app, open the redemption link on your iPhone and it will unlock the app automatically.

The app’s upgrade screen may show the plans under translated names. Limited and Unlimited are the same plans.

15Moving house, step by step

Before you pack

Create one tag per room in the new home, not the old one – New Kitchen, New Bedroom, Office, Store For Now – so arriving boxes can be directed without opening them. Add an Open First tag for the kettle, bedding, chargers and tools.

Sort out your plan before you start, not halfway through: Free holds 3 boxes and Limited holds 10, so a real move needs Unlimited, which also unlocks item photos and backup.

Each box

1. Tap + on the Boxes tab.
2. Photograph the box open, before sealing it.
3. Let Smart Photo Analysis fill in the name and contents, then correct anything it got wrong.
4. Add the destination room tag plus content tags.
5. Set the handling instructions – Fragile, Heavy, Temperature Sensitive, Expensive.
6. Enter a weight if the movers need to know what is heavy.
7. Save with the ✓ checkmark.

Labels

Dashboard › Print QR Codes › choose the boxes › under Fields to Include switch on Handling Instructions (and Total Weight if you want it), as only the number, name, tags and QR code are on by default › Select Template… › Moving Day › Preview or Export PDF › Print. Moving Day is a 4×6 label design, so set that label size in the printer dialog. Stick them on the side of the box, not the top.

On the day

• Scan a label to see a box’s contents without unstacking or opening it.
• Filter by Open First to find the essentials immediately.
• Filter by a room tag to confirm everything for that room arrived.

Afterwards

Open a box › Reminders › Add reminder to set an unpacking reminder; they all appear in the Reminders hub and the Upcoming Reminders widget. For the movers or your insurer, Dashboard › Print Inventory › PDF Document gives a report of every box with number, contents and weight, free on every plan.

Once you have moved in, swap the room tags for permanent place tags and the same inventory becomes a catalogue of your home.

16If something is not working

The camera does not open in the Scan tab

Camera access was denied and the Scan tab shows Camera Access Required. Tap Settings there, or open the iOS Settings app › SmartBox › Camera and allow it. Photos and the photo library work the same way.

A box is missing on my other device

Check that both devices are signed into the same iCloud account with iCloud turned on for SmartBox, and that both have been online recently. Sync happens in the background and can take a moment; there is no sync button, so opening the app on both devices helps.

A tag I created does not show up on my iPad

The list of available tags is per-device, but tags attached to a box or item are added on every device when you open that box or item or Manage Tags. A tag you created and have not attached to anything yet stays on the device where you made it: attach it to a box, or create it again on the iPad.

My custom label template disappeared

Custom templates are stored on the device only and are not synced, so deleting the app loses them. They are included in a backup file, so restoring a backup brings them back.

The public QR code is unavailable

A QR code holds a limited amount of data, roughly 900 characters. For a box with many items, SmartBox shows Public Code Unavailable. Use private mode (which works across your own synced devices and your shared home) or share a PDF report instead.

Scanning says “Box not found in your storage”

The code is a valid SmartBox code, but that box is not on this device – usually it has not synced yet, or it belongs to someone whose home you have not joined. Code not recognized means the code matches no box.

Changing the Default Tab did nothing

It applies the next time you launch the app, not immediately.

My reminder did not repeat, or no notification came

Reminders fire once. There are no repeating reminders in this version. If nothing arrives at all, notifications may be off: SmartBox shows Notifications Disabled with an Open Settings button, or check the iOS Settings app › Notifications › SmartBox. A reminder whose time has already passed does not fire.

I hit the box limit

Box Limit Reached means your plan holds 3 (Free) or 10 (Limited) boxes, counting the boxes of a shared home too. Your boxes are safe. Upgrade to add more (section 14).

I cannot add or change anything in a shared home

You joined as View only, and SmartBox shows View Only when you try. Ask the owner to give you edit access. If your plan has dropped to Free or Limited, the box limit can also stop you.

The shared home is not updating

Changes arrive when you open the app, return to it and when iCloud sends an update, and there is no refresh button. Close the screen and open it again, or switch to another tab and back. Make sure you are online and signed into iCloud. If sharing fails with Couldn’t Share, check iCloud and your connection.

Restore Data says it cannot restore right now

Can’t Restore Right Now appears while you are in a shared home. Stop sharing your home or leave the one you joined, then restore.

NFC does not work

NFC needs an iPhone that supports it. This NFC tag is read-only. means the tag is locked or not formatted; use a blank rewritable tag. No SmartBox link found on this NFC tag. means the tag was never written by SmartBox.

Smart Photo Analysis failed

It needs an internet connection and an iCloud account. Daily AI analysis limit reached means you have used your allowance for today; try again tomorrow.

Still stuck

Use Report a Bug or Suggest a Feature in Settings, or write to support@smartboxorganizer.app. Every message is read.