Grovena runs in a browser, but it does not have to look like one. Adding it to your home screen gives it an icon, opens it full screen with no address bar, and lands you on the catalogue rather than the homepage.
It is free, it takes two taps, and it is the same Grovena underneath. Same account, same cart, same lists. There is nothing separate to sign into and nothing to download from an app store.
What installing changes
- An icon, on your home screen or in your dock, next to everything else.
- No address bar. You get that strip of screen back, which matters most in the scanner, where you are holding the phone up to a shelf label and every pixel of viewfinder helps.
- It opens on the catalogue, not the marketing homepage, so you are one tap from searching rather than two.
- It sits in your app switcher like any other app.
What it does not change: your account, your cart, your saved lists and your Pro subscription are all held on our side, so they are already there when you open it and they stay if you remove it.
Installing it
On an iPhone or iPad. Safari offers no install button, so it is a manual trip through the Share menu:
- Tap Share in Safari's toolbar.
- Scroll down and choose Add to Home Screen.
On an Android phone. Tap Install Grovena and confirm. That button is in the More tab of the bottom bar, and on your Account page — and Chrome will often offer it unprompted as well.
On a computer. Chrome and Edge show an install icon at the right-hand end of the address bar. Install Grovena on your Account page does the same job.
On an iPhone that same button opens the Share-menu steps above rather than installing anything, because that is the most any website is allowed to do there. Wherever you start from, it disappears once you are installed — which is the quickest way to check that it worked.
Shortcuts straight to the scanner
On Android and on a computer, press and hold the icon (or right-click it in a dock or taskbar) for three shortcuts: Scan a barcode, Half-price specials and My shopping lists.
The first is the one worth knowing. It opens Grovena with the viewfinder already up, so a barcode in your hand is two taps from a full comparison — see scanning a barcode for what it can and cannot read.
Shortcuts are not offered on an iPhone — Apple does not support them for home-screen apps, so the icon simply opens Grovena as normal.
It still needs a connection
There is no offline mode, and that is a decision rather than an omission.
Grovena's whole job is telling you what something costs today. A price saved on your phone last week is not a faster answer, it is a wrong one, and a shopping app that quietly shows you stale prices in an aisle with no signal is worse than one that admits it cannot reach the network.
So the app needs a connection, exactly as the website does. In a supermarket with patchy reception, loading your list before you walk in is the practical move.
Scanning on an iPhone
Installing does not stop your iPhone asking for camera access each time you open the app. That one is Safari's, not ours, and there is no way around it from a website. Scanning a barcode explains what is happening and why it is only asked once per visit.
Removing it
Delete the icon the way you would any other app. Nothing of yours is lost, since your account and cart live with us rather than on the phone, and the website carries on working exactly as before.
Something here not matching what you see on your device? Tell us — browsers change what they offer, and we would rather this page were right.