Find a box

You know your Christmas decorations are in Box 45 — the app told you so. But you're standing in front of a shelf with 30 nearly-identical cardboard boxes, each with its own QR sticker. Reading every sticker one by one is slow.

The Find a box feature solves this. Tap Find this box on the box's detail page; the camera opens; sweep across the shelf; the matching sticker lights up green with a beep and a vibration the moment it enters the frame.

Same idea works for closets and items that live inside a known box.

Why this is different from regular scanning

The regular scanner (/scan.php) reads one QR Label at a time and navigates you to whatever it points to. Find-mode is the opposite direction: you already know where you want to go — you just need help locating the physical sticker that matches.

• Regular scan: one-to-one. "What is this thing?"
• Find-mode: one-among-many. "Which of these things is the one I want?"

How to use it

Find a box

1. Open the Boxes page and tap the box you're looking for.
2. On the box's detail page, tap Find this box (next to the Print label button).
3. Grant camera permission if asked. (First time only.)
4. Aim the camera at the shelf or pile of boxes. The app reads every QR sticker visible in the frame.
5. The matching sticker outlines in green, the device vibrates briefly, and a short two-tone beep plays. The signal repeats while the target stays in frame.
6. Grab the box. Tap Done when finished — the camera turns off.

Find a closet

Same flow on the Closets page. Tap a closet, then Find this closet.

Find an item that's in a box

Open the item's detail page. If the item lives in a box (or closet), there's a "box pin" block at the top showing the container. Inside that block, tap Find this box (or Find this closet) to locate the parent container. Once you've grabbed the box, find the item inside.

Items don't have their own find-mode button — the assumption is that you organize via boxes, so finding the box gets you to the item.

What to expect

When the signal fires

• A green outline appears around the matched sticker.
• Your device vibrates twice in quick succession (Android only — iOS Safari doesn't support vibration).
• A two-tone beep plays.

The signal stays on while the target sticker is visible. There's a brief 800 ms grace period for camera shake — if the target briefly disappears (you tilted the phone, light flickered) the highlight stays put for a moment before clearing.

The "Sound on" toggle

In the bottom toolbar of the find page there's a Sound on / off button. Useful in libraries, sleeping-baby rooms, or anywhere you'd rather not announce yourself.

When sound is off, vibration is also off — they're treated as one "silent mode" together. The visual highlight still works.

The "X codes seen" counter

Below the camera viewfinder you'll see a small counter ("3 codes seen"). It bumps up every time the decoder reads a new sticker, regardless of whether it's the target. This is just feedback that the camera is alive and decoding — useful when you're not sure if anything is being read.

Tips

• Lighting matters. In a dim attic the decoder will struggle. Turn on the room light, or open Control Center / quick settings on your phone and switch on the torch.
• Distance matters. Phones decode QR stickers reliably at about 20–60 cm. Too far and the QR blurs; too close and the camera can't focus.
• Sticker condition. Scratched, faded, or wet stickers may not decode. If you have many old stickers and find-mode struggles, reprinting them on matte sticker paper helps.
• Multi-sticker frames are fine. On modern Android Chrome and desktop Edge, the decoder reads every QR visible in one frame and picks the matching one. On iOS Safari and Firefox the decoder reads one at a time, so you'll need to sweep slightly slower.

Browser support

Find-mode works on:

• Android Chrome / Edge — best experience (per-sticker green outline, vibration, beep).
• Desktop Chrome / Edge — same as Android, no vibration.
• iOS Safari — works, but with a whole-frame green flash instead of a per-sticker outline. No vibration. No torch.
• Firefox — works in HTTPS contexts; same fallback path as iOS Safari.

Older browsers without camera support will see an "unavailable" message instead of crashing.

Privacy

The camera frames stay on your device. Decoding happens in your browser; the only thing the server knows is which token you're searching for (passed in the URL when you tap Find this box).

If a token belongs to another tenant — for example, you scanned someone else's QR sticker by accident — find-mode still works mechanically, but no friendly resource label is shown. You'll just see "Looking for token XYZ123" instead of "Looking for: Box 45".