September 2026 update: Meals, your family meal planner, and a look behind the scenes

September was about dinner. Baylo learned to plan your family's meals, got noticeably sharper at understanding you, and finally turned the lights down.

Baylo now plans what your family eats

Every household has the six o'clock question. What are we having? Is there anything in? Didn't we have pasta on Tuesday? Then somebody goes to the shop for one onion and comes back with everything except the onion.

Meals opened to everyone almost a month ago, and we have spent all this time making it properly good. It sits in the bar at the bottom of the app (along the top on a computer) and has three parts: a Planner for the week, your Recipes, and a Profile where you tell Baylo who is eating.

The Profile is the part that earns its keep. Add everyone you cook for: the grown-ups, the children, Nan on Sundays, even the baby, with a weaning stage, because a six-month-old and a toddler are not on the same menu. Give each person their allergies, dislikes and diets. Allergies stay out of anything that person is eating, and so does anything made from them. Dislikes are dodged where possible. Children get no spice, whatever the grown-ups decide. And if you pick something yourself that clashes, Baylo does what you asked and simply tells you: "Just so you know, this satay contains peanuts, and Sam has peanuts listed as an allergy." Ultimately, you know your family best.

Then open the Planner and tap Plan full week. Baylo writes a week of meals for that household, with a line saying why it fits you. Change whatever you don't fancy: a new idea for one meal or a whole day, or drag Tuesday's dinner onto Thursday. Takeaway on Friday? Say so, and Baylo writes Takeaway on Friday and leaves it alone. Let a dinner stretch over the next day or two and it plans the leftovers and buys enough for all of them.

Your own recipes come in too. Photograph a cookbook page or Nan's handwritten card in the app, or paste in something you copied from a website, and Baylo tidies it into a recipe with servings you can scale. Or literally just describe what you want. Star the good ones and Baylo slips them into the week now and then.

When the week looks right, tap Shopping list. Baylo adds up the quantities (two recipes that each want 200g of spinach become 400g), skips what you always have in, and saves it as a tick-list in Notes, which you can drop straight into the family group so whoever is at the shop sees the same list. Want it on the fridge? Print the week as a PDF: one page for the fridge door, then one per recipe.

And if you would rather not think about any of it, switch on Auto-plan in the Profile. On the day you choose, Baylo fills next week and sends the plan to WhatsApp or Telegram. "Your meals for next week are sorted." We have not got tired of that message yet.

All of it works in chat as well. "What's for dinner on Thursday?" "Swap Tuesday and Wednesday." "Mushrooms are a hard no." Baylo keeps the lasting ones, so you only have to say them once.

One honest note. Meal ideas are planned by AI and can get things wrong, so take them with a grain of salt, or your favourite seasoning. Do glance at the ingredients where allergies are involved.

Behind the scenes

Our Behind the Scenes page shows what we are fixing, what is coming, and what has just landed, no sign-in needed. It had a busy September. Here are the changes that deserve more than the one line the page gives them.

A sharper Baylo

Halfway through the month we changed how Baylo turns what you say into a reminder. It used to take two steps: one to work out what you wanted, another to work out the dates. Now the part that reads your message fills in the date, time, repeat and heads-up itself, and our own calendar maths checks the sums. In our tests it gets 98 reminders in 100 exactly right, in about half the time. It also remembers what was in the photo or PDF you just sent, so "actually, make that the Friday" on your next message does what you would expect. And it reads Word documents now.

Settings you can just ask for

Settings used to be three tabs of switches that made more sense to us than to you. They are now one page of plain questions: How Baylo reaches you, Summaries, Reminders, Calendars, and so on. Or skip the page altogether. Tell Baylo "turn off the weekly summary" or "open on the week calendar" and it changes the setting and tells you in one line what is now set.

Dark mode, at last

You asked, a lot. Settings > Look and feel, or just tell Baylo. It follows you to every device you use.

A face for everyone

Add your photo in Settings and your family sees your face on the reminders and notes you share, and next to your name wherever people are listed.

Family first, if you want it

If Baylo is mostly how your family runs, make the family group your default. New reminders, notes and Lookouts go there unless you say "personal". It is in the group's settings, or just ask Baylo.

A heads-up when plans clash

Save or move something that overlaps with something else and Baylo says so: "This clashes with Doctor Appointment (2PM - 3PM)." It checks your connected calendar and your family's shared reminders too, and keeps quiet about all-day things and back-to-back slots, which are rarely a real clash.

A faster calendar, and a few more

The calendar used to take a good three or four seconds to open. Now it opens in a blink. Your reminder colours can carry across to Google Calendar (Settings > Calendars > Colour in Google). Any reminder can keep its own time zone, for the call with Granny in Melbourne. You can pause Baylo's WhatsApp messages while still chatting to it there. Repeats can land on the first or last working day of the month. And behind all that sits the usual long list of bugs found and fixed, every one of them on the page.

Keep telling us

Almost everything above started as a message from one of our users. The feedback button is in the app: bottom right corner on a computer, in the More menu on your phone. It comes straight to us, and we read all of it.

Baylo is free, on WhatsApp, on Telegram, on your phone and in your browser.