Could shopping apps be changed to stop me accidentally ordering the wrong thing?

I’m not as dotty as this request may make me sound. I just think it would be really helpful. Let me tell you more about what I want and why.

Do you have a list of things you must avoid due to allergies, intolerances or your own preferences? Do you have a restricted items list? Ever accidentally buy something that contains some of those restricted items? It’s annoying.

Or ever need to order something with one of those restricted items but the shop cancels those items as they realise, based on your shopping history, that this isn’t a product you would normally choose?

I’m not sure if this is more of a me issue or if this is an issue for a lot of people. But I think if shopping apps had a restricted items list feature it would be so helpful.

A Restricted List Feature

For instance, I would like to be alerted whenever I add something to the shopping cart that has gluten. And I would like if I was never recommended to buy any products that contain gluten. But I might want to buy some products that contain gluten for other people.

So I don’t want to be prevented from buying things that contain a restricted item. I want a Restricted Items List feature that I can create and edit or delete as I wish. If I try to add a restricted product to my shopping cart an alert will pop up reminding me this product contains something on the list.

Another important part of this feature would be that the app would not recommend any products that contain any of the restricted items. For example, if you buy a gluten-free lemon cake this feature would ensure that another lemon cake which is cheaper (yay!) but it is not gluten-free (nay!) would not be recommended to you. And recommendations that are tailored to your particular preferences or needs would be good for both retailers and buyers, no?

Maybe all this would be difficult for platforms to set up. And I certainly wouldn’t expect small businesses to have such a set-up. But for large retailers and supermarkets, and for platforms like Amazon, this could really enhance user experience, for the customers who need it.

Seriously, I’d love this.

Is there a workaround for now?

Just in case there was some browser extension that I was not aware of, I asked AI did this feature already exist. Are there any browser extensions, apps or workarounds it might recommend. And actually, much to my surprise, it recommended a bunch of things.

Unfortunately, none of them were quite what I was looking for. An interesting thing I discovered was there are extensions that act as keyword blockers. These seem to work with varying degrees of success. But the ones I tried wouldn’t simply alert you to the presence of a keyword, they would either block access to that webpage completely or simply not work at all. Disappointing. But I’m not sure how much user error, the way I set up the settings, was to blame.

There is possibly a keyword blocker extension out there that would give me the functionality I want. But I often buy things through apps on my phone, not through a browser. So what I would really love is if large supermarkets and e-commerce platforms did offer this feature in their own apps.

The most helpful sounding suggestions AI gave me were:

• Keyword Blocker Browser Extensions – This seems promising but as I said these unfortunately didn’t work for me.
• Gluten Free Scanner (Mobile App) – uses your phone’s camera to scan barcodes and lets you know if the product is suitable or not. This works, but it is for use in bricks & mortar shops, not the online ones. Not sure how large is its list of barcodes, but it does allow users to add products to improve the service.
• Tampermonkey (All major browsers) – allows user to add scripts themselves to enhance a site’s functionality. AI suggested adding the following script for Amazon:

   // Checks for gluten keywords in cart
  if (document.body.innerText.match(/gluten|wheat|barley|rye|malt/i)) 
  {
    alert("⚠️ GLUTEN WARNING! Check ingredients before buying.");
  }

I haven’t tried Tampermonkey, but it seems like a good option if you’re prepared to put in the work. I’m not really. The whole reason I’m asking for this feature is for times when I’m too tired to properly check things out myself.

I doubt this post will result in anything, but hey if you don’t ask you definitely won’t get, right?