Getting Started With The Things I Carry
Most people find out about this app because someone shared a link to their daily carry screenshot. It is a straightforward inventory tracker from The New York Times that runs entirely in your browser. You add items, they show up as a list with icons, weights, and descriptions. That is basically the whole thing. But there are enough rough edges and configuration options that people waste time going the wrong direction. Go to thingstheycarry.com and hit start. No account required to create one. You can set up a public profile so others can view your gear, or keep it completely private. The interface gives you a blank inventory and a sidebar of categories. EDC is the default starting point, but the app includes presets for travel, first aid, photography, and a few others. Adding an item takes about four clicks. Search the built-in catalog if your item exists there. If it does not, you type the name manually and assign a weight. The weight field is crucial because the app calculates your total carry weight automatically. Most people skip this initially and go back later, which is fine but tedious. Do it right the first time.
The weight units switch between grams, ounces, and kilograms. Pick whichever you use consistently and stick with it. Do not mix them. I watched a friend convert his entire list from grams to ounces halfway through and then wonder why his numbers looked wrong. The app does not flag unit mismatches between items.
What the app actually lets you do
Think of it as a static spreadsheet with nicer icons. You can create multiple inventories, toggle between them, and share a read-only link. There is no cloud sync across devices beyond the browser session. Close the tab and reopen it, and your data is still there because it lives in localStorage. But if you clear your browser cache, the inventory vanishes. This tripped me up for a while before I realized the data was not being stored on any server. You can export your list as an image, which is what everyone actually uses it for. The screenshot shows your items with their weights and a total at the bottom. Most people post these on social media. That is the primary social function of the app. It also generates a shareable URL if you want someone to see your exact list without the image format. One thing beginners miss is the ability to clone existing inventories. If you already have a well-built travel list, you can duplicate it rather than rebuilding from scratch. The duplicate button is hidden in the three-dot menu on your inventory screen. It took me several weeks to find it because the UI does not advertise it.
Get the Full Details
Common mistakes and the workaround I figured out
The biggest pain point is item weight accuracy. The app relies entirely on what you type in. There is no database look-up that pulls manufacturer specs. So when I was building my initial EDC loadout, I was guessing at weights for everything from my pocketknife to my water bottle. My total came out to about 1.2 kilograms, which felt roughly correct until I actually weighed everything on a kitchen scale. The real total was 1.8 kilograms. A sixty percent discrepancy because I underestimated every single item. The fix is simple but people ignore it. Buy a pocket scale for under fifteen dollars and weigh each item before entering it. A digital jewelry scale reads to 0.01 grams and makes the whole process take about twenty minutes instead of the hour I wasted second-guessing numbers. Once your weights are right, the total becomes useful for actual planning, not just an aesthetic number on a screenshot. Another issue is the category system. The default categories are pretty broad. You might want subcategories like pockets, bag, belt, and keychain, but the app does not support nesting. Your workaround is to prefix items with their location, like "belt-ckf" for your belt carry folded knife, or just keep a separate note with those details. The app itself will not track where on your person each item lives.
How to get the most out of it
Build your inventory slowly. Start with the items you actually carry every single day. Do not add the backup gear, the emergency kit, the seasonal additions. Those complicate the list and make the total weight meaningless for daily use. Once your base EDC is solid, create a second inventory for bug-out or travel scenarios. The multi-inventory feature is one of the better parts of the app that most people overlook. Keep your item names consistent. Use the same naming convention every time, or you end up with five different entries for the same pocketknife because you called it "Leatherman," then "multi-tool," then "the red Leatherman." Search becomes useless when your own naming is inconsistent. I use a standard format: brand, model, then distinguishing feature in parentheses. It is slightly more work upfront but saves you from clutter. If you want actual portability planning, supplement the app with a proper weight tracking method. The Things I Carry is good for visualization and sharing. It is not a replacement for understanding how your load translates to real-world carry comfort. There are other tools and spreadsheets that do heavy computation on load distribution. This app does not attempt that, and pretending it does will frustrate you.
The shareable images look clean. The design choices by the Times team are intentional and the default color schemes are decent. If you want to customize the look, you can adjust the theme from the settings menu. Dark mode, light mode, and a couple of accent colors. Not much to it, but it takes thirty seconds and makes the screenshots marginally less generic. I do not recommend this for professional use cases. If you are doing search-and-rescue gear audits or military load planning, you need something with certified weight databases and revision history. The app is aimed at hobbyists and everyday carry enthusiasts. It serves that audience well enough, but it is not built for operational precision. That said, for tracking your personal daily items, understanding what you actually carry versus what you think you carry, and sharing that with others who are interested in the same thing, it does the job. The barrier to entry is low, there are no subscriptions, and it works offline once loaded. Those are not insignificant advantages for what is essentially a very fancy list app.
