What's New

A running log of features, fixes, and improvements to Our Favorites.

Week of May 19

  • Submit your pick by replying to email

    Reminder and invite emails now have a Reply-To address that knows which party and round you're submitting for. Just hit reply with a link — we'll scrape the title and image, save it as your pick, and (if it's an invite) join you to the party in one step. Brand-new to OurFavorites? Sign up first, then reply.

  • Heads up: send feedback if anything looks off

    Reply-to-submit is a new pipeline with a lot of moving parts (DKIM, MIME parsing, scraping, dedupe). If you reply and don't see a confirmation, or your favorite shows up looking weird, please use the Share Feedback form on your dashboard so we can dig in.

Week of May 12

  • Smarter invite suggestions

    When you invite someone to a party, we now suggest email addresses you've used before. No more retyping the same addresses every time.

  • One-time party rounds

    Not every party needs to repeat on a schedule. You can now create a single round that stands on its own.

  • Image uploads are back

    Photos you added to your favorites weren't saving correctly — that's fixed. Images now stick.

  • Cleaner dashboard

    The main dashboard got a refresh: party cards are cleaner, pending invites are easier to spot, and your recent favorites look better too.

  • More stores work now

    Zappos links now work. Nordstrom, Etsy, and Tractor Supply are more reliable when the page is slow to load.

Week of May 5

  • Reveal times show in your timezone

    We used to show reveal times in a fixed timezone, which was confusing for people in different parts of the country. Now it always matches your local time.

  • Paste any Amazon link

    Short Amazon links (a.co, amzn.to) now work the same as full product URLs — just paste and go.

  • Hosts can reveal early

    If you're running a party where everyone has to submit before anything is revealed, you can now force the reveal early if you don't want to wait.

  • Control who can invite

    As a host, you can now choose whether members are allowed to invite other people. Find it in the party settings.

  • Reminder emails before the deadline

    Members who haven't added their pick yet will get a nudge before time runs out.

  • Fewer "link not recognized" errors

    We cleaned up how links get processed before we look them up, which should fix a bunch of cases where valid links were getting rejected.

Week of Apr 28

  • See what needs your attention on the dashboard

    Parties where you still need to add your pick now show up front and center on your dashboard, so nothing slips through the cracks.

  • Invite friends right after creating a party

    After you create a party, we now take you straight to inviting people — no hunting around for where to do it.

  • Reveals happen automatically

    You no longer need to manually trigger a reveal. Parties now reveal on their own at the scheduled time.

  • See who hasn't accepted their invite

    On the party page, hosts can now see a list of people who were invited but haven't joined yet, and resend the invite with one click. Your pending invitations also show on the dashboard.

  • Secret submissions mode

    New option for parties: everyone's picks stay hidden until all members have submitted. Great for gift exchanges or when you don't want people to copy each other.

  • Get notified when someone joins

    Hosts now get an email when a new member accepts their invitation.

Week of Apr 21

  • Party rounds and picks

    The heart of Our Favorites is here. Create a party, invite your people, open a round, and everyone adds their favorite pick. Everything reveals together at the end.

  • Reveal emails show everyone's picks

    When a round reveals, everyone gets an email with a full summary — each person's pick, their write-up, and the tags they added.

  • Dark mode

    The app now follows your system's dark or light mode preference. You can also set it manually in your settings.

  • Better book links

    Links from Goodreads, Bookshop.org, and other book sites now pull in accurate titles and cover images from Google Books.

  • No duplicate items

    If two people favorite the same book or product, they now share one record instead of creating two. Means cleaner data and better matching across the app.

Week of Apr 14

  • Parties

    You can now create parties, invite friends, and run themed rounds to find out what everyone's into. This is the big one.

  • New look for the dashboard

    A ground-up redesign: new navigation, cleaner overview, and a better layout throughout.

  • Paste a link, get the details automatically

    Drop in a link to almost any product or item and we'll pull the title, type, and images for you. Pick your favorite photo from what we find.

  • Describe what you love about it

    When you favorite something, you can now add tags like "cozy," "life-changing," or "great gift" to capture what makes it special.

  • Amazon affiliate links

    When you share an Amazon item, we include a referral tag in the link. It doesn't change the price for anyone — it just helps us keep the lights on.