The Home Depot

Two features in this app solve problems specific to hardware shopping, and both are more useful than the shopping itself. Image Search addresses the fundamental difficulty of a DIY project: you know what the part looks like and you have no idea what it is called. Photograph the fitting, the bracket or the mysterious plastic thing that broke, and the app identifies it. Anyone who has tried describing a plumbing component to a member of staff using hand gestures will understand why this matters. The Product Locator is the other. Having found what you need, it tells you the exact aisle and bay in your local store and confirms whether it is actually in stock, which turns a forty minute hunt through a warehouse the size of an aircraft hangar into a direct walk. Checking stock before setting off saves the wasted journey entirely. Beyond those, over a million products can be browsed and bought, ratings and reviews are available in seconds, and the barcode reader lets you scan something on a shelf to read what other customers thought before committing. An account adds order tracking, purchase history and saved lists, which is worth it for anyone working through a project over several visits.