Picniic went quiet. The family hub doesn't have to stop.
Picniic disappeared without warning. It was pulled from Google Play on 5 November 2021, and its site now refuses every connection. Plannie is a family hub that is still built and maintained, and your household can start using it today.
The free family home hub, before it went dark
Picniic called itself the free family home hub: a shared calendar, to-dos assignable to family members, shopping lists split by favourite store, saved online recipes with meals scheduled from them, a file locker for documents, a family locator, and group messaging kept inside the app. Circles let a grandparent or a nanny see a slice of the family without joining the whole account, which was a good idea. Apple named it one of its Top Apps of 2019, and Time put it on that year's list of the 50 best apps.
The free tier carried the calendar and the to-dos, with ads running in the Android build. A Premium subscription unlocked the rest: the recipes-and-meals tools, the file locker, the locator, Google and Microsoft calendar add-ons, and integrations with TeamSnap plus IoT devices like pet trackers and smart watches.
It stopped, and nobody said why
Picniic's last update, version 1.97, shipped in March 2021. Google pulled the Android build from Play seven months later, on 5 November 2021, and the App Store listing has since 404'd. picniic.com itself now refuses every connection. By January 2023, a thread on Apple's community forums described sharing between family members breaking down sometime around the middle of 2022: the app stayed installed but no longer connected households.
Nobody ever explained why. There was no acquisition, no closure notice and no farewell post, whether on the site, in the press or on a single review outlet. The app just stopped answering. That is part of why people are still searching for a replacement years later: families were never offered a migration path or an export tool, and nobody warned them to move their data anywhere else before it shut down.
Even at its best, the free tier ran ads on Android, and Premium's own price kept shifting depending on which review site you asked. There was no chores-and-rewards system for kids, no way to forward a school email straight into the calendar, and no wall-display mode for a kitchen tablet, all of which families now expect from a family hub.
Picniic's own price is gone too
Picniic's pricing page is gone along with everything else, so you can't look up what it charged anymore. All that's left is what review sites wrote down at different points, and they don't agree with each other. Plannie's price is one number you can check right now: $99 a year for the whole household, whatever the device count, with no per-person markup. The table puts what Picniic is known to have charged next to what Plannie charges today, run out to three years. Where the Picniic figures are uncertain, we've left them uncertain instead of settling on a single figure.
| Plannie | Picniic | |
|---|---|---|
| What you paid to start | $0, free plan with ads | $0, free tier with ads |
| Subscription | $99/yr whole household | Premium price no longer retrievable Reports ranged $50–$99.99/yr, or $15/mo, across review sites; the vendor's own price page is gone. |
| What's recoverable today | N/A, account keeps working | ✗ Nothing No export tool was ever documented. |
| Year one | $99 | Unknown |
| Three-year total | $297 | Not calculable |
Picniic details from archived pages of picniic.com (last capture 29 January 2023), checked 18 September 2026.
Sources: picniic.com (archive)
What you get back
- The shared calendar, now synced: two-way with Google and Outlook, with Apple Calendar and any ICS feed coming in as read-only.
- The per-store shopping lists, as Plannie's shared lists, editable from any member's own phone.
- Saved recipes and scheduled meals, as Plannie's weekly meal grid, a recipe library, and a grocery list that fills itself from a pasted recipe link.
- Assigned to-dos, upgraded into chores that pay out in tickets kids trade for rewards, something Picniic never had.
- The paperwork Picniic never solved: forward a school email or photograph a flyer into the Family Inbox and Magic Import turns it into an event or task on its own.
What Plannie doesn't do
- Picniic's family locator: Plannie doesn't share your family's location, and that's by design.
- Circles, letting a caregiver or grandparent see a slice of the family without joining the whole account. Plannie doesn't bill per member though, so in practice a grandparent or nanny can just be a regular member and see the shared calendar, with private lists and personal mode keeping things separate; it isn't a dedicated partial-access feature the way Circles was.
There's nothing to migrate, so this is a rebuild
Picniic never published an export tool, and the app itself has been gone from both stores since 2021, so there's no file to transfer and you have to rebuild. Mostly that means reconnecting accounts your family probably already uses elsewhere, so you won't be retyping years of history from memory. Start with the calendar, since that piece was most likely already living in Google or Outlook rather than inside Picniic itself, then work outward to lists, meals and members.
THE MOVE, STEP BY STEP
- Create your household at app.plannie.io and give each member a colour.
- Connect Google or Outlook under Settings → Family & access → a member → Sync & calendars → Connect a calendar; Picniic's own calendar sync was never documented, and it's gone anyway.
- Recreate the assigned to-dos as chores with tickets and rewards attached, an upgrade on the plain checklist Picniic offered.
- Paste in your old favourite recipe links, or just their names, to rebuild the week in the meal grid.
- Re-add family members and set up private lists in place of Circles' shared-view idea.
Frequently asked
When did Picniic actually shut down?+
There wasn't one shutdown date, more a slow fade. The last update, version 1.97, shipped in March 2021; Google pulled the Android app from Play on 5 November 2021; the App Store listing 404s; and by January 2023 users on Apple's community forums were reporting that sharing between family members had broken, sometime around the middle of 2022. No closure was ever announced.
Can I recover my Picniic recipes or lists?+
Not from Picniic itself. No export tool was ever documented, and the site and both apps are gone, so there's nothing left to pull from. If you remember your favourite recipe links or store names, pasting or retyping them into Plannie takes a few minutes; that's the fastest way back to where you were.
Does Plannie share my family's location like Picniic did?+
No. Picniic had a family locator; Plannie doesn't track or share anyone's location, on purpose. It's a calendar, chores, meals and lists hub, not a location app.
Do I need to buy anything to replace Picniic?+
No. Plannie's kiosk mode runs on any tablet your family already owns, so there's no hardware to buy. The free plan lets you try the calendar, calendar sync, and lists and meals with starter limits before paying anything. Chores with tickets and rewards, kiosk mode, the Family Inbox and Magic Import come with Premium.
What does Plannie cost compared to what Picniic charged?+
Picniic's own price isn't something you can look up anymore: review sites recorded $50/yr, $99.99/yr and $15/mo at different points, and the vendor's price page is gone, so there's no single figure to compare against. Plannie Premium is $99/yr for the whole household, which is $297 over three years, and you can check that price today.
Is there any way to keep using Picniic if I liked it?+
No safe way. The Android app was removed from Google Play in 2021, the App Store listing is gone, and picniic.com refuses connections, so there's no current download or working install to fall back on.