A little wishful thinking.
Save what you love. Share a little joy.
Wishful Thinking is a free family wish list app that lets you save gift ideas from any online store, watch their prices, and share a list by link so family can mark what they bought without spoiling the surprise. It costs nothing: there are no paid plans and no ads.
How Wishful Thinking works
- Make a wishlist. Name it (Kids’ Christmas, Mum’s birthday) and give it a date if you like. Dated lists repeat every year and appear on your gift calendar.
- Add wishes from any store. Paste a product link. On an Android phone with the app installed, use Share → Wishful Thinking from a store’s app or website.
- See the price. Where the store’s page can be read, Wishful Thinking fills in the title, picture and price, checks the price once a day and keeps a history. Where it cannot, you type the price in.
- Share the list by link. Family opens the link, signs in, and marks what they bought. You never see which items are taken.
What you can do
- One list, many stores. A single wishlist can hold items from any shop with a product page.
- Hidden “bought” marks. Family sees what is already bought, so nobody doubles up. The list’s owner does not.
- Price history and price drop alerts. Choose an amount or a percentage, and get an alert on your phone when a price falls by more than that.
- Say how much you want it. Mark a wish “Really love this” or “A little treat”, and sort by price or biggest price drop.
- A gift calendar. Every dated list in one place, each year.
- Lists shared with you. Open a family member’s link once while signed in and it stays under Friends.
- Control of sharing. Make a new link or stop sharing a list whenever you want.
What Wishful Thinking costs
Every feature on this page is free, for you and for the family members you share with. There are no paid plans, no trial and no ads. If a store link carries an affiliate code, the app labels it “Affiliate link”; it costs you nothing extra.
Who it is for
Wishful Thinking is for families and close friends who give each other gifts: parents collecting ideas for the children, grandparents who want to know what to buy, and anyone tired of the “what do you want this year?” text. You must be 13 or older to have an account; a parent can keep a list for a younger child. Read the guides to family Christmas wish lists and wish lists for kids, or see how Wishful Thinking compares with Amazon wish lists, Giftster and Elfster.
Honest limits
- Some large stores block automated reading of their pages. You can still save the link, and you enter the price yourself.
- Prices come from each store and can change between checks.
- It installs on Android from Chrome and works in a desktop browser. There is no iPhone app.
- It does not draw names for a Secret Santa or gift exchange.
Questions and answers
What is Wishful Thinking?
Wishful Thinking is a free family wish list app. You save things you would like from any online store, group them into lists for occasions such as Christmas or a birthday, and share a list by link so family can mark what they bought without you seeing it.
Who is Wishful Thinking for?
Wishful Thinking is for families and close friends who buy each other gifts and want to avoid duplicates and guesswork. Each person 13 or older has their own account, and a parent can keep a list for a younger child.
What does Wishful Thinking cost?
Wishful Thinking is free. There are no paid plans, no subscription and no ads. A link to a store may carry an affiliate code; when it does, the app labels it as an affiliate link and it costs you nothing extra.
How is Wishful Thinking different from an Amazon wish list?
A store’s own wish list is built around that store’s catalog. Wishful Thinking is not tied to one store: you paste a product link from any shop, and one list can mix items from many of them. Family marks gifts as bought on the shared list, and the list’s owner never sees which ones.
Can the person who owns the list see what has been bought?
No. On Wishful Thinking, family members who open your shared link while signed in can see what has already been bought and mark what they buy. When you look at your own list, those marks are hidden, so the surprise is kept.
Does Wishful Thinking track prices?
Yes, where the store allows it. Wishful Thinking checks saved items once a day, keeps a price history, and can send a price drop alert when the price falls by more than an amount or percentage you choose. Some large stores block automated reading; for those you type the price yourself and it is shown as entered by hand.
Is it wishfulthinking or wishfullthinking?
The app is called Wishful Thinking, spelled the usual way with one L. Its web address is wishfullthinking.app, with two Ls. If you searched for the Wishful Thinking wish list app under either spelling, this is it.
What does Wishful Thinking store about me, and is it private?
Wishful Thinking stores your email address, the name you choose, a hashed password, your lists and the price history of the items on them. Your birth date is used once at sign-up to confirm you are 13 or older and is not saved. A list is visible only to people who have its share link, and you can make a new link or stop sharing at any time.
How do I start using Wishful Thinking?
Open wishfullthinking.app, create an account, and make your first wishlist. Add a wish by pasting a product link. On an Android phone you can install the app from Chrome and then send products to it from the Share menu of a store’s app or website. There is no iPhone app.
How do I stop using Wishful Thinking?
There is nothing to cancel, because Wishful Thinking has no subscription. You can delete any wishlist or stop sharing it from the list’s settings. To have your whole account removed, contact Quill Hound, the company that makes Wishful Thinking, through quillhound.com.
Start a list
It takes a minute: an email address, a name and a password of at least 10 characters.
The web address is wishfullthinking.app, with two Ls. The name is Wishful Thinking, with one.