Setting Up Storage Locations and QR Labels

If your items live across shelves, boxes, closets, garages, or storage units, Storage Locations helps you track where things actually are. Pair it with printable QR labels and the catalog becomes much more useful in the physical world.

Storage Locations is optional, but it is one of the strongest reasons to use MDCollections for home inventory and physical collections. This guide covers enabling it, creating locations and containers, printing labels, and connecting the storage system to your collections.

Enabling Storage Locations

Storage Locations is turned off by default. To enable it:

Open App Settings
Under Features, toggle on Enable Storage Locations

Once enabled, you’ll see a My Locations section on the main screen alongside your collections.

Configuring Location Settings

Before adding locations, configure how the storage system should work. Tap the settings button in My Locations to access the setup screen.

Folders and Files

Location Folder — where your location .md files will be stored.
Asset Folder — where QR code label images and other assets will be saved.
Template File (optional) — a template that defines the default properties for new locations.

This follows the same basic pattern as collection folders. Keeping it in a dedicated location folder makes backups and syncing simpler.

Properties

Define the properties you want for each location. At minimum you usually want a name, but you can also add notes, address details, a photo, or anything else that helps.

Container Property

Choose which property should hold your containers. Containers are typically stored as tags on a location, with each tag representing a shelf, bin, drawer, box, or similar physical container.

Display Settings

Configure how locations appear in the app, including thumbnails, sorting, and any other display preferences you want.

QR Code Label Settings

Set your preferred label size and format. These settings apply when generating QR labels for locations and containers.

Adding Locations

With settings configured, you’re ready to create your first location.

Tap the + button in My Locations. A location represents a physical place — your home, your office, a storage unit, a workshop. Give it a name and fill in any properties you defined.

You can create as many locations as you need. Most people start with one or two and expand as the system becomes useful.

Adding Containers

Containers are the specific spots within a location — a bookshelf, a closet bin, a garage shelf, a labeled box. There are two ways to add them:

As tags on the container property — open a location, and add tags to the container property you configured. Each tag becomes a container. This is the quickest way to add several containers at once.
From within a location — open a location and tap + to add a new container with its own details.

Name containers in a way that will still make sense later. “Shelf A,” “Blue Bin,” and “Top Drawer” are much more useful than vague placeholder names.

Generating and Printing QR Code Labels

QR labels are what connect the physical world to the catalog. Once attached to a container, a label lets you jump directly to that container or assign items to it on the spot.

Generating Labels

You have a few options:

Generate a single location label — from Location Settings, tap Generate Location QR Code Label in the QR Code Labels section. This creates a label for the location itself.
Generate all container labels at once — from Location Settings, tap Generate All Container QR Code Labels. This creates labels for every container across all your locations in one go.
Generate a single container label — open a location, go into a container’s settings, and tap Generate QR Code Label. Useful when you add a new container to an existing setup.

All generated labels are saved to your Asset directory as image files, ready for printing.

Printing and Attaching

Print your labels on label paper, sticker sheets, or regular paper (you can cut and tape them). Attach each label to its corresponding physical container — stick one on each bin, shelf, box, or drawer.

Once a label is attached, the physical container is linked to its digital counterpart in the app. That connection is what makes the system feel much less like a spreadsheet and much more like a real inventory workflow.

Connecting Collections to Locations

Storage Locations and your collections stay separate until you connect them. Here is how to link the two systems.

Add Storage Properties to Your Collection

Open your collection’s settings and add two new properties:

A property of type Storage Location — this will hold which location the item is stored in.
A property of type Storage Container — this will hold which container within that location.

These property types are built for the storage system. They enable location pickers, container pickers, and QR-based assignment when editing items.

Assigning Items to Containers

When adding or editing an item, you have two ways to assign it to a container:

Scan a QR label — tap the Scan Container button and point your camera at the QR code on the container. The storage location and container fields are filled in automatically.
Select manually — pick the location and container from the dropdown menus in the storage properties.

Scanning is faster when you are standing in front of the container. Manual selection works better when planning or bulk-entering items away from the storage area.

Unassigned Items

If an item has a storage location set but no container, it appears in an Unassigned group within that location. This is useful for tracking items that are somewhere in a room or area but haven’t been placed in a specific container yet. As you organize, you can assign them to containers later.

Browsing by Location

Once items are assigned to containers, you can browse your storage from the location side too. Open a location, then open a container to see everything stored inside it. This is a different view of the same data — instead of browsing by collection, you’re browsing by physical location.

This is useful when you are standing in front of a shelf and want to know what is on it, or when reorganizing and trying to understand what is already inside a box.

Tips

Start simple. You don’t need to label every container on day one. Start with the locations and containers where you most often lose track of things, and expand from there.
Use clear container names. “Garage - Shelf 3 - Bin A” is more useful six months from now than “Bin 1.” Be specific enough that the name tells you where to look.
Print labels in batches. Use the “Generate All Container QR Code Labels” option to create everything at once, then do one print session. It’s faster than generating and printing one at a time.
Use the storage system where it matters most first. Seasonal bins, workshop storage, hobby parts, and archive boxes are usually the fastest wins.

Final tip

Scan when you put things away. The best time to assign a container is when you’re physically placing the item somewhere. Scan the container label, save the item, and it’s tracked.