Brickit: Your Brick Collection

Review by eFreeware

Brickit is an Android app from the developer of the same name that turns a pile of loose toy bricks into something buildable. You spread the bricks out, photograph them, and the app recognizes the individual parts in the picture. From there it suggests things you can make with the pieces you already have, and helps you keep track of them.

What makes it worth considering is the problem it addresses. Most brick collections accumulate as a mixed heap, and the useful pieces disappear into it. Brickit's pitch is that a photo of that heap becomes an inventory, and the inventory becomes ideas. With over 5 million installs and a 4.4 average from more than 18,000 ratings, it has clearly found an audience among people with exactly that heap at home.

How a scan turns a heap into a build list

The core loop is simple to describe. You lay the bricks out so they are visible, take a photo inside the app, and the scanner identifies the separate parts on the image. What you get back is not just a count but a working catalog of what is in front of you, which the app then uses for everything else it does.

That catalog is the foundation for the build suggestions. The developer says Brickit offers thousands of ideas drawn from the bricks you own, covering animals, robots, vehicles, spaceships and characters, along with whatever else you want to attempt. The appeal is that the suggestions are constrained by your actual parts, so an idea you are shown is one you can plausibly finish rather than one that sends you shopping.

The app also provides building instructions, described as simple, which fits an app aimed at households rather than dedicated model builders.

Finding one specific piece in a large pile

Searching for a single part is the feature I would expect to matter most in daily use. You pick the piece you are after in the catalog, and Brickit highlights where it appears in your photo. Instead of sifting through the whole pile by hand, you look at the picture and go straight to the spot.

The same highlighting carries into building. As you work through a set of instructions, the app marks the pieces each step needs, so you are not hunting for a part mid-build while a half-finished model sits in front of you. For anyone who has watched a build stall because one small element went missing, this is the part of the design that reads as genuinely useful rather than decorative.

Both features depend on the scan being a reasonable record of what you have, so the quality of the photo and how well the bricks are spread out will shape how much you get from them. That is inherent to photographing a pile rather than a limitation the developer hides; it is simply how this kind of tool works.

Keeping a digital record of the collection

Beyond individual builds, Brickit is meant to help you organize your bricks digitally and make better use of what you already own. That framing suits households where the collection is shared, and it also suits collectors who want a clearer picture of what is in the boxes.

Brickit is a way to get more out of the pieces on hand rather than a strict inventory system, so I would treat it as a working record tied to your scans. It is not presented as a replacement for sorting bricks physically; it is a layer on top of what you already do, aimed at making the existing pile more legible.

Version 5.0 is described as faster, clearer and more useful than earlier releases, and the most recent update is a technical one with bug fixes and performance improvements. Taken together, that suggests an app that is being actively maintained rather than left as it was at launch in October 2022.

What the app needs from you, and what it costs

The practical requirement is bricks and a camera. You need loose bricks to photograph, and you need to spread them out for the scanner to recognize individual parts. If your collection is mostly assembled models you are unwilling to take apart, there is nothing here for the scanner to read, and the build suggestions have no inventory to draw on.

Brickit is free to download and supported by ads, and it offers in-app purchases. A Brickit Pro subscription is available, and it adds extra tools for scanning, building and organizing. The developer's terms note that subscriptions renew automatically unless auto-renewal is switched off at least 24 hours before the period ends, and that any unused part of a free trial is forfeited when you buy a subscription. Managing or canceling the subscription happens in your account settings.

One point worth stating plainly: Brickit is an independent product made by enthusiasts, not an official LEGO release. The LEGO Group has no involvement with it. If brand affiliation matters to you, that is the developer's own clarification, and it is unusually direct about it.

Families, collectors and adult builders

The stated audience is broad but specific in a useful way: anyone with loose toy bricks at home, including kids, parents, collectors and adult builders. What those groups share is a pile of unsorted bricks and an interest in doing something with it. If that describes your household, the app's whole design is pointed at you.

For families, the draw is the combination of scanning, suggestions and instructions in one place, which turns a shared box of bricks into something a child can work from with a parent. For collectors, the value is more likely to be the catalog and the part-finding, since knowing what you have is half the battle when a specific piece is needed. For adult builders, the appeal is the constraint: ideas that fit the parts on hand rather than a wish list.

The app is rated for Everyone, which matches its framing, and it is free to try with ads and purchases present. Nothing more than photos of your bricks is needed.

A practical tool for bricks you already own

Brickit is worth considering because it solves a narrow problem well. If you have a box or pile of loose bricks and you want to build from it rather than add to it, the scan-recognize-suggest-find loop covers the whole job, and the part highlighting during builds is the detail that makes the difference between an idea and a finished model.

The trade-offs are the ones the app itself sets out. It needs loose bricks and photos of them, it is free with ads and in-app purchases including a Brickit Pro subscription, and it is an independent product with no official connection to the LEGO Group. None of that is hidden, and none of it undermines what the app is for.

I would point this at households with a shared brick collection, at collectors who want a searchable record of their parts, and at builders who enjoy working within limits. If your bricks are mostly built and staying that way, the scanner has nothing to work with, and the app's value depends on there being a pile to photograph.

What's new in version 5.6.2

Technical update: made several bug fixes and performance improvements.