Wait one to two weeks so it can settle in. That is the summary at the top of this search, and underneath it sit years of forum threads saying the same thing with more feeling. It is sensible, and it is an answer to a different question from the one most people typed.
Two weeks is advice about shock. Moving a plant into a new pot disturbs roots and costs it recovery time, and doing that in the same week it changed buildings is two disturbances at once. Whether it needs a bigger pot is a separate question with a separate answer, and published repotting cycles for houseplants run somewhere between 18 and 24 months. Those two clocks are not close enough to be confused for one another.
Worth a try
It can work here with a little care.
A little dim, but workable
Comfortable temperature
Humidity suits it
Airflow suits it
The clock it reads is the one you started
GrowSpot has a repot check, and it never issues an instruction. At most it raises a hint that it is worth looking at the roots, and it only does that when four conditions hold at once. One of them is how long it has been since the last repot, and that interval is something you tell it rather than something it works out:
| What the app knows about your new plant | What the repot check does |
|---|---|
| You brought it home this month and logged nothing | Silent: too soon on the clock it reads |
| You brought it home this month, and the shop told you it was potted two springs ago | Raises the hint |
| Same plant, same records, but it is autumn where you live | Silent: outside the spring window |
| Potted two springs ago, and a heat or cold alert is running outdoors | Silent: extreme weather outside |
| Brought home this month, and it came in water culture rather than soil | Silent: repotting does not apply here |
The first two rows are the same plant in the same pot on the same day. What separates them is a date in your records. A plant that spent two years in a nursery pot at the grower before it reached the shop arrives with none of that history attached, so if you log nothing, the check treats it as freshly potted and stays quiet for a long time.
What you can see, and what it can
That sounds like a gap, and it mostly is not, because the signs the internet gives you for a root-bound plant are things nobody can measure from a phone. They are things you see when you crouch down and tip the pot. Set them next to the whole of what the check actually reads:
| The sign | Who reads it |
|---|---|
| Roots coming out of the drainage hole | Only you can see it |
| The pot drying out faster than it used to | Only you can see it |
| The plant going top-heavy in its pot | Only you can see it |
| New growth stalling in the growing season | Only you can see it |
| Whether it is spring at your latitude | The check reads it |
| How long since the repot you logged | The check reads it |
| What the plant is growing in | The check reads it |
| Whether a heat or cold alert is running outdoors | The check reads it |
The split runs cleanly down the middle. Everything in the top half needs eyes on the plant; everything in the bottom half is date, place, container and weather, which is exactly the part you cannot hold in your head for a dozen plants at once. Neither half is the whole answer, which is why the app raises a hint and then hands the decision back to you.
What the first week is actually for
Meanwhile, four other checks are running on your new plant, and three of them have everything they need on the day it arrives. They read your room and your forecast rather than the plant's past, and a plant that has been in your home for six hours has a room and a forecast:
| The check | What it reads on the plant’s first day | Can it answer? |
|---|---|---|
| The repot hint | Reads the time since the repot you logged, and on a plant you just bought that record starts today | Silent |
| Growing or resting | Reads room temperature and day length: a warm room in long days reads as growing | Answers today |
| The watering interval | Reads the pot, the mix and your weather: the sleeve inside a cover pot it came in reads ×0.9, against ×1.44 for terracotta and a gritty mix | Answers today |
| Weather alerts | Reads your forecast and whether it lives outdoors: a night at or below 10 °C raises a cold alert | Answers today |
This is the part worth spending the first week on. Where the plant stands is reversible, costs nothing, and changes more about its next six months than the pot will. The card near the top of this page is a Bambino fiddle leaf fig two metres in from an east window: temperature, humidity and airflow all suit it, and light is the single dimension that does not, which is what holds it at 66 rather than a comfortable score. Moving that plant is a two-second decision, and no repotting would have fixed it. You can take the same reading for your own shelf with the free spot checker before you decide anything about pots. Here is the same plant walked in from that window one step at a time:
| Where you set it down | Estimated light | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| 0.3 m, against the glass | 6,500 lux | Great fit, 100/100 |
| 1 m back | 5,000 lux | Worth a try, 68/100 |
| 2 m back | 3,150 lux | Worth a try, 66/100 |
| 3 m back | 1,984 lux | Not the best fit right now, 46/100 |
What to do with the plant you carried home
Leave the pot alone unless the roots are visibly out of the drainage holes or the mix has turned to soup. Lift it out of any cover pot to water, and let it drain before it goes back. Then pick the spot deliberately rather than by where there is room, and give the plant a start date, so the clock has something to count from.
If it arrived in autumn, nothing is lost by waiting: the check stays quiet until spring comes round at your latitude anyway. How much water it wants meanwhile is mostly about what the pot and the mix are made of, and a plant brought home in winter also walks into four things changing at once.
The verdicts here come from the repot and growth checks themselves, run with the inputs a newly bought plant has. The per-type thresholds are working defaults rather than calibrated figures, so we do not publish them, and the light figures are estimates for an indoor position on a clear day rather than meter readings.