Help & Documentation

Welcome to Recipe App. This page covers everything you need to use the product, from your first recipe to managing your subscription.

If you can't find what you're looking for, email support@recipeapp.io.

Getting started

Creating your account

Go to book.recipeapp.io/signup
Enter your name, email, and a password (8 characters minimum)
Check your inbox — we'll send a verification link from noreply@recipeapp.io
Click the link in the email to confirm and sign in

If the verification email doesn't arrive within a minute or two, check your spam folder. You can also request a fresh one from the verify-email screen.

Signing in

Visit book.recipeapp.io/login. Forgot your password? Click "Forgot?" next to the password field — we'll email you a reset link.

Installing on your phone

Recipe App is a Progressive Web App, so it works perfectly on your phone without an App Store download:

iPhone (Safari): tap the Share button → "Add to Home Screen"
Android (Chrome): tap the menu (⋮) → "Add to Home screen" or "Install app"

It'll show up like a native app — handy when you're cooking and don't want to dig through tabs.

Adding recipes

You have five ways to capture a recipe. Pick whichever is most convenient — they all end up at the same place: a structured recipe ready to save.

1. Manual entry

Type a recipe in directly. Every field is editable, you can add as many ingredients and steps as you need, and you can attach an image, tags, prep time, and notes.

Use this when you're making up your own recipe or transcribing something on paper.

2. Paste text

Copy a recipe from anywhere — a forwarded email, your Notes app, a blog post, a screenshot's OCR'd text — and paste it into the Paste text tab. We'll automatically pull out:

Title
Ingredients (preserving exact quantities)
Steps in order
Servings, prep/cook times if mentioned
A category (Breakfast, Dinner, Dessert, etc.)
A few useful tags

You can review and tweak everything before saving.

3. Photos

Add up to six photos of the same recipe, including ingredients, directions, and continuation pages. Choose several at once or keep adding pages. Use the arrow buttons to put them in reading order.

JPEG, PNG, WebP, and GIF photos are supported, up to 10 MB each. Each photo uploads separately with progress. If something fails, keep the page open and choose Retry extraction: completed uploads are reused.

Choose Extract & review recipe to compare the original pages with the extracted ingredients and steps. Select a page and zoom in to check small print, edit quantities, and uncheck lines you do not want. Possible duplicates are flagged for review; they are never automatically deleted. Confirm with Use reviewed recipe, then finish editing and save.

The first photo can become the cover if you select that option. On an existing recipe, open Add ingredients & steps from photos below Instructions to review and append selected lines. Your current ingredients and steps stay in place; use Undo to reverse a merge.

4. Link (web pages and YouTube)

Paste any recipe URL into the Link tab. Two pipelines:

Recipe blog or food site: we fetch the page, prefer the structured recipe data when available (most major sites embed it), fall back to scraping the visible text.
YouTube videos (full videos, Shorts, youtu.be/... shortlinks): we pull the video's title, channel, full description, and auto-generated transcript via the same API the YouTube app uses. The recipe usually lives in the description; the transcript fills in any gaps.

If the channel name was on the page, we auto-fill the From / Attribution field for you (e.g. from Joshua Weissman).

5. Voice dictation

Hands messy? Open the Dictate tab, tap Start, and just talk through the recipe — ingredients, steps, anything. Hit Stop when you're done, then Turn into recipe and we'll structure your transcript.

Supported in Chrome and Safari. Firefox doesn't expose speech recognition; use Paste text instead.

Editing and organizing recipes

Reviewing the AI's draft

After any AI-assisted ingestion (paste, photo, link, dictate), you'll land on a pre-filled form. Always review before saving — AI parsing is good but not perfect. Common things to double-check:

Quantities (especially fractions like ¾)
Serving size
Whether ingredients accidentally got merged or split

Draft recovery and undo

Changes in the recipe form are automatically saved as a draft on this device. After a refresh or return visit, choose Restore draft to continue, or Discard old draft to use the current recipe. Drafts are separate for each account and recipe and do not sync across devices. A successful recipe save clears its draft.

Use Undo and Redo while editing to reverse deleted ingredients or steps, reordering, text edits, and photo merges. Undo history lasts for the current editing session. If browser storage is unavailable, a message explains that draft recovery cannot be saved.

Image controls

Use the visible Replace cover and Remove cover buttons. Upload progress appears while a photo is transferred and prepared. If it fails, Retry upload keeps your selection. Cover photos are compressed to WebP. Photos are served from unguessable public URLs; anyone who has a photo URL can view it.

Categories and tags

Category (single, required): the main meal slot — Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert, Snack, Drink, Side, Sauce, Bread, Soup, Salad, or Other.
Tags (multiple, optional): free-form labels like vegetarian, quick, weeknight, instant-pot. Comma-separate or hit Enter to add.

Click any tag on a recipe page to filter your collection by that tag.

Attribution ("From / where this came from")

A dedicated free-text field for who or what gave you this recipe — Grandma's recipe box, Joy of Cooking p. 241, Aunt Sarah's email, a YouTube creator. Different from a tag. Click the attribution on any recipe page to see all the recipes from that source.

When ingesting from a URL or YouTube link, this gets auto-filled with the site or channel name.

Notes

Use the Notes field for anything that doesn't fit the recipe itself: substitutions you've tried, a memory ("first thing I cooked for Emma"), a tweak ("next time, half the salt"). Notes are searchable.

Search and filters

The search bar uses Postgres full-text search across title, description, ingredients, instructions, tags, and attribution. Try:

chicken garlic — finds recipes with both
aunt — finds anything from "Aunt Sarah" or similar
grandma cookies — finds "Grandma's Famous Sugar Cookies"

You can also click any category pill to filter, or click an attribution / tag link.

Cooking mode

Open a recipe and choose Start cooking. Check off ingredients as you use them, follow one large step at a time, and use Back, Next, or Jump to a step. Choose Extra-large text for easier reading.

Enable Keep screen awake if your browser supports it. The app releases the screen lock when you leave cooking mode.

Start a timer for a step by entering the number of minutes. You can run several timers at once. Keep the recipe page open: timers show when they finish and catch up after switching tabs, but cannot alert you while the app is closed. Cooking progress and timers reset when the page is closed or refreshed.

Print mode

Open any recipe and click Print in the top-right. The print view strips navigation, buttons, and decoration — what's left is a clean recipe card ready for paper or PDF.

Macros and calories

Every recipe has a Per serving panel showing calories, protein, carbs, and fat.

After saving, choose Estimate macros on the recipe page. Saving finishes without waiting for AI.
If macros aren't shown yet, click Estimate macros on the recipe page.
Click re-estimate at any time if you change ingredients.

These are estimates, not lab-measured values. Confidence depends on how specifically you wrote the ingredients ("2 tbsp olive oil" gives a more accurate estimate than "olive oil"). Don't use these numbers for medical or precise dietary decisions.

Account and billing

Free vs Pro

Free — Up to 20 saved recipes. Every other feature (all five ingestion modes, AI macros, search, attribution) is fully available.
Pro — $7/month, unlimited recipes. Cancel anytime.

Your usage is shown on your Account page (top-right of the header → "Account").

Upgrading

When you try to save your 21st recipe on the free plan, you'll see an inline upgrade panel with a button. Or visit Account → Upgrade to Pro at any time.

We use Stripe Checkout — no card data ever touches our servers.

Promo codes can be entered on the Stripe Checkout page. We sometimes run discount campaigns; redeemable codes will be sent in launch emails.

Managing your subscription

On your Account page, click Manage subscription to open the Stripe billing portal. From there you can:

Update your payment method
View past invoices
Cancel your subscription (you keep Pro access until the end of the billing period)

Cancellation and refunds

Cancel anytime via the billing portal. Refunds are issued case-by-case for billing errors and within 7 days of the most recent charge — email billing@recipeapp.io.

Your data and privacy

Recipes you create are private to you. No one else sees them.
Photos you upload are stored on Vercel Blob and served via random unguessable URLs.
AI processing (Claude vision/text/Anthropic) sees the content of your inputs only when you trigger an ingestion, and we don't pass your account info along.
Your data, on demand: use Account → Export all recipes (JSON) for an export, or email privacy@recipeapp.io to request permanent deletion.

See the Privacy Policy for the full picture.

Troubleshooting

"Free tier limit reached" on save

You've hit 20 recipes on the free plan. Move recipes you do not need to Trash, or upgrade to Pro.

Verification email never arrives

Check spam / junk
Wait 60 seconds (Resend can occasionally lag during their busy hours)
On the verify-email screen, click Resend verification email
Still nothing? Email support@recipeapp.io — we can verify the account manually

"This video has no description or transcript we could read"

YouTube creators can disable captions, and some videos don't have a description. We try four different YouTube clients to maximize what we can read, but if all fail you'll get a partial draft with just the title and channel — fill in the rest from the video itself.

URL ingestion returns generic "Page text" results

Some sites use heavy JavaScript or anti-scraping measures that prevent server-side fetching. Workaround: open the page, copy the recipe text manually, and use Paste text instead.

AI got the recipe wrong

AI parsing isn't perfect. The pre-filled form is editable — fix what's wrong and save. If you see the same kind of mistake repeatedly, email support@recipeapp.io with an example URL or text and we'll tune the prompts.

Can't sign in after password reset

Make sure you're using the new password and clearing any saved password autofill. Reset links expire in one hour — request a new one if needed.

FAQ

Is there a mobile app? It's a PWA — installable on iOS Safari and Android Chrome via "Add to Home Screen". Looks and feels like a native app without taking up the App Store space.

Can I share my recipes with family? Yes. Open a recipe and use Share to create a link. You can also choose to show a recipe on your public profile.

Where are my recipes stored? In a Postgres database hosted on Neon (US-East). Photos are on Vercel Blob (also US-East). Backups run automatically.

Do you train AI on my recipes? No. Your inputs are sent to Anthropic's API for ingestion and macro estimation only. Per Anthropic's terms, customer API data is not used to train their models.

What happens to my data if I cancel? You keep all your recipes; you just can't save new ones beyond 20 until you upgrade again. If you delete your account, all data is permanently removed within 30 days.

Can I export my recipes? Open Account → Export all recipes (JSON). Your download includes every recipe, favorites, collections, and shopping lists. Image URLs are included; image files are not bundled. Keep the downloaded file safe. This is a portable backup; importing a whole backup is not yet supported.

Why $7/month? It's the lowest price that covers the AI inference costs (each photo, paste, URL, or YouTube ingestion uses Anthropic credits) plus hosting and email delivery. We'd rather charge a fair price than show ads.

Last updated: September 8, 2026

Adjusting servings

On a recipe page, change Adjust servings to scale ingredient amounts for your meal. Use Reset to return to the original amounts. This also works in cooking mode and when viewing shared recipes. If no serving count is saved, edit the recipe to add one first.

Recognized leading amounts (including fractions) scale automatically. Ranges, packages, and unclear amounts remain as written with check quantity beside them. Instructions, temperatures, cooking times, and nutrition are not recalculated. The saved recipe always keeps its original quantities.

Favorites and collections

Tap Favorite on a recipe card or recipe page, then use the Favorites filter to find it again. Open Collections to create groups such as Weeknight dinners, Family favorites, or Want to try. Open a recipe, expand Save to collections, and check any groups it belongs to. Recipes can belong to multiple collections. Deleting a collection keeps its recipes.

Shopping lists

Open Shopping, or choose Add to shopping list on a recipe. Name a new list, select one or more recipes, and optionally adjust their servings. Create shopping list combines exact matching ingredient names with compatible measures: US cups and spoons, metric liquid volume, or weight. Different preparations, unclear quantities, and packages stay separate so you can review them. The app does not guess whether similar ingredient names mean the same thing.

Check off items you already have or have bought. Use Edit to correct a quantity, × to remove an item, and Add item for other groceries. Lists save to your account and are available on your other devices when online. A shopping list is a snapshot: editing a recipe later does not change an existing list. Create a fresh list to use updated recipes.

Recipes without internet

While online, open a recipe and choose Save for offline. Its ingredients, directions, notes, original servings, and source are saved on this device. Photos are not included. Open Offline in the navigation to see saved copies. If a page cannot load without internet, the app opens this offline library instead.

Use Refresh offline copy after editing a recipe, Remove offline copy to remove one, or Account → Clear offline copies to remove all. Signing out or switching accounts clears the device's offline library. The library is for the last signed-in account, so anyone using your unlocked device can read its saved copies while offline. Browser storage cleanup may remove copies; check the library before a trip. Offline copies support reading and ingredient checks; editing, shopping-list sync, and the full cooking timers require the online app.

Install instructions, any time

Open Install app in the footer, the install icon in the header, or the install guide in Account. The install guide includes iPhone/iPad, Android, and desktop instructions and stays available even if no automatic prompt appears. Installing the app does not automatically save recipes offline; choose Save for offline on the recipes you need.

Saving shared recipes

Choose Save to my recipes on a public or shared recipe. If you need an account, signup and email verification bring you back to that recipe. Saving creates a private copy with credit to the original source. Repeating the action opens your existing copy.

Trash and backups

Deleting a recipe moves it to Trash & recovery, accessible from your library and Account. Restore brings back its favorites and collection memberships. Restored recipes are private and old sharing links stay disabled. Trash does not count toward your recipe limit.

In Account, export active recipes and organization as JSON. Use Restore from a backup to preview and import an export. Existing recipes are kept, imported recipes are private, and repeated imports of the same backup are not duplicated. Backups must be no larger than 4 MiB with at most 5,000 recipes. Images are links to the original files, not bundled files. Restore a recipe from Trash before exporting if you want it in the backup.

Nutrition estimates

Saving a recipe no longer waits for a nutrition estimate. Estimate it from the saved recipe when you need it. Values are approximate and per serving. Editing ingredients or the serving count clears the old estimate so you can request a fresh one; title and note edits preserve it.