Add recipes
Four ways to import recipes into your library — Camera, Photos, Files, and a paste box for links or text.
Tap + on the Recipes tab to open the add sheet. Pick the source that matches what you have — we'll detect how many recipes are inside and import each one as its own card.
Camera
Snap one or many recipes in real time. We figure out which photos belong together — multiple shots of the same cookbook spread collapse into one recipe; separate dishes become separate recipes.
- Up to 8 photos per session.
- Lay the page flat, fill the frame, daylight is best.
Photos
Pick photos already in your library. Same boundary detection as Camera — pick a stack of unrelated dishes and you'll get a recipe per dish.
- Up to 8 photos per import, 10 MB each.
Files
Import from PDFs or saved images. PDFs are where this shines — drop a multi-recipe cookbook excerpt and we'll fan it out into one card per recipe.
- Up to 5 files per import.
- PDFs up to 25 MB. Images up to 10 MB each.
- PDFs only — pick photos OR PDFs, not mixed.
Paste a link or recipe text
The text box at the bottom takes either a URL (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, or any recipe website) or pasted recipe text. One paste = one recipe.
What happens after Import
A placeholder card appears on your grid right away. If we found multiple recipes, the placeholder fans out into one card per recipe within a few seconds. Each finishes processing independently — you can start cooking the first one while the others are still being read.
If something goes wrong
- Found too many recipes — we occasionally split one long recipe in half. Delete the duplicates; keep the merged one.
- Found too few — re-snap the missing ones. Faint scans, blurry shots, or pages mostly off-frame can get skipped.
- Import failed — open the recipe row and tap retry, or try a different source.
Related guides
Snap photos of cookbook pages, magazine recipes, or printed cards and import them into recipes.im. We work out which photos belong to which recipe and parse them.
Send any recipe link from Safari to recipes.im. Works with food blogs, cooking magazines, and most recipe sites.
Open the camera from inside the app to find ingredients you've already got, or to import a recipe from a printed page.