Snap to find or import

Find ingredients you have

Use this when you want to see what you can cook with what's already in your kitchen, or to add real items to your Staples list without typing them out.

Open it from:

• Recipes tab → Ingredients filter chip → camera button — adds the items you snap to your filter chips, so the recipe list narrows to things you can actually make.
• Recipes tab → ⋯ menu → Staples → camera button — adds to your Staples list (the things you always have on hand).
• Groceries tab → ⋯ menu → Staples → camera button — same Staples list, different entry.

Snap 1–8 photos and tap Identify. Gemini returns ingredient names with confidence scores; you tick which ones to keep. Anything we're confident about is pre-ticked.

It works on anything that shows ingredients:

• Fridge or pantry shelf — wide shots are fine. Mix angles to catch items hiding behind others.
• Crisper or freezer drawer — pull it out so the back row is visible.
• Receipt — point at the line items. Prices and store codes get ignored automatically.
• Handwritten shopping list — clear handwriting works. We OCR the page and parse the items the same as printed text.
• Single-item close-ups — useful for branded packets or jars where the label tells the story.

Import recipes from a printed page

Use this when you want to add a cookbook page, magazine recipe, or handwritten card to your library — the same way you'd import a recipe from a URL.

Open it from:

• Recipes tab → + button → Camera

Snap as many photos as you want and tap Import. We figure out which photos belong together — multiple shots of the same dish collapse into one recipe, separate dishes become separate recipes. Works for:

• A single cookbook page or magazine recipe
• Handwritten card, notebook page, or napkin
• Multi-page spreads of one recipe — extra shots stitch into the same recipe
• A whole stack of recipes — snap them in one session, get a recipe for each dish back

After Import, the camera dismisses and a placeholder card appears in your recipes grid. If we found multiple recipes, the placeholder fans out into one card per recipe a few seconds later as each one finishes processing.

Tips for good results

• Mix angles when finding ingredients — a wide shelf shot plus a close-up of a bunch of herbs both work. Combine them in one scan.
• Open doors fully — back shelves matter.
• Pull drawers out if you want what's inside identified.
• Use the flash (top-right of the camera) for dim shelves or low light.
• Steady the camera on a flat surface for receipts and recipe pages — text needs to be legible.
• Tap a thumbnail to remove a blurry photo before tapping Identify or Import.
• Mix dishes freely when importing recipes — we work out the boundaries. Two shots of one cookbook spread = one recipe; three different cards = three recipes.

What happens if we miss something?

When finding ingredients: type the missing item into the chip set — it becomes a chip alongside the camera-identified ones. Free-form text is supported, even for things not in any recipe.

When importing a recipe: open the imported recipe and tap Edit to fix anything Gemini got wrong. Common edits — fixing a quantity it misread, removing a duplicate ingredient, adjusting a step. The .cook source is fully editable.

Synonyms and categories

When the camera is finding ingredients for you, we won't make you remember exact wording. Pantry pasta matches recipe spaghetti. Cheese matches parmesan. Courgette matches zucchini. Cilantro matches coriander. Even minor typos like *spagetti* match *spaghetti*. Full details in the ingredient filter guide.