Import a recipe from a photo
Snap a photo of a cookbook page or magazine recipe and import it into recipes.im. We OCR the text and parse it.
Some of the best recipes still live in cookbooks. Take a clear photo of the page, share it to recipes.im, and we'll read the text out and parse it like any other source.
- 1
Take a clear photo of the recipe page
Lay the book flat in good light. Try to capture the whole recipe — title, ingredients, and method — in one shot. If the recipe spans two pages, take two photos.
- 2
Share the photo to Recipes
Open the photo in Photos, tap the share icon (square-with-arrow), scroll the row of app icons, and pick Recipes.
- 3
Wait for the OCR pass
Photos go through a vision pass that reads the text out, then parses the recipe. Expect 15-30 seconds — slower than text or a website, faster than a video.
Troubleshooting
The recipe came out garbled
Usually a focus or lighting problem. Retake the photo with the page flat, the camera parallel, and avoid harsh shadows. Cookbook fonts are usually fine; handwriting is hit-or-miss.
Two-page recipe — only one page imported
Today we parse one image at a time. If your recipe spans two pages, photograph the second page and re-import it as a separate recipe; merge them by hand using Remix with AI or by editing the .cook file.
Magazine clipping with multiple recipes on one page
Crop the photo down to the single recipe before sharing. Otherwise the parser has to guess which recipe is the one you wanted, and it's a coin flip.
Related guides
Share recipe text from Notes, Mail, Messages, ChatGPT, Claude, or any app where you can select text — recipes.im parses it just like a website.
Send any recipe link from Safari to recipes.im. Works with food blogs, cooking magazines, and most recipe sites.
A short tour of what happens between tapping Share and the recipe landing in your library — and the architectural choice that keeps it cheap to run.
Common problems and fixes — failed imports, missing ingredients, scrambled steps, sync issues.