I recently started using the Recime app for managing recipes and meal planning, but I’m running into issues with features not working as expected and confusing navigation. I’d really appreciate detailed feedback, pros and cons, and any tips from others who have used Recime so I can decide whether to stick with it or switch to another recipe app.
Started using Recime about a month ago. Short version. It helps a bit, but it feels half-baked in a lot of spots.
What works well for me:
- Recipe storage: Adding your own recipes is ok. Text input is simple. It parses ingredients decently if you keep the format clean.
- Web import: Pulls in title, ingredients, steps from most big sites. Sometimes screws up ingredient quantities or misses notes, so you need to check every import.
- Tags and search: Tagging recipes with “quick”, “vegan”, “kids” etc helps. Search by title and tag works fine.
Where it gets annoying:
- Navigation: The flow between Recipes, Meal Plan, and Shopping List feels clunky. Too many taps to do simple stuff like move a recipe from one day to another. I still get lost between week view and day view.
- Meal planning: Drag and drop is glitchy on my phone. Sometimes drops the recipe on the wrong date. Swiping between weeks lags. Duplicating a whole week’s plan for future weeks would save time, but the feature behaves inconsistently for me.
- Shopping list: It groups some items but not all. Example. “1 cup milk” and “2 cups milk” might stay as two separate entries. Units are not normalized, so you end up manually editing. Sorting by aisle or category feels half finished.
- Sync: On my partner’s phone, sync lagged by several minutes. Once, a whole day’s plan did not appear until we re-opened the app. Makes shared planning risky.
- Offline use: If your connection drops, certain actions fail silently. I had recipes not save after editing when my wifi was unstable.
Bugs or weird behavior I hit:
- Duplicated recipes after editing while switching between apps.
- Random logouts twice in one week, which killed my flow.
- Search not updating until I force-closed the app.
- One imported recipe lost half the steps after I edited ingredients.
What helped me use it without wanting to uninstall:
- Keep recipe formatting simple. “1 cup milk” on its own line. No extra comments in the ingredient line.
- After web import, skim the ingredients and steps once and fix them before you rely on it.
- Use tags aggressively. Example tags. “weeknight”, “prep-sunday”, “freezer”, “company”. Search is more useful than the default folder structure.
- For meal planning, I plan dinners only. Breakfast and lunch in one generic “Basics” note so I do not have to fight the UI as much.
- For the shopping list, I rewrite critical items into categories like “Produce”, “Dairy”, “Pantry”. Faster than trusting the auto grouping.
- Take screenshots of your weekly plan at first. If sync glitches, you still know what you planned.
Pros for your use case:
- Keeps recipes in one place.
- Decent importing from standard food blogs.
- Tagging and search save time once set up.
- Works ok if you mostly plan on one device.
Cons:
- Navigation feels confusing and slow until you memorize the paths.
- Some features feel like beta, especially shopping list and sync.
- Bugs make it risky as your only meal planning tool.
- No strong bulk-edit tools for serious planners.
If you want rock solid meal planning with good grocery logic, pairing Recime with a spreadsheet or a simple list app might be less stressful. I still use it as a recipe box first, planner second. If recipe storage is your main goal, you might tolerate the quirks. If planning and grocery management is priority, I would keep looking.
I’m in a similar boat as you, but my experience is a bit more mixed than @himmelsjager’s.
For me, the navigation is confusing at first, but not totally unusable after a week or so. It’s like they copied three different apps and glued them together. Once you memorize where things live, it’s… tolerable, just not intuitive. I wouldn’t hand it to a non techy family member though.
Where I actually disagree a bit is meal planning. Drag and drop on my phone is mostly fine, but the real issue for me is context. I can’t see enough of the week and nutrition / prep time at the same time, so I keep opening recipes, backing out, then moving them. It’s more “cognitive friction” than straight up bugs.
What I like that hasn’t been mentioned much:
- Portion scaling is decent. I’ve scaled 2 to 6 servings without the quantities going totally insane.
- Printing / PDF export is handy if you cook with a tablet in the kitchen. It’s ugly but functional.
- Photo support is nice for family recipes. I add pics of old handwritten cards.
What drives me nuts:
- No proper bulk actions. Want to tag 30 recipes as “dinner” in one go? Enjoy tapping each one individually.
- Backup story is unclear. I do not fully trust that everything is safe if the company vanished tomorrow.
- Editing imported recipes can be laggy on larger ones. I had a 20 ingredient curry that made the editor crawl.
How I’m using it now:
- Recipe vault: yes.
- Serious meal planning for a family of 4: no.
- Shared planning: only for “idea board” level stuff, not the final plan.
If you’re already feeling frustrated this early, I’d treat Recime as a recipe notebook and run actual meal plans and grocery lists through something simpler like a notes app or spreadsheet. The app feels like it’s 70% to what it wants to be, and you’re kind of beta testing the last 30% whether you like it or not.
TL;DR: useful if you can live with quirks, but if you want rock solid reliability and super clear navigation, you’re probably going to keep swearing at your phone. I sure did lol.
I’m a bit closer to @himmelsjager’s take than to yours, but with a few twists.
My experience with Recime app
I’d call Recime “functional but half-baked.” It works, yet I never fully relax using it.
Pros of Recime
-
Recipe capture is solid
Web import works better than I expected. It parses most blogs correctly, and cleaning up is usually quick. -
Tagging & search are powerful
Once you tolerate the UI, being able to search by tags, ingredients and titles together is very handy. I actually disagree slightly with others here: the navigation to the search / filters became second nature to me faster than a week. -
Cross device use is decent
On tablet the layout breathes more. Meal review and cooking flow are nicer on a bigger screen, so Recime works well as a “kitchen companion” if you park a tablet on the counter. -
Good “single source of truth” for recipes
It beat my old mix of Google Docs plus photos. If you treat Recime primarily as a central recipe vault, it does that job reasonably well.
Cons of Recime
-
Navigation feels inconsistent
Here I fully agree: it feels like three design philosophies glued together. Sometimes back takes you to a different “layer” than you expect. It is not just a learning curve; it can feel internally inconsistent. -
Meal planning is too fiddly for real life
Where I differ a bit from the other comment is drag and drop. It technically works, but planning a real weekly menu for a household using Recime is slower than it should be. I often revert to a plain calendar app for the actual schedule and just link or reference recipes from Recime. -
Performance cliffs
Large, photo heavy or long recipes occasionally stutter. Adding notes or editing while you cook can lag enough to be annoying. -
Unclear data longevity
Same worry: not obvious how export / backup would work if Recime disappeared. I would not trust it as my only storage for treasured family recipes.
How I’d actually use Recime
-
Good for
- Recipe archive
- Browsing ideas, tagging, quick search
- Cooking from a tablet or phone once recipes are clean
-
Not great for
- Complex meal planning
- Shared planning for a family where everyone needs to see a clear weekly view
- “I must not lose these recipes” scenarios without a parallel backup
If you are already annoyed with navigation and broken-feeling features, I’d position Recime as your recipe database and run planning and grocery lists through something simpler and more transparent. @himmelsjager leaned into frustration on the planning side, and I am only slightly more forgiving because I mainly use Recime for storage, not full workflow.
Summary of pros & cons for Recime
- Pros: strong import, good tagging & search, decent across devices, useful recipe vault.
- Cons: confusing navigation, so so meal planning, occasional lag, uncertain backup story.
If a clean, reliable planning flow is your priority, you may be happier keeping Recime in a supporting role rather than as the center of your meal planning universe.