Switching Apps

Switching recipe apps without losing years of saved recipes

Moving looks like more work than putting up with the annoyance. It's smaller than it looks, because many saved recipes never get cooked.

People stay with a recipe app they've outgrown for much the same reason they stay on an old phone contract: moving looks like more work than putting up with the annoyance. A few hundred recipes saved over several years represent real effort, and the fear of losing them keeps a lot of cooks in tools they've stopped enjoying.

The move is smaller than it looks, because many of those saved recipes never get cooked.

Decide what you're actually moving

Open the old app and sort by favourites, last opened, or whatever signal it offers. The recipes cooked in the past year are the ones worth moving first, and they're usually a fraction of the total. The rest can wait. If you miss one later, you can go back for it, and the old app will still be there.

Treat this as a clear-out as much as a migration. Recipes saved on a whim in 2021 and never opened again don't need a new home.

Check what the old app can export

Some apps let you export your collection to a file. It's worth trying, though what comes out doesn't always import cleanly into another tool, and the formatting can vary. If the export works, good. If it doesn't, you still have options, because most recipes came from somewhere:

• Web recipes still have their original link, so you can bring them in by URL
• Social media saves can be captured with a screenshot of the caption or comments
• Typed-in or handwritten recipes can be photographed from the page or screen

Run both apps side by side for a fortnight

Keep the old app until you've planned and cooked a couple of weeks from the new one. This takes the pressure off the migration, since nothing is final, and it shows you quickly which recipes you actually reach for. Anything you open in the old app during that fortnight and haven't yet moved is the next batch to bring over.

Expect a few duplicates

If you pull recipes in from several places, the same dish will turn up twice: once from a blog link, once from a screenshot a friend sent. Spotting these by hand is tedious. Better to let the new tool flag likely repeats as they come in, then decide which version to keep.

Where mmmiso fits

mmmiso takes recipes in by link, screenshot, photo or pasted text, so a collection built from mixed sources can come across without retyping, and when you review each one it flags likely duplicates of recipes you've already saved. The free tier gives you 25 captures to start, plus 5 a month, which is plenty for the list of recipes you actually cook. If you do want to move a big stack in one go, bulk upload is there with paid credits, though it works from photos, one recipe per photo, rather than links. One honest limit: mmmiso can't import an export file from another app, so everything comes in through those routes.

Pick the recipes you actually cook, import them, and plan next week from the new app. Keep the old one installed until you're sure you won't miss it.