Repimame25 August 2026
How to cook hands-free from a recipe on your phone
Your hands are covered in flour, the screen has gone dark, and the next step is somewhere below the fold. Here is how people actually solve that, from the free fix that takes ten seconds to apps built for it.
Quick answer. Most of the problem is the screen switching itself off. On iPhone, Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock → Never fixes that in ten seconds - just set it back afterwards, or your battery pays for it. For scrolling, there are two hands-free options - a voice assistant or an app with a gesture mode - plus one that is not hands-free but solves the mess: seal the phone in a freezer bag.
1. Stop the screen turning off (free, ten seconds)
This is the whole problem for most people. The recipe is fine; you just cannot see it.
iPhone: Settings → Display & Brightness →
Auto-Lock → Never.
Android: Settings → Display → Screen timeout
→ the longest option.
Set it back when you finish. Left on Never, the battery will be dead by dinner.
Do this if you only ever need to see one screen of the recipe at a time.
2. Ask a voice assistant (free, mixed results)
"Hey Siri, set a timer for ten minutes" works well and is worth the habit. Asking an assistant to read a recipe aloud or scroll a page works much less well, because it does not know what is on your screen.
What does work: timers, unit conversions, and simple questions ("how many grams in a cup of flour"). What does not: navigating a recipe you have already saved.
Do this if what you actually need is timers, which is more often than people expect.
3. The plastic bag trick (free, ugly, effective)
Put the phone in a clear freezer bag. Capacitive touchscreens work through thin plastic, so you can scroll with a greasy finger and wipe the bag instead of the phone. Cooks have been doing this for years.
It is not hands-free, but it removes the actual objection - you are not getting oil on the glass.
4. An app with a hands-free mode
Two iPhone apps ship a working hands-free mode, and they take opposite approaches: Crouton jumps between steps, Repimame scrolls.
| App | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Crouton | In its own words, you "move between steps without touching your device" | Jumping step to step in a recipe you already know |
| Repimame | Pinch thumb to index finger in front of the camera, then move that hand up or down to scroll | Reading through a long recipe at your own pace |
We make the second one. Crouton shipped hands-free before we did and has thousands of ratings behind it; if step-to-step is what you want, start there. Ours scrolls rather than jumps, which suits recipes where you are reading a paragraph rather than ticking off a list.
What our version actually does
Turn on Cooking Mode and two things happen: the screen stops dimming, and the front camera starts looking for the gesture. Hold your hand up and pinch your thumb and index finger together, then move that hand up or down; the recipe scrolls with it and stops when you let go. Nothing else on the screen responds.
The camera feed never leaves your phone. Frames are read on the device and thrown away. Nothing is recorded, stored or uploaded, and the app has no other use for the camera.
Times written into the steps become timers. "Simmer for 15 minutes" gets a button, and the alarm sounds even when the phone is on silent, which is the setting that trips most people up.
Worth knowing: it needs camera permission, and it works best when the phone is propped up facing you rather than flat on the counter.
What to try first
- Screen keeps going dark - fix Auto-Lock. That is probably the whole problem.
- You just need timers - your voice assistant already does this well.
- Greasy fingers on glass - freezer bag.
- Long recipes you have to scroll - a hands-free app.
Written by the people who make Repimame, an iPhone app with a hands-free cooking mode. Free to start, no account needed. There is also a comparison of recipe apps if that is what you are actually after.