Repimame25 August 2026
Turning a photo into a recipe: what actually works
"Photo to recipe" covers two completely different jobs, and mixing them up is why people end up disappointed. One is copying text you can already see. The other is guessing.
Quick answer. If your photo has the recipe written in it - a cookbook page, an index card, a screenshot - you want text recognition, and your phone already does that for free. If your photo is just a finished dish, nothing in the image tells anyone what the cook actually put in it. What you get back is an estimate. Both jobs are useful - but only one of them gives you the cook's real amounts.
Case 1: the recipe is written in the photo
A page from a cookbook, your grandmother's index card, a screenshot of a blog. The words exist. You just need them out of the image.
Your phone does this for free
On iPhone XS or later, running iOS 15 or later, open the photo, press and hold on the text, and drag to select it like any other text. Copy, then paste into a notes app. Apple calls this Live Text - and the device requirement is the part people miss, so if nothing happens on an older phone, that is why.
On Android, open the photo in Google Photos and tap the Lens icon. Google Lens also runs on iPhone through Google's own apps.
For handwriting, use Google Lens rather than Live Text - it is noticeably better at it, and worth the detour even on an iPhone. Either way, a card written in pencil in 1974 may defeat both.
Do this if the text is printed and reasonably clear. It costs nothing and takes about fifteen seconds.
When you want it as a proper recipe, not a wall of text
Copying gives you a paragraph. Some apps will take the photo and give you a structured recipe - separate ingredients, numbered steps, a servings figure you can scale.
CookBook is the one that leans hardest into this; its own listing says its scanner turns photos of handwritten recipe cards, cookbook pages, screenshots and clippings into editable recipes. If your problem is a drawer full of paper, that is the app to look at first.
Case 2: the photo is just the finished dish
You photographed a plate at a friend's house. Nobody wrote anything down.
An app can look at that photo and produce a recipe. It identifies the dish and the ingredients it can see, then writes down what that dish normally takes. It is pattern-matching, not reading - the same photo of a stew can produce three different ingredient lists.
So when a tool hands you "200g chicken thigh" from a photograph, nobody weighed that chicken. It is a sensible starting point, and it will be wrong about something. Correct it the first time you cook it.
Do this if you want a plausible starting point for a dish you liked - and you are the kind of cook who adjusts as you go anyway.
How to get a better guess
- Photograph it before it is eaten. A full plate shows more than a half-empty one.
- Get close and get the light right. The tool is identifying ingredients by sight.
- Take more than one angle if the app accepts several photos. What is buried under the sauce matters.
- Fix it after the first cook. That is when you learn the real amounts, and it takes a minute to edit.
Which one do you actually need
| Your photo | What to use | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Printed page or screenshot | Live Text / Google Lens (free) | The exact words, as a paragraph |
| Paper recipes, lots of them | CookBook | Structured, editable recipes |
| A finished dish | An app with photo-to-recipe | An estimated recipe to edit |
| A cooking video | Not this at all - see below | The caption is where the recipe is |
That last row is where most people go wrong. If what you have is a video, screenshotting it is doing it the hard way - the recipe is usually already typed in the caption. Here is how to get it out of there.
What we do
We make Repimame, so treat this as our own description of it. It does the second case: photograph a finished dish and you get back an editable recipe - ingredients, numbered steps, a cooking time and a servings figure you can change. The amounts are estimates. Three photos a month on the free plan, fifty on the paid one.
It is not a scanner for recipe cards. If that is your problem, CookBook is the better buy, and we would rather you knew that now than after downloading ours. (Our own effort has gone into video instead - a separate job.)
Written by the people who make Repimame. Free to start, iPhone and iPad, no account needed. There is a longer comparison of recipe apps if you are weighing several up.