Help Center

No. Karoto works without an account. Everything is stored on your device, and syncing across your devices is optional, through your own iCloud.

Yes. Karoto is free, with no ads, no subscriptions and no purchases.

Yes. Importing a recipe from a website link needs a connection, and Apple Intelligence may need one too. Without it, Karoto sorts the recipe with simpler matching. Everything else works without internet.

On your device. If you’re signed in to iCloud and syncing is on, they also sync between your own devices through your private iCloud, which the developer can’t access.

Karoto is available on iPhone, iPad and Mac, with iOS 26, iPadOS 26 or macOS 26 and later. The app is available in English and Russian.

Tap the + button and choose Paste Link, Paste Text, Add Screenshots or Write from scratch.

Yes. Paste the link, or share the page from Safari, and Karoto reads the recipe from the page. If a page can’t be read, Karoto lets you paste the recipe text instead.

On the recipe’s page, tap Share, choose Karoto, then tap Add to Karoto. The recipe is ready to check the next time you open Karoto. Safari works best, because Karoto reads the page exactly as you see it.

Karoto can’t read links from social media. Take screenshots of the post instead (open the full caption first), and add them with Add Screenshots, in order. You can add up to 6 at a time.

Karoto reads the text on your device and ignores app text such as usernames and like counts. It keeps the screenshots with the recipe so you can see the original, and syncs them through your iCloud if you use it.

Yes. On the recipe, tap ⋯ and choose Show Original to see the screenshots it was read from.

Yes. Every imported recipe opens for review before it’s saved, with any lines Karoto is unsure about highlighted. Until you confirm it, the recipe stays a draft.

On supported devices, Apple Intelligence works out which ingredients belong to which step. Without it, Karoto matches each ingredient to the step that names it. If something lands in the wrong place, you can fix it in the editor.

Yes. Choose Write from scratch, and add ingredients with a keypad made for amounts and units, then connect them to steps.

Yes, up to five, in the editor’s Image section. Touch and hold a photo to crop it again, or drag it to reorder. The first one becomes the recipe card, cut out from its background. When you add a recipe from a link, Karoto brings in up to five photos from the page, skipping icons and ads.

When your clipboard holds a recipe or a link, Karoto offers to import it. It reads the content only when you choose to paste.

Karoto lays out a recipe as a tree: ingredients flow into steps, and steps flow into the finished dish, so you can see what goes where before you start.

Every ingredient that feeds that step lights up.

Yes. In the editor, select ingredients or steps, then tap Group or Merge to make the tree match how you cook.

Recipes can have sections, such as dough, filling and icing, each with its own ingredients and steps.

Yes. Choose ½×, 2× or 3× to scale every amount, and switch between metric and US units in one tap. The Conversions tab converts amounts, such as cups to millilitres, and lists what a cup of common ingredients weighs.

Use folders to group recipes (such as Baking or Soups) and tags to label them (such as Bread or One-pot).

Yes. Search finds recipe names, tags and ingredients, so you can type what’s in your fridge and see what you can cook.

Drafts are recipes you haven’t finished or confirmed. They stay out of All Recipes, your meal plan and your grocery list until you finish them.

Nothing. Deleting a folder never deletes its recipes, and they simply become unfiled.

Yes. Go to Settings → Your Data → Export Cookbook. It creates a .zip with every recipe, in a folder for each of your folders, both as Markdown that any notes app can open and as a recipe file other recipe apps can import. Photos and drafts aren’t included.

Open a recipe and tap the play button.

One step at a time, with only the ingredients that step uses. Tick off ingredients as you add them, and use the arrows to move between steps.

Yes, while you’re in cooking mode.

A step that mentions a time gets a timer button. For a range like 35–45 minutes, the timer starts at the shorter time, so you check early. Timers keep running when you change steps or lock your device, and they ring even in Silent Mode. Tap a running timer to change it.

Hands-free lets you move between steps without touching your phone. Hold up one finger and wave it right for the next step or left for the previous one, and close an open hand into a fist to start the step’s timer. On devices with Face ID, you can also wink to move between steps or open your mouth to start the timer.

Yes. On iPhone, the current step and its timer stay on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island. You also get a notification when a timer finishes.

Go to the next or previous step, start the step’s timer, or stop it and add one or five minutes, without unlocking your phone.

Choose Close and Keep Cooking to return to the same step later, with your checked ingredients and timers as you left them. End Cooking, or Done on the last step, clears them so next time starts fresh.

No. Hands-free uses the camera live to recognize a gesture, and nothing is recorded or stored.

Add recipes to the days of your week, under Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.

Hold and drag it, or tap Move To in its menu and choose a day. Duplicate To puts a copy on another day.

Tap the circle next to it. It stays on its day, faded, so you can see what you cooked, and it stops sending reminders. In a household, it’s marked as cooked for everyone.

Yes. A meal without a recipe is its own entry, and notes are separate, so you can plan “Dinner at Mum’s” or add a reminder to defrost something.

Yes. When to Start Cooking sends a reminder at your meal time minus the recipe’s cooking time.

The recipe has a step that needs starting early, like marinating, proofing dough or chilling overnight. You can turn the badge off in Settings → Preferences.

Yes. The widget shows what’s left to cook today on your Home Screen. Touch and hold it and choose Edit Widget to show or hide sections and notes, hide or cross off cooked meals, and choose whether it moves on to tomorrow once everything’s cooked.

Karoto sends ingredients to a list in Apple Reminders, grouped by aisle. You can add ingredients from a recipe or from your meal plan.

Groceries live in Reminders, so you share them there. In the Reminders app, share your groceries list with the people you shop with. Then each person chooses that shared list in Karoto under Settings → Preferences → Reminder List.

A household lets up to 5 people share a cookbook and a meal plan, through iCloud.

Send an invite from the Household settings. Each person needs Karoto and an iCloud account, and must open the invite on every device they use Karoto on.

Open the invite someone sends you, on each device you use Karoto on. Households share through iCloud, so iCloud sync turns on when you join. You can be in one household at a time.

The household’s recipes, folders and meal plan are shared. Your own recipes stay private until you move one into the household, and your drafts are always private.

If the owner stops sharing, everyone loses access to the household’s recipes, folders and meal plan. Anyone leaving a household can keep a copy of what they want first.

No. There are no accounts, no servers, no ads and no tracking.

On supported devices, recipe text may be processed on your device or by Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, which is designed so that Apple doesn’t store or see it. Read more in the Privacy Policy.

Only when a feature needs them: Reminders for your grocery list, Notifications for timers and cooking reminders, Camera for hands-free, and Photos for importing screenshots. You can change any of them in Settings.

Delete recipes or your whole cookbook from within the app. If you use iCloud, manage the synced copy in your device’s iCloud settings.

In Settings → Your Data, then relaunch Karoto. With sync off, your recipes stay only on that device.

Some pages can’t be read, and some sites stop apps from reading them. Share the page from Safari instead, so Karoto reads it exactly as you see it. If that doesn’t work either, copy the recipe text from the page and choose Paste Text.

Automatic sorting can get things wrong, especially without Apple Intelligence. Tap Edit on the recipe, select ingredients or steps, and use Group or Merge to put them right. Select ingredients and a step, then Merge, to add them to that step.

Apple Intelligence works on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max and iPhone 16 or later, on iPad with A17 Pro or M1 or later, and on Mac with Apple silicon. It has to be turned on in Settings → Apple Intelligence & Siri. Private Cloud Compute has a daily limit, and past it Karoto uses the on-device model until the limit resets. Without Apple Intelligence, Karoto matches ingredients to the steps that name them.

Check that each device is signed in to the same Apple Account, is online, and has iCloud sync on in Settings → Your Data. That screen also shows when Karoto last synced, and says if your iCloud storage is full or iCloud didn’t accept some changes. Karoto keeps your changes and syncs them once it can. To fetch the latest now, pull down on the Cookbook or Meal Plan.

First, make sure Karoto can use Reminders: in the Settings app, find Karoto and allow Full Access to Reminders. Then, in Karoto, open Settings → Preferences → Reminder List and check that it shows a list that still exists in Reminders. Items added on another device show up once Reminders has synced them. Pull down on the Groceries tab to reload.

Make sure notifications are allowed for Karoto in the Settings app. Timers ring even in Silent Mode. For cooking reminders, turn on Cooking Reminders in Karoto’s Settings → Notifications. A meal marked as cooked stops sending reminders, and in a household only the person who planned the meal is reminded.

Allow camera access for Karoto in the Settings app. Prop the screen up facing you, about an arm’s length away, in good light. Hold up one finger facing the screen with the others curled: an open hand or a fist moving sideways doesn’t change the step. Winks and the open mouth need a device with Face ID.

In the share sheet, scroll the row of apps to the end, tap More, and turn Karoto on.

Households go through iCloud, so on every device check, in the Settings app under your name → iCloud: you’re signed in, iCloud Drive is on, and Karoto is on under Saved to iCloud. The household is stored in the owner’s iCloud, which needs some free space. Send the invite to an email address or phone number on the other person’s Apple Account. A VPN or iCloud Private Relay can stop iCloud from answering, so try with them off. If it still fails, iCloud may just be busy, so try again a little later.

Open the invite on that device too. It must be signed in to the same Apple Account, with iCloud sync on in Settings → Your Data. Then pull down on Settings → Household to refresh.

Every device needs to be online, with iCloud sync on in Settings → Your Data. To fetch the latest changes now, pull down on the Cookbook, Meal Plan or Household screen. If the owner’s iCloud storage is full, new changes wait until there’s room. They’re kept, and they sync once there is.