MyRecipes

Review by eFreeware

MyRecipes is a free recipe app from PEOPLE INC. GROUP, available in the Food & Drink category. Its pitch is straightforward: instead of scattering recipe links across browser bookmarks, screenshots and saved social posts, you keep them in one app, backed by a catalog of more than 100,000 recipes from established food brands. For anyone who cooks regularly and keeps losing track of what they meant to make, that is the main reason to consider it.

The app has been downloaded more than 50,000 times and holds a 3.2 average from 112 ratings, which suggests a mixed reception so far rather than a runaway favorite. It is free to install and supported by ads, with an optional membership on top. I'll come back to what that membership covers, because it shapes how much of the app you actually get for nothing.

What the app actually does

At its core, MyRecipes is a place to collect recipes and then cook from them. You save recipes you find on food sites, keep them in collections, and open them later in a cooking view the developer calls cook mode. That view keeps the screen awake while you work, and lets you move between the ingredient list and the directions with a tap, so you aren't juggling browser tabs or scrolling back to find your place mid-recipe.

The second half of the idea is organization. Rather than one long list of saved links, you build collections around the way you actually cook: a week's meal plan, healthy staples, holiday menus, things the kids will eat, and a holding pen for recipes you want to try. The developer also publishes featured collections from its editors, and you can turn one of those into a personal collection with a tap and then adjust it.

If you already have an account, signing in brings your saved recipes and custom collections with you, which matters if you are moving between a phone and a tablet. The app is built for both screen sizes, and the cooking view is clearly the part the developer has thought hardest about.

The recipe catalog and where it comes from

The library is the app's strongest selling point. It draws on more than 100,000 recipes from names many home cooks already recognize, among them Allrecipes, Food & Wine, EatingWell, Southern Living, Serious Eats, Simply Recipes, Spruce Eats, Better Homes & Gardens, Real Simple and Liquor.com. That spread covers weeknight dinners, baking projects, holiday cooking and drinks, rather than leaning on a single cuisine or style.

The developer says culinary experts check each recipe and home cooks give it a look, a claim that matters more for baking than for a simple pasta dish. I'd treat it as a reasonable signal of consistency rather than a guarantee, but it does distinguish a curated catalog from an open collection where anything can be uploaded.

Search is where a catalog this size lives or dies, and the app filters by cook time, rating, ingredients and brand, alongside searching across everything you have saved. Brand filters are a nice touch if you have learned to trust one source's baking recipes over another's.

Saving from the web and from social apps

Saving from food sites is free, and the developer frames it as the fix for sending yourself links and digging through browser history. That is a familiar frustration, and an app that pulls those saves into one searchable place solves it without much ceremony. You are not copying ingredients by hand or keeping a notes file of URLs.

Saving from Instagram and TikTok sits behind the paid membership instead. That is the single most important thing to understand before installing, because it decides whether the app fits how you find recipes. If most of your cooking inspiration arrives through short videos, the free version will not capture it; if you mostly cook from recipe sites and brand pages, the free tier covers the main job.

The most recent update added Instagram and TikTok icons to recipes saved from social media and made the brand labels on recipe cards larger and clearer, so saved items are easier to tell apart at a glance.

Recommendations, collections and the cooking screen

Recommendations are tied to your own saving behavior: the more you save, the more the app leans on your tastes, preferred cuisines and cooking habits to suggest what to make next. That is a sensible design, since a suggestion engine with nothing to go on is just a list of popular recipes. It does mean the app gets more useful after a few weeks of use rather than on the first evening.

Collections are where the day-to-day value sits. A meal plan collection, a holiday menu and a shortlist of recipes to try next keep the library from turning into another pile of unsorted links. Turning an editor's featured collection into your own, then editing it, is a quick way to start one without building it from scratch.

Cook mode is the feature I'd weigh most heavily if you cook with a phone propped on the counter. Keeping the screen awake and switching between ingredients and steps without losing your place addresses two small annoyances that show up in almost every recipe app, and it is the clearest sign that the developer has watched people actually cook.

What the free version asks of you

Two things shape the free experience. The first is advertising: the app is free and ad-supported, so you should expect ads alongside the recipes. The second is the membership, MyRecipes+, which starts with a seven-day free trial and adds an ad-free mode, saving from Instagram and TikTok, extra personalized recommendations, updates from the editors and member discounts. The paid tier adds extra features, but the app works without it.

There is also the matter of an account. Signing in is how your saved recipes and collections follow you to another device, which is the point of keeping them in one place.

Install counts above 50,000 tell you the app has found an audience, not that the audience is enthusiastic.

Who this fits

MyRecipes is built for people who cook from recipes often enough to need a system: weeknight planners, holiday hosts, parents keeping a list of dinners the family will actually eat, and anyone who has accumulated a mess of bookmarks and screenshots. The combination of a large branded catalog, collections and a cooking view aimed at a phone on the counter is a coherent package for that person.

It also suits households that move between a phone and a tablet, since saved recipes and collections are tied to an account and the app is designed for both. If your recipe inspiration mostly comes from short social videos, the membership is effectively part of the cost of using the app the way you cook, and that is worth deciding on before you start saving.

If you prefer to keep your own recipes in a private notebook, or you cook mostly from memory and a handful of family cards, the app's emphasis on a curated catalog and collections will feel like more structure than you need.

A recipe organizer for people who cook from a screen

MyRecipes makes a clear case for itself: a large catalog from brands people already trust, saving from recipe sites at no cost, collections that match how you plan meals, and a cooking view that keeps the screen on and your place in the recipe. The free version covers the essentials, and the membership adds ad-free browsing, social saving, extra recommendations and discounts.

The trade-offs are equally clear. Ads are part of the free experience, saving from Instagram and TikTok requires the paid tier, and an account is what keeps your collection in sync across devices. The 3.2 rating from 112 ratings is a caution rather than a verdict, and I would skim recent reviews if social saving is what drew you in.

For home cooks who collect recipes from food sites and want one organized place to cook from, this looks like a sensible install, with the seven-day trial as a low-risk way to judge whether the paid extras are worth keeping. If your recipes live in short videos, factor the membership into the decision from the start.

What's new in version 1.2.0

Our latest update makes browsing + saving recipes even better. - Easier to find recipes from your favorite brands, with bigger, clearer labels on every recipe card - Instagram and TikTok icons on recipes you save from social media - Small improvements so saving and browsing are smoother - More delicious updates are coming! Stay tuned Never lose a recipe again!