Oh She Glows - Healthy Recipes

Review by eFreeware

Many recipe apps feel like uneven collections, with inconsistent photos and instructions that leave too much unsaid. Oh She Glows is the opposite: a curated set of more than 180 plant-based recipes from Angela Liddon, the author behind the OhSheGlows.com blog, packaged with full-screen photography and a set of cooking tools built around actually standing at a stove. That combination of a known recipe writer and a purpose-built app is the most distinctive thing about it.

It is a paid download at $2.99, with no ads, and it carries in-app purchases for recipe bundles. If you already cook plant-based food and want a tested, finite collection rather than an endless feed, this is the kind of app that fits. If you are simply curious about eating more vegetables, it is a low-cost way to find out whether Liddon's style works for your kitchen.

What you actually cook from

The core of the app is the recipe collection itself. Liddon has been writing vegetable-forward recipes for over fifteen years, and the developer says she only publishes dishes that have been vetted by family, friends and recipe testers. That testing claim matters more than it might sound, because the usual failure mode of a plant-based recipe is a dish that reads well and cooks badly. Over 150 of the recipes are gluten-free, which widens the audience considerably.

Beyond the main catalog, some recipes exist only in the app and are not shared anywhere else. That is a meaningful reason to pay for the app rather than just reading the blog, and it is the sort of thing that tends to matter to people who already follow Liddon's work. The collection is also described as growing: each recipe published on the blog is added to the app, so the library expands over time rather than staying frozen at what you bought.

A bundles page sits alongside the recipes, offering themed collections that are both free and paid. The recent update added salads to that Books page, which suggests the bundles are where newer themed material lands. Anyone weighing the app should treat the in-app purchases as optional extras layered on top of a complete base collection, not as a gate in front of the recipes.

Finding the right dish for tonight

Search works two ways: by ingredient keyword or by recipe title. The ingredient search is the one I would lean on most, since the practical question in a kitchen is usually what to do with what is already in the fridge rather than which named dish to make. Filters then narrow things further by dietary and allergy information, season and dish type, so you can pull up, say, summer-appropriate gluten-free mains without scrolling the whole catalog.

Browsing by category is supported too, with thumbnails grouped so that all the breakfast titles and photos sit together. Each recipe carries detailed nutritional information in its tips section, which is useful if you track intake or need to check a dish against a dietary plan before committing to it.

The photography deserves a mention on its own. Every recipe has full-screen, high-resolution images, and the interface is optimized for tablets. On a larger screen that turns the app into something closer to a cookbook you leaf through than a list you scroll, which is a reasonable way to decide what to cook when you have no fixed plan.

Cooking tools that assume messy hands

Several features exist specifically for the moment you are mid-recipe. You can strike out ingredients and directions as you work through them, so you do not lose your place between the chopping and the stirring. An anti-lock feature keeps the device from going to sleep while a recipe is open, which removes the small irritation of waking a screen with wet hands.

Recipes are also available offline, so a saved dish travels with you. That covers cooking at a vacation rental, in a kitchen with unreliable Wi-Fi, or anywhere you would rather not depend on a connection. There is a favorites list for the dishes you return to, and you can attach your own notes to any recipe, which is the natural place to record a substitution or a timing tweak you made last time.

None of these are exotic, but they are the right set. A recipe app lives or dies on whether it is pleasant to use while cooking, and the combination of strikeout, screen-awake behavior and offline access addresses the three things that most often send people back to a printed page.

Getting it onto your device

Setup is minimal by design. You buy the app, install it, and the recipe collection is there. The one requirement worth flagging is language: recipes are available in English and French only. If neither is your reading language, the app will not be usable regardless of how good the recipes are.

The app was released in January 2017 and was updated in April 2026, so it is a long-running product that still receives content updates rather than a one-off release. It has more than 50,000 installs and a 4.7 average from roughly 1,500 ratings. Those numbers describe a modest, settled audience rather than a mass-market hit, which is consistent with a paid app built around one author's recipes.

The developer provides an email address for support questions, which is the route to take if something goes wrong. Beyond the download price, the only money involved is the paid bundles on the bundles page.

The cook this suits

This app is built for someone who already eats mostly plant-based, or who cooks that way several nights a week and wants a dependable set of recipes rather than an infinite one. The gluten-free coverage makes it relevant to households juggling more than one dietary restriction, and the allergy filters help when you need to check a dish quickly rather than reading every ingredient line.

It also suits people who like cooking from a tablet propped on the counter. The large photography and tablet-optimized layout are aimed at that setup, and the strikeout and anti-lock features only really pay off when the device is sitting open in front of you while you work.

The narrower fit is the cook who wants a general-purpose recipe manager for their own clippings and family dishes. This is a closed collection from a single author, expanding as her blog expands, with notes and favorites as the only personalization. If your cooking is not centered on plant-based food, the catalog will feel like someone else's kitchen rather than yours.

A tested collection for plant-based kitchens

At $2.99 with no ads, Oh She Glows asks for very little and gives a well-defined thing in return: more than 180 plant-based recipes, over 150 of them gluten-free, with app-exclusive dishes, full-screen photos, nutrition details, filters, offline access and the small cooking conveniences that make a tablet usable at the stove. The paid bundles are there if you want more, but the base library stands on its own.

The limits are equally clear. Recipes come in English and French only, the collection is one author's, and the app is a reading and cooking tool rather than a place to store your own recipes. Those are characteristics, not faults, and they define who the app is for.

If you cook plant-based food regularly and want a curated, photographed, tested set of recipes that works offline and keeps growing, this is an easy recommendation. If you are looking for a broad recipe organizer, the app's focus will not match what you need.

What's new in version 1.4.3

Big salad energy over here—Oh She Glows Salads just landed on the Books page—come take a peek!