DinnerSorted
Organising recipes
How to organise recipe screenshots on your iPhone
Quick answer
Open Photos, search for a word that appears in most recipes, such as 'tbsp', 'ingredients' or 'method', and add the results to a Recipes album. Delete the duplicates and the ones you'll never make. Then turn the 20 or so you actually want to cook into text, using Live Text to copy the words out or a recipe app that reads the screenshot for you, so you can search them and put them on a meal plan.
Screenshotting a recipe takes half a second, which is exactly why so many of us have hundreds. They're scattered through the camera roll between holiday photos, parking tickets and memes, and finding the one with the good flapjack recipe means scrolling back to 2022.
Here's how to get them under control in about half an hour, and how to stop the pile growing back.
Step 1: find all your recipe screenshots
You don't need to scroll. The iPhone Photos app can search for text inside your photos, so search for words that appear in almost every recipe:
- tbsp and tsp
- ingredients
- method or instructions
- serves
- oven temperatures like 180°C or gas mark
Run a few of these searches and you'll catch most of them. Searching "Screenshots" also narrows things to screenshots only.
Step 2: gather them into one album
Make a new album called Recipes. Apple's guide explains how to create an album and add photos to it; you can select several search results at once and add them in one go. Now everything is in one place, even if it's still a mess.
Step 3: be ruthless
Go through the album and remove:
- Duplicates. You will have screenshotted some recipes three times.
- Partial screenshots missing the ingredients or the method, unless you know where the full recipe lives.
- Recipes you'll never make. Be honest. If it's been sitting there two years, it can go.
Most people end up with a few dozen worth keeping. That's a collection you can actually use.
Step 4: turn the keepers into text
A screenshot is a picture of a recipe. You can't search it properly, scale it for more people, tick off ingredients or add them to a shopping list. Turning the recipes you'll actually cook into text fixes all of that.
The free way: Live Text
Open a screenshot, press and hold on the words, drag to select the ingredients and method, and tap Copy. Apple explains how Live Text works on supported iPhones. Paste it into a note, add the dish name and, if you know it, the link to where it came from. It takes a minute or two per recipe.
The quick way: a recipe app that reads photos
Some recipe apps can read a screenshot and lay it out as a proper recipe, with ingredients and steps separated. You check it, fix anything it misread, and save.
Start with the 20 you cook most
Don't try to convert everything at once. Do the recipes you make regularly first. The rest can stay in the album until you fancy them.
How to stop the pile growing back
- Save the link, not a screenshot, when the recipe is online. The link usually leads to the full recipe, and you keep the creator's credit. Our guide to saving recipes from websites covers the cleanest ways.
- Pick one home for recipes and put new ones straight there. See how to organise your recipes for choosing one.
- Empty the album once a month. Turn the new screenshots into text, or delete them.
Got recipe cards or cookbook pages too? The same approach works for photos of paper recipes: see how to digitise a cookbook or handwritten family recipes.
Doing this in DinnerSorted
Disclosure: I make DinnerSorted. In the app, choose to add a recipe from a photo and pick a screenshot from your camera roll. It reads the text and lays out the title, ingredients and steps for you to check and edit before saving. From then on the recipe is searchable by ingredient, can go on a night of your week, and adds its ingredients to the grocery list.
DinnerSorted is free to download on iPhone, with three automatic imports a month on the free plan, covering photos, social media and websites. Unlimited imports come with DinnerSorted Pro, which has a free trial. You can also type recipes in by hand for free.
Questions people also ask
How do I find all my recipe screenshots on iPhone?
Use search in the Photos app. Apple says you can search for text that appears in your photos, so words that show up in almost every recipe, such as 'tbsp', 'tsp', 'ingredients' or 'method', will pull most of them up.
Can I copy the text out of a recipe screenshot?
Yes. On a supported iPhone, Live Text lets you press and hold on the words in a photo, select them and copy them. You can then paste the recipe into a note or a recipe app.
Should I keep recipes as screenshots?
Screenshots are a fine way to grab a recipe quickly, but a poor way to keep one. You can't easily scale the amounts, add the ingredients to a shopping list or edit them, and they get buried among your other photos. Turn the ones you'll cook into text.
Is there an app that turns screenshots into recipes?
Yes. Some recipe apps read the text in a photo or screenshot and turn it into an editable recipe. DinnerSorted does this on iPhone, as well as importing from social media links and websites.
Sources
Outside facts in this guide link to their source. The advice and examples are our own.