[HN Gopher] Show HN: Onlyrecipe 2.0 - I added all features HN re...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Onlyrecipe 2.0 - I added all features HN requested - 4
years later
Author : AwkwardPanda
Score : 105 points
Date : 2025-12-04 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (onlyrecipeapp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (onlyrecipeapp.com)
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Hi HN,
|
| I posted the first version of OnlyRecipe here about four years
| ago [1], and the response was incredible. The feedback in that
| thread shaped a lot of what I wanted to build next. That initial
| momentum proved that the core problem (ads, life stories, and
| clutter on recipe blogs) needed a solution.
|
| Progress since then has been slower than I hoped -- I had some
| health issues and was building on and off -- but I kept coming
| back to this project because I genuinely love working on it. I've
| been working on the project on and off, fitting development in
| whenever I could. This post represents a huge personal milestone.
|
| Here's what's new after all this time:
|
| Import from Videos: Import directly from TikTok, Instagram,
| Youtube and Facebook videos
|
| Import from Handwritten recipes: Import from handwritten notes
| and screenshots
|
| Unit Conversion: A highly-requested feature. Instantly convert US
| Customary (cups/oz) to Metric (grams/ml) for any extracted
| recipe.
|
| Grocery Lists: Consolidate ingredients from multiple saved
| recipes into a single, clean shopping list.
|
| Meal Plan: Plan your weekly meals in advance
|
| Controls: Full recipe editing, PDF export, printing, and cross-
| device sync
|
| Mobile-First Design: While the web view (linked above) is great
| for quickly seeing the result, the mobile apps have dedicated
| native controls for cooking mode (e.g., screen stay-awake,
| timers, and offline access).
|
| In-App Browser: Directly import from any site within the app and
| many more...
|
| To see these features in action quickly (small gif/videos), check
| it out on the landing page [2]
|
| The link above is a deep link to a live demo on the web app.
|
| I'd love to hear your thoughts on the new utility features and
| the performance of the parser! Try it out here [5]
|
| [1] Original post from Jan 2022:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29795482
|
| [2] Landing Page: https://get.onlyrecipeapp.com
|
| [3] iOS App: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/only-
| recipe/id1602130759
|
| [4] Android App:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nsqr.onlyr...
|
| [5] Web app: https://onlyrecipeapp.com
| neogodless wrote:
| Constructive feedback on current state:
|
| - many recipe sites let you check/uncheck things you want to
| print. I'd love to print just [ name, ingredients, instructions
| ] without [ photo, metadata/servings/nutrition/etc. ]. I much
| prefer one page recipes to two pages.
|
| - on desktop, some text-break like "6 servings" breaks to 2
| lines
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Thank you for the feedback. Appreciate it. I have made a note
| of this. I will fix it in next release.
| jodieweldon wrote:
| Very cool! it does get a bit confused about number words that
| aren't amounts, like "3 large russet potatoes, peeled and
| halved lengthwise" becomes "3 large russet potatoes, peeled and
| cut in 0.50 lengthwise" which when scaled up becomes "cut in 1
| lengthwise"
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Yeah it tries to convert generically. I have noted this edge-
| case and I'll add special handling for cases like this.
|
| Thank you for pointing it out
| RyanHamilton wrote:
| Congrats on releasing and steadily improving. What was the most
| unexpected thing you learnt lately?
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| There are many learnings:
|
| 1. The most unexpected thing that I learned was the absolute
| nightmare it is to set up subscriptions.
|
| I initially thought it would be a simple task. I started off
| with writing APIs and webhooks for Play store and App store.
|
| But then as I got into the specifics things got complicated
| very quickly.
|
| The combinations of subscriptions (monthly/yearly, AI and non-
| AI), cancellations, cross device subscription sync, how to
| handle trials, how to manage subscription states of users, and
| then when users upgrade, that's another few cases to handle.
|
| There were just too many cases to handle.
|
| I then just used a third-party provider (RevenueCat). They have
| handled all the complexities beautifully.
|
| 2. Supabase self-host is another nightmare in itself. Just the
| sheer amount of configs needs (through the .env file) is
| insane. They have intentionally made it so difficult to
| configure.
|
| 3. Setting up SMTP and sending emails is actually a very tiring
| and cumbersome process. AWS SES is just too much work. Mainly
| the domain reputation (emails always landing in spam) and also
| there are not many providers that give a generous trial.
| regularfry wrote:
| Very minor point, in the grand scheme of things: when converting
| measurements from imperial to metric, I would be astonished if
| many recipes need more than two significant figures. When the
| recipe says "391.32 gram strained greek yogurt" I would not
| expect disaster to befall me if I only supplied 391.31g.
|
| A more major point is that I don't seem to be able to select text
| to copy and paste. I had to type out "391.32 gram strained greek
| yogurt" like some sort of caveman. And that makes me wonder what
| a screen reader would make of it...
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Thank you for the feedback. Will definitely release an update
| by tomorrow for this.
|
| Regarding selection of text, that has been a problem with
| flutter. I will find a way to make it selectable.
|
| There is an alternative. You can share the recipe or click
| print. There you would be able to select it.
|
| Or, you could share the recipe and it would be copied to your
| clipboard.
|
| I know that is not exactly what you want, but it will solve the
| purpose for now.
|
| I'll fix it soon. Apologies.
| pjsg wrote:
| I'm not convinced that the units conversion is right. The
| example of 2 Cups of greek yoghurt being 391.32 g. 1 US cup
| is 240 ml (or 236.5 ml depending on which type of cup you are
| using). The density of greek yoghurt is somewhere between
| 0.96 g/ml and 1.04 g/ml (depending on which website you trust
| the most). This leads me to calculate that 2 cups greek
| yoghurt weighs between 454 g and 499 g). The 391 g value is
| way off.
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Thanks for pointing it out. I'll look into it and fix it by
| tomorrow.
| _bent wrote:
| This should do the trick
| https://api.flutter.dev/flutter/material/SelectionArea-
| class...
| nkrisc wrote:
| My kitchen scale only shows grams to the nearest integer
| anyway.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| For recipes, I prefer to use approximate round figures when
| talking in terms of metric and American customary. So, 1 fl oz
| is 30 ml, a pound of flour is 450 g, etc.
|
| These are much easier to measure, scale, and remember. There
| are very few contexts where minute differences matter, and I
| don't think you're going to find a material crossover figure
| between those that want recipe help and those that are working
| on the kind of stuff where it matters.
| chrysoprace wrote:
| That works for some recipes, but for bread precise is better.
| I'm astonished when I read bread recipes that casually ask
| for 2 cups of flour (which could be wildly different
| amounts).
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| You don't need to get that precise to make bread. I've made
| bread successfully all the time with volume measurements,
| it's not like the recipes are _that_ finicky.
| mlyle wrote:
| You can be wildly off in baking and produce an edible,
| enjoyable product. Especially if you have a sense of how
| to adjust the consistency of what you're mixing and can
| adjust baking times.
|
| But-- if you use weight measurements and attend to
| precision, you'll have to adjust a lot less and you'll
| come much closer to the best possible output.
| chrysoprace wrote:
| It's not that you can't, it's just that it's harder to
| get consistent results. Switching to weight measurements
| is the first advice I give to any friends who are
| struggling with making bread.
| valleyer wrote:
| Looking through your comments, your spelling indicates you
| might be from a Commonwealth country, which means you might
| not be familiar with the fact that a "cup" is a
| standardized measurement in the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit)#Customary_cup
| zahlman wrote:
| Sure, but in practice people don't use measuring cups all
| that precisely a lot of the time. Specifying a weight
| forces people to bust out the scale and pay attention.
| atonse wrote:
| This reminds me of making a trip to a jeweler when I was < 10
| years old, and noticing that they had a weighing scale that
| seemed to be down to decimal points of a gram (which I guess
| counts when you're weighing gold, etc).
|
| And the numbers kept changing even when the scale was empty. I
| think I had a whole conversation with my grandpa about why that
| was happening, and we came up with "probably just variations in
| air/breeze around the scale causing them to change"
|
| No idea if that's actually what it was, but it's plausible if
| you're doing sub-gram weighing?
| umanwizard wrote:
| I have a scale in my kitchen that measures with 0.1g
| precision, and it doesn't do what you describe (change while
| you're not touching it). Perhaps technology has advanced
| since the anecdote you describe? Or maybe my scale is just
| lying to me.
| atonse wrote:
| Hmmm then I bet it was a flaw. Or maybe modern scales have
| microcontrollers that adjust for this?
|
| This was a scale in a jeweler in India. It might have been
| in the late 80s or mid-90s. I might be misremembering too.
| So take my anecdote with a grain of salt.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > Or maybe modern scales have microcontrollers that
| adjust for this?
|
| This seems likely to me.
| zahlman wrote:
| > So take my anecdote with a grain of salt.
|
| Oh, come on. Surely the scale wasn't _that_ precise.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Your scale may smooth out the fluctuations automatically.
|
| Mine takes a little while to notice when I'm adding
| something like a tenth of a gram of yeast to a recipe.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Yeah, I'd guess this is what's happening.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Most likely the op amp (or whatever gain stage) noise. After
| a certain point, you get thermal noise.
|
| But with such scales, low sample rates and averaging are key.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > No idea if that's actually what it was, but it's plausible
| if you're doing sub-gram weighing?
|
| Yes, even dust particles landing on the scale can impact the
| reading, which is why when you're measuring really small
| things and want to be precise, you usually have a little
| glass/plastic cube around the entire thing too.
|
| Also frequently used for people who measure drugs for various
| purposes.
| jamessb wrote:
| > why when you're measuring really small things and want to
| be precise, you usually have a little glass/plastic cube
| around the entire thing too.
|
| These weighing instruments with draft shields are usually
| called analytical balances:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_balance
| folli wrote:
| Also, depending on the ingredient, it makes more sense to use
| cups as a measurement of volume, not mass, when converting to
| metric. E.g. liquids, yoghurt etc.
|
| Another thing: although not strictly metric, but European
| recipes also use tablespoon and teaspoon as measurements for
| smaller volumes, so no need to convert this.
|
| Just my two cents, other than that very nice work!!
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I've made a note.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| so use cups and tablespoons but put in parenthesis the
| value in mL
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Certainly. That would provide a good user experience.
| Thank you.
| djoldman wrote:
| Please, please try using weight whenever possible, aka for
| all amounts >= 2 grams.
|
| 1. People are bad at measuring volume. This has been tested.
| There is much more variance in amounts measured by volume
| than be weight. See "science and cooking" (ferran adria).
|
| 2. Using a scale means doing a lot fewer dishes! (measuring
| cups, spoons, etc.)
|
| 3. It's faster, try it!
| ThomasMidgley wrote:
| "Also, depending on the ingredient, it makes more sense to
| use cups as a measurement of volume, not mass, when
| converting to metric."
|
| Hmmm... What kind of cup? :-)
|
| US "legal" cup (240ml)
|
| US customary cup (246,6ml)
|
| metric cup (250ml)
|
| UK cup (170,5ml)
|
| edit: fixed typo 150ml -> 250ml
| Chilko wrote:
| Not sure where that 150ml came from - our metric country
| (New Zealand) 1 cup is 250 ml.
| ThomasMidgley wrote:
| Thanks, I mistyped. I meant 250 ml.
| bja wrote:
| This is amazing, and at first glance it is going to solve many of
| my problems. I see offers to start a free trial but nothing about
| pricing. The sign up page doesn't work well with my password
| manager, I imagine you need to add auto fill hints to the
| textboxes, looks like your using flutter, so add these to each
| textbox you want to autofill:
| https://api.flutter.dev/flutter/material/TextField/autofillH...,
| it should also work with mobile
|
| When I sign up, I get an error when confirming my email: This
| site can't be reached The webpage at
| https://api.onlyrecipeapp.com/?code=XXX
|
| Good work, looks very promising.
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Oh shoot!
|
| That's a reverse proxy configuration error. I just fixed it.
|
| Please try registering again.
| xiconfjs wrote:
| Doesn't seem to work for this blog:
| https://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2016/03/tartiflette-french-p...
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Noted.
|
| This page probably does not have the standard recipe attributes
| that are needed for parsing the recipe.
|
| I am adding a fallback mechanism for such cases. The text will
| be parsed using LLM like ChatGPT.
|
| Should be released by tomorrow. Cheers!
| bmelton wrote:
| I assume that (like most recipe apps out there) he's just
| trying to parse the json Recipe schema when it is attached.
| Most blogs attach them because it helps Google get them
| indexed.
|
| Chef John doesn't
| sdqali wrote:
| Ironic, considering that FoodWishes has been on Blogspot
| forever. Blogspot (Google) could auto-generate it on the fly.
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| You are right. I'll add a fallback to parse it using LLM.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| This one didn't work either: https://www.thekitchn.com/how-
| to-cook-moist-tender-chicken-b...
| tclancy wrote:
| Easily fixed. After all, you are the mason of your own JSON.
| imperialdrive wrote:
| Hijacks the back button :/
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Sorry for that. I am still handling cases in web app. This is
| built in Flutter and released as a mobile-first or tablet-first
| app.
|
| I am fixing many such issues right now. Should be at par with
| the mobile apps soon.
| bflesch wrote:
| The animations are laggy and the transitions make the website
| slow.
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Can you also tell me which browser and/or version you are
| using? I'll check it.
|
| I have actually added same transition as mobile apps. But there
| shouldn't be lags ideally. I'll have a look.
| bflesch wrote:
| It's most likely because all 3d acceleration is disabled in
| my browser. Using chrome up-to-date on linux.
| CraftThatBlock wrote:
| The app looks very nice. Small suggestions: Show the price of the
| premium plan when not logged in. Many users may not entertain an
| app depending on the price, and logging in shouldn't be needed to
| see it.
|
| Also the ability to halve recipes would be great, sometimes you
| just want to make less.
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Thanks. Yes, makes total sense.
|
| Will make these changes and release soon.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| Four years soon?
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Haha. No, not this time. ;) It'll be released by this
| weekend and I am focusing on this project completely right
| now.
| amir734jj wrote:
| Clicking on back button of my mouse starts an infinite loop.
| jpalmer wrote:
| This looks great. Something I'd like to see in a recipe app is
| scale is not only reflected in the ingredients list but also in
| the directions.
|
| The linked recipe is a great example. The 1/2 teaspoon in step 1
| is never modified regardless of the scale of the recipe.
|
| Also scale should go below 1 (like .5).
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Noted this. Thank you.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Should the measurements be included in the instructions or just
| left out to avoid that? Instead of "add 1/2 teaspoon of
| ingredient", just say "add ingredient".
|
| growing up, we had the old red/white gingham Betty Crocker
| cookbook where the scaled measurements were written in the
| book. the instructions never had any of the measurements in
| them. based on that, it just feels natural to the point of
| adding the scaling into the instructions seems overly
| complicated. just took a look at couple of other recipe
| examples, and they all leave out the measurements in the
| instructions.
| mattcantstop wrote:
| It's great to see other people working on this. It's a problem
| that needs solving, and you've solved it in a meaningful way. I
| have been building https://spoonme.kitchen/ for a couple of years
| now (but with a different focus) to help solve this problem and a
| few others that are meaningful to me.
|
| One aspect that I've been really wrestling with is how can we
| make the end user experience of seeing a recipe better, while
| still providing meaningful income to the recipe creators who
| labor so much to share their stuff with us. I'd be interested in
| your thoughts on this. That to me would be the very meaningful,
| positive change: that end users get a better experience, and
| creators get paid. That's been my overarching goal and
| motivation.
| wjrb wrote:
| Congratulations on the work.
|
| Some nits/notes:
|
| - Browser history seems to go in a circle (at least in Chrome);
| try use the browser's native "back" arrow a few times after
| clicking through the link you shared from HN.
|
| - Transition animations and element "load-in" animations make the
| whole thing feel slow and hard to use. As it is, I'm frustrated
| trying to look through recipes or moving through pages.
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| You have confirmed the two issues that others are also facing.
|
| I'll definitely look into this
| sequoia wrote:
| No one requested "highlight the ingredient names in the recipe
| steps"? That's a top request from me.
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Thanks. I'll add this as an optional user preference
| meowcow wrote:
| Highlighted ingredient names and inline amount/sizing so
| there isn't as much back-and-forth referencing!
| sirjaz wrote:
| I would be amazing if you released this as a Windows app. I would
| love to use it on my surface which sits in the kitchen.
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| That should be doable. I have made a note. Thanks.
| pzo wrote:
| - if you change to metric system suddenly you get numbers like
| 453,59 grams fusili pasta - its quite demotivating
|
| - instead of grams I would like also tell me how many americano
| coffee cups more or less than looking for scale.
|
| - I wanna scale down - if serving is for 6 people i want to scale
| down to to servings
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| I've added it to my notes. Thanks
| cengen wrote:
| I think it's first time I've seen stuff like tablespoon,
| teaspoon, cup converted when changing to metric. These are very
| normal units to use in Europe when cooking. We don't measure
| teaspoons by the grams when we make food. If measuring flour or
| something then of course grams would make sense.
| dzonga wrote:
| would love to see the original requested feature list ?
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Here is a list (summarized by LLM)
|
| Conversion, Scaling, and Measurement
| Conversion to weights from volume (e.g., converting '1 cup of
| flour' to grams). One developer noted they'd look into generic
| conversion feasibility. Scaling a recipe (e.g.,
| adjusting ingredients for 1.5x or 2x the batch size).
| Unit Choice: Offering a clear choice between metric and
| imperial units. Unit Specificity: The ability to
| differentiate between US and non-US cups for accurate
| conversions. Data Structure: Displaying ingredient
| data with consistent units in a database to enable easy batch
| size adjustments and visualization of value changes.
| Structured Data and Presentation C4E Format:
| Converting recipes to the format used on Cooking For Engineers.
| Process Visualization: Displaying the entire recipe process
| using Gantt charts or a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) / graphviz
| to illustrate dependencies between steps.
| SEO/Integration: Incorporating JSON-LD support for better
| recipe recognition and advanced features.
| Printability: Generating dedicated print-friendly pages.
| Standard Layout: A simplified, standardized layout for better
| readability across all recipes. Sharing: A feature
| for sharing recipe "image cards" (screenshots) with friends.
| Management, Search, and Tools Shopping List:
| Creating a grocery list from the scraped ingredients.
| List Filtering: The ability to exclude common ingredients
| (salt, pepper, olive oil) from the automatically generated
| shopping list. Nutrition: Generating automatic
| nutrition labels. Personal Database: The
| capability to ingest every recipe from every cookbook into a
| personal, searchable database. Search Function:
| Allowing search for recipes instead of just requiring a URL
| input. Sync/Backup: Enabling server-sync and
| export/import of recipes. Timers: The option to
| set a timer linked to the time specified in a recipe step.
| Custom Lists: Allowing users to create their own categorization
| rules for ingredients on shopping lists. Platform and
| UI Dark Mode: Adding a dark mode for late-night
| cooking. iOS Integration: Implementing a Safari
| extension feature for the iOS app to open recipe pages
| automatically within the app. Video Parsing: The
| capability to parse recipes from YouTube URLs or videos.
| cush wrote:
| Great job!
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Thank you :)
| robhlam wrote:
| Thank you for this!
|
| [comment about issue that is present in original recipe removed]
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Are you still taking suggestions? You should have a "random
| recipe" button that loads something random from your database.
| Right now, your product is very one-dimensional: Someone has a
| specific problem, they find your solution, they use it. But,
| adding another dimension for people who don't have that problem
| is a good idea. And I think a random recipe button will naturally
| open you to finding what that second dimension is.
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Hey! I never really thought in that direction.
|
| That's a great insight. I'd definitely look into it.
|
| Thank you
| namrog84 wrote:
| In addition to random recipe.
|
| Have a recipe of the day. Rotated per 24 hours.
|
| So we can all enjoy and refine a recipe together
| dbjacobs wrote:
| Since a recipe can be for multiple services, the ability to scale
| a recipe down would be helpful.
| egonschiele wrote:
| Funny timing, I've been building something like this for my own
| use -- but your feature list has everything I wanted :) How much
| do you charge? Would love to know without downloading an app
| AwkwardPanda wrote:
| Glad you liked it. There is a free tier. So you don't
| necessarily have to purchase. The pricing summary is here
| https://get.onlyrecipeapp.com/pricing
|
| Thank you
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| This is great, but it seems to be missing the requisite 5000 word
| backstory detailing the author's summer trips to their grandma's
| farmhouse where the recipe originated or the vacation to a
| foreign land where the author had a personal encounter with the
| dish's chef who, after much cajoling, revealed the secret recipe.
| Without the backstory, each recipe feels ungrounded and detached
| from time, place, and even reality itself.
| spondyl wrote:
| My particular favourite of this genre is "Maple Shortbread
| Bars" from The New York Times which starts with the opening
| "Shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001"
|
| https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017089-maple-shortbread...
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| My neighbor had 1940s Joy of Cooking, which in itself was
| probably one of the first every recipe, for the most part,
| just works cookbooks. Between rationing and more important
| not spoiling when sending cookies from the US to soldiers
| fighting on the front lines, many cookie recipes were without
| butter.
|
| Outside of a story like that, there is no reason to include
| war in your recipe. Cooking is about nurturing and sustaining
| homeostasis. There is something fundamentally wrong about
| taking other people's suffering and making it about one self
| -- it is narcissistic which spoils like cookies made with
| butter after several weeks of travel.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| Oh, it's worse than you think. It's not just "taking other
| people's suffering and making it about oneself." It's often
| purely SEO. Recipes get ranked higher when they are
| preceded by long, "engaging" introductions that nobody
| reads but that use keywords and address common questions
| (Like "can I substitute ingredients?). Often the longwinded
| introductions you see aren't the result of narcissism but
| of thoughtless SEO.
| napolux wrote:
| hahahahahah i remember you! <3
| Brainspackle wrote:
| Any planned import options? I would love to import my plantoeat
| csv into it
| VerifiedReports wrote:
| Great job! Seems to work well.
|
| I created an account, but when I clicked on the confirmation link
| in the resulting E-mail, it took me to a log-in page that said,
| "Sign in to api.onlyrecipe.com:443.
|
| I wasn't surprised when I used my sign-up info and got nothing
| but a Kong error for my troubles. So... looks like sign-up is not
| yet working.
| chrysoprace wrote:
| Fantastic. I was actually working on something like this myself.
| I was planning to use an LLM as a fallback for recipes that don't
| contain properly formatted recipe data.
|
| Curious as to how you get around some of the anti-scraping
| measures like Cloudflare. I put in a recipe blog
| (https://www.maangchi.com) that usually blocks me with Cloudflare
| but your site was able to scrape it just fine.
|
| Edit: also as a very minor point your counter on how many recipes
| have been imported seems to keep going up each time I try to
| visit the same recipe. It says I've converted 5 but I've just
| tried to visit the same recipe 5 times.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-04 23:00 UTC)