Mela Recipe Manager

I feel bad because I recommended Paprika not long ago, my longtime fav, but then Rec League happened and @Toby Nieboer mentioned Mela, and I tried it and it’s better. Beautifully designed, really nice swipe interaction between ingredients and steps, also great at extracting recipes from cluttered web pages. Last but not least, it has a recipe scanner, for importing recipes from paper cookbooks, and it’s fantastic! You can draw blocks over the areas that contain the title, ingredients, steps, etc. and then it imports it (see addendum rec here). Magical. Forgive me, Paprika…

app-etizing kitcheny things

2 months ago

Comments

Jonathan

@j0nathanAug 1, 2026

This is one of my favorite apps. It’s design works for me better than any other recipe app I’ve tried. I’ve been using it for years and haven’t looked back.

Madge Home

@madge_homeAug 1, 2026

I love mela!

Melody

@melodyAug 1, 2026

Better than Paprika? Oh my…

Jim Biancolo

@jimbiancoloAug 1, 2026

If you try it I’ll be curious to hear if you agree!

Anna Songsong

@annasongsongAug 2, 2026

Yeah I love paprika too and am intrigued! Have you found a way to export all of your recipes from Paprika?

Melody

@melodyAug 2, 2026

@Anna Songsong it’s really easily actually, paprika has an export setting and mela has import! All my recipes are now in Mela but I’m not fully committed to switching yet. Mela is definitely a more aesthetic design though.

Jim Biancolo

@jimbiancoloAug 3, 2026

One of the things that sold me was a feature that I almost ignored: if you go into a recipe and tap “cook” the resulting view is really useful. The font is much bigger, and you can swipe quickly between the “ingredients” view and the “steps” view, and it remembers your position in each view. Really smooth and much easier than the toggling mechanism in Paprika

graham

@eeveeacresAug 4, 2026

I’ve been importing recipes into Recipetables and printing them off! https://recipetables.com/r/0730d5cdbd it’s just so simple and easy!

Anna Songsong

@annasongsongAug 8, 2026

Ive been mia but thanks y’all this is helpful!! I’ve downloaded it!

Jim Biancolo

@jimbiancoloAug 30, 2026

@Melody @Anna Songsong I just tried the scanner feature (for importing paper cookbook recipes) and it’s great! I was already sold but this is a game changer for me.

Melody

@melodySep 14, 2026

@Jim Biancolo the scanner did it for me, I’m a full convert now. Sorry to Paprika, you were good to me!

Across Rec League

Mela

Jim Biancolo

“Just a lil addendum to my rec of the Mela recipe manager. The recipe scanner is fantastic and makes it so easy to consolidate your go-to recipes from your favorite cookbooks. Just take a pic, select blocks for ingredients, steps, etc. and it pulls the text right in (see photo). We live in magical times.”